Jeannie Gaffigan and her husband Jim tend to avoid the polarizing topics that divide much of America in their new comedy series "The Jim Gaffigan Show." Instead, they focus on the things that everyone can agree on, like cake.
"Everybody likes cake," Jeannie Gaffigan told Headlines & Global News in an exclusive interview. "Republicans like cake. Democrats like cake. Atheists like cake. Mormons like cake. So let's bring everyone together on cake."
Focusing less on controversial topics and more on food and family, the Gaffigans have assembled a diverse audience that spans from college guys to middle-age fathers and their teenage sons. They all show up to Jim's stand-up shows across the country and watch his new TV Land show, executive produced by Jeannie.
"When we did our books, 'Dad Is Fat' and 'Food: A Love Story,' and with the advent of 'Mr. Universe,' a Comedy Central special we did a few years ago when Jim started talking about the kids, our audience started expanding," the mother of five explained. "So all of the sudden, instead of it just being mostly this Comedy Central demographic... we started noticing our audience was growing and changing and developing into a more inclusive demographic."
For those who try to politicize the Gaffigan's partnership of a woman working in the background as her husband gets all the credit on screen, they fail to recognize the incredible amount of work Jeannie puts in behind the scenes. She not only serves as an executive producer on "The Jim Gaffigan Show," but she's also a writer on the show in addition to taking care of their five children and producing his stand-up specials.
She willingly made the choice to not play herself on the show (and at one point that was the plan) and as she puts it, you could say, "Jim is the man in front of the woman." Their partnership is equal opportunity.
"I went into the background as a producer and realized that if Jim was in all the scenes, who was going to be there to make sure that this was our point of view. Who's going to be there? We don't have a third person. We don't have anybody that knows our life like I do. And so when [CBS] recast the Jeannie character, I didn't even put myself into the mix," Jeannie said.
She added, "I think that's it's really important for people in this age of equality to realize that you can be an extremely powerful, important, fulfilled person and not have your face on the cover of a magazine... I think if you're someone's partner and you happen to be their wife, or husband in a lot of cases, there's nothing wrong with being that person who's allowing that other person to be in the front."
Enjoy Jeannie and Jim's shared story of their wonderful and chaotic family life on "The Jim Gaffigan Show" on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on TV Land. The show also repeats on Nick at Nite and Comedy Central.
