Maggie Q, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Eliza Coupe Turn Grief Into Comedy as Friends Reassessing Their Lives in PIVOTING

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede In the first episode of the new sitcom PIVOTING, three close friends are attending the funeral of a fourth close friend. “I really did think you’d be the first to go,” says Sarah, played by Maggie Q, to Amy, played by Eliza Coupe. “You know, with all the artificial sweeteners, smoking all those years, drinking, the pills, the gluten, the jaywalking … ” “I’m sorry … I promise I will be next?” replies Amy, somewhat quizzically. To which a teary-eyed Jodie, played by Ginnifer Goodwin, adds, “Colleen would really like that.” Colleen, as should be obvious by now, is the fourth friend whose death sets up the story in PIVOTING, which debuts Sunday, Jan. 9, at 8:30 p.m. ET on CTV, CTV.ca, and the CTV app. The series then makes its time-period premiere with another new episode on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 9:30 p.m. ET. Colleen’s death from cancer was a shock to her pals. The diagnosis came out of nowhere, and she was gone quickly. Now, Amy, Jodie, and Sarah are processing the tragedy by reassessing their own lives, and deciding to “pivot” in various ways. The thing is, they aren’t necessarily the best decision-makers, even when their intentions are good. Work-focused Amy commits herself to being a better mother, but she isn’t really equipped for the task. Jodie decides to lose weight, but winds up developing a crush on her much-younger trainer. And Sarah, who is a doctor, leaves the medical field because the pressure is too much, and takes a job at a local grocery store because she thinks it will be more “fun.” Executive producer and showrunner Liz Astrof was inspired to create PIVOTING because she witnessed a similar situation first-hand, after someone close to her passed away. “Well, I ripped a lot off from my friends, so it’s all stuff that has happened,” said Astrof in a virtual panel interview. “First of all, I just noticed at the funeral, we were so old, I couldn’t believe it. Just everyone in our age group, it was so depressing. We all thought we still looked the same age, but nobody said that to any of us.” But it was in the following weeks and months that Astrof witnessed the more profound changes. “Afterward I started to notice that people were just burning their lives down – like, some were having affairs, getting divorced, having babies, going back to school, usually to be a therapist or yoga teacher,” she recalled. “Because they realized, well, this is it. It was either, ‘I might go soon, too,’ or, ‘what if I live another 30, 40 years like this? I don’t want to do that, either.’ So it just put life into perspective for all of us, I think.” In PIVOTING, the reactions to which Astrof is referring are summed up by Jodie, when she says, “Someday is now. We have to live our best lives now.” But of course, there’s a lot of room for comedy in there, because if it were easy for Jodie, Amy, and Sarah to be living their best lives, they would have been doing so already. “I also appreciated that in the middle of something completely unrelated, in remembering the love that these women have for each other, they might notice that someone’s neck looks fantastic,” Goodwin said. “There is something among friends that happens, where you can, well, pivot at any moment and say, ‘I know I’m really mad at you right now, but your t— look spectacular, what have you done?’ And to me, that is the show.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv