Image Credit: Eric McCandless/ABC FamilyLast Tuesday night, ABC Family’s cheesy, throwback-y new sitcom Melissa & Joey became the network’s biggest series debut in Adults 18-49, with 1.3 million in that age range tuning in to the decidedly nostalgic vibe of the show. The total viewership — a whopping 2.2 million viewers! — wasn’t shabby either, besting the viewership of shows across the cable and broadcast network spectrum. We’ll see how those numbers hold up — will people come back? — after tonight’s episode. In the meantime, EW got the chance to sit down with the show’s two stars, Melissa Joan Hart (hi, Clarissa…or Sabrina!) and Joey Lawrence (hi, Joey…or Joey!), to chat about how the show came together, what it’s all about, all that nostalgia, and which of their former sitcoms they’d reboot today if they had the choice.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How’d it come together for you guys to do this show?
MELISSA JOAN HART: The first time we got to work together was [the ABC Family original movie] My Fake Fiancé. Both of us just work together really well and from there we knew we wanted to spin-off and do something in television, and ABC Family agreed. We all came together and ABC Family had the concept, we had characters we wanted to play.
So, wait, whose idea was it?
MELISSA: Well, ABC Family had the same idea, basically. They were working on it from their end and we were like “oh, we should do this.” They had the concept — we had the idea to keep going together.
JOEY: They asked if we would be interested in continuing the dynamic of the characters that we able to tap into in the movie. We were open to it and then the discussion grew into larger talks and more talks and we talked to the writers and now here we are.
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