1. By JACQUELINE PRIMO
Assistant Managing Editor
O
n a warm winter day, Pali-
sadian Charlie Grandy is
a long way from his home
in the Alphabet Streets, bounc-
ing along a bumpy road past
quaint village shops, then big-city
skyscrapers, then European cas-
tles soaring into the skyline.
Trams packed with people
drive past and wave, and Gran-
dy good-naturedly gives them an
easy smile and a wave back.
But the laid-back Grandy isn’t
driving through a fairytale coun-
tryside or New York City. Instead,
he’s piloting a golf cart, bopping
around the Universal Studios lot
to and from various sets for “The
Mindy Project.”
As a writer and executive
producer on the hit show, Grandy
is on his second day back from
hiatus to begin shooting the final
13 episodes of season four. (The
season’s first 13 episodes were
shot and aired on Hulu before the
winter break.)
With high-fives and hugs,
Grandy and the show’s cast and
crew greet each other as eagerly
as school kids back from summer
vacation.
Among the sitcom’s stars who
greet Grandy are Ed Weeks, who
is just as dashing and charming in
real life as his character Jeremy
Reed is on the show, and Mindy
Kaling herself, the show’s creator,
who proved just as quirky, cool
and fun-loving in person as her
TV persona.
For Grandy, moving from the
writers’ room to various sets to
working with the actors—it’s just
another day at work. And cruising
around on a golf cart while driv-
ing down James Stewart Avenue
on the NBC/Universal lot is just
part of his daily commute.
It’s all the culmination of a
prolific career that’s earned him
two Primetime Emmys plus two
Writers Guild of America nomi-
nations.
Despite the success, “I always
felt like my life was a long road
back to the Palisades,” Grandy
tells the Palisadian-Post during
an exclusive set visit on Wednes-
day, Jan. 20.
A JOKE MACHINE
Grandy was born in New
York and moved with his parents
(including dad Fred Grandy, best
remembered as Gopher on “The
Love Boat”) to the Via Bluffs
neighborhood of Pacific Palisades
when he was just a baby.
From there, Grandy lived in
various Los Angeles neighbor-
hoods on the Westside until he
reached the sixth grade, when
his father moved to Iowa and his
mother headed east to Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Grandy went on to attend
Harvard University where he ma-
jored in East Asian Studies—a
choice he refers to as a bit of “re-
bellion” on his part, having come
from a family in the entertainment
industry.
But he was around 9 or 10
when his dad introduced him to
“Monty Python”—unknowingly
planting the seed.
As a kid, Grandy would lis-
ten to stand-up comedy albums
a la Bill Cosby, Robin Williams,
George Carlin, Steve Martin and
Bill Hicks, whom he called “a real
comic’s comic.” Grandy started
doing his own stand-up comedy
after graduating from college in
1997.
His foray into stand-up last-
ed about a year before he landed
a gig at “The Daily Show” with
then-writing partner Dan Goor.
He migrated to “Saturday Night
Live” in 2001 to write for the
show’s weekly political/current
events mock newscast sketch
“Weekend Update,” which at the
time featured Tina Fey and Jimmy
Fallon.
In 2002, over SNL’s four-
month production hiatus, Grandy
tried his hand at stand-up comedy
again, this time in Brooklyn.
“It was a fun time to be doing
stand-up. I had a lot of access to
stage-time,” Grandy says, noting
a five-minute set he did for Com-
edy Central’s long-running show
“Premium Blend.”
“I quit immediately after be-
cause I realized I preferred writ-
ing comedy to performing it. And
I preferred spending time with
my wife-to-be Sage, who heckled
me less than stand-up audiences,”
Grandy notes. “I was much more
excited about the inception of
the joke than the delivery of the
joke.”
Grandy would go on to be a
writer and producer for SNL until
2008, working with the cast mem-
bers who have become household
names—Tina Fey, Amy Poehler,
Jimmy Fallon, Maya Rudolph and
Seth Meyers, among others.
“That whole crew has gone
on to dominate late-night televi-
sion,” Grandy says.
Along with the on-screen co-
medians, the writers’ room was
filled with equal amounts of tal-
ent over the years Grandy was on
staff.
“You stay close with that class
you come in with,” Grandy says.
In 2008 Grandy joined the
writing staff of hit sitcom “The
Office,” a series for which he
would become co-producer and
eventually supervising producer.
“When I left late-night TV,
I figured I had written between
25,000 and 30,000 jokes over
eight years, five pages of jokes a
day,” Grandy says.
And then, ever the humble
gentleman, he adds, “About 3
percent of them were any good.
Though through hard work my
percentage is now about 4 per-
cent.”
ON THE “MINDY” SET
It doesn’t take spending a lot
of time with Charlie Grandy to
see how down-to-earth and genu-
inely funny he is.
Grandy is approached by
cast and crew (who have clearly
become good friends with him)
everywhere he goes on the NBC/
Universal lot that day—from
the set of an extremely realistic
New York City subway car, to
an apartment set, to the writers’
room where “The Mindy Project”
scribes were working on a script
for an upcoming episode.
Stepping into the writers’
room, Grandy greets the team and
takes his place behind his com-
puter at the head of the table. With
his hand on his chin, he scans the
pages of a script the writers pre-
pared that day.
“This is good,” he says with a
laugh as his eyes move along the
screen.
The writers smile in his direc-
tion. It’s clear that making Gran-
dy laugh is a good thing.
The sitcom stars Mindy Ka-
ling as the bubbly and quirky
NeighborsMEET
YOUR
“SNL”
(Continued on page 14)
“The Office” “The Mindy Project”
Fun Times on the Set
and in the ’Sades with
Charlie Grandy
In the writers’room for the hit
TV sitcom“The Mindy Project,”
writer and executive producer
Charlie Grandy (r) laughs as he
scans a script.
Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer
Some of theTV shows that
Charlie Grandy has worked on
include:
Palisadian-PostServing the Community Since 1928
Page 13 $1.50Thursday, January 28, 2016 ◆ Pacific Palisades, California

2. Page 14 Palisadian-Post January 28, 2016
Charlie Grandy
Mindy Lahiri, an Ob/Gyn doctor
at the center of the romantic-com-
edy series.
“Mindy has tremendous fo-
cus,” Grandy says of his friend and
co-worker. “She’s the most talent-
ed writer I’ve ever worked with…
She’s hilarious and thoughtful and
smart.”
Grandy and Kaling have a his-
tory dating back to his SNL days
when Kaling breezed in as a guest
writer for a week around 2006.
The two also worked on “The Of-
fice” together for years.
Now, Grandy says “The Min-
dy Project” is unlike any show he
has written on.
“Mindy has such a clear voice.
That makes it so much easier to
write jokes. It’s very clear now to
say this is something she would or
wouldn’t do,” he says of her char-
acter on the show.
On a typical day, Grandy and
the writers are either getting a
script ready for a table read, prep-
ping a script to shoot or “breaking
stories” (developing the story and
jokes for an episode).
“The nice thing about being on
a show for a few years is you round
the characters out, give them more
of a backstory, put them through
greater challenges. It keeps it in-
teresting,” Grandy says.
Even better, he adds, “I love
being in the writers’ room. The
highlight of my day is being in that
room, just with funny people figur-
ing out stories.”
But the writing process isn’t
always glamorous, he admits. And
in order to churn out a script in two
or three days, which he often does,
it takes more than just being cre-
ative and funny.
“You can’t have writer’s block.
It’s a discipline. It’s not very sexy,”
Grandy says.
Family Time in
the ’Sades
Cut to a scene that’s far more
familiar to most Palisadians—the
Palisades Recreation Center.
Away from the craziness of the
Universal lot, Grandy is in the
midst of another kind of chaos a
few days later on Jan. 23. Instead
of being in the driver’s seat of a
golf cart this time, however, he’s
sitting on the sidelines cheering on
his son Teddy, 8, who is playing
in a nail-biting overtime basketball
game in the gym.
Earlier that morning, Gran-
dy was encouraging his other son
Rhys, 6, at his PPBA baseball try-
out.
Mom Sage, with her sunny
personality, is on hand too as is
daughter Annabelle, 10, who nods
her head enthusiastically when
asked if her dad is funny.
“He always puts a funny twist
on things,” Annabelle says.
As the family poses for a pho-
to for the Post, son Rhys hams it
up on the slide, clowning for the
camera.
“He’s way funnier than I am,”
Grandy says with a laugh.
It was just this sort of fami-
ly-friendly, small town commu-
nity scene at the Rec Center that
brought Grandy back to the Pali-
sades in 2008 when he transitioned
from “SNL” to “The Office.”
“Actually it was Sage who
told me if we were going to move
to California, the Palisades was the
only place we could live,” Grandy
says.
Sage, a former news producer
for CNN, knew about the Palisades
because she had a brother and her
best friend living here.
Like many Palisadians, the
Grandy family likes to keep it lo-
cal when eating out—Roast, Casa
Nostra, Kay ’n’ Dave’s, Beech
Street and Juicecrafters are on
their regular rotation. They’re
looking forward to even more op-
tions once developer Rick Caruso
opens his Palisades Village proj-
ect.
“We’re really excited about
Caruso,” Grandy says.
Sage adds, “It seems like if
anyone could do this project, he’s
really the right guy for the job.”
After the morning’s sports ac-
tivities, the family heads off to one
of their favorite eating spots: Pali-
sades Garden Café.
Plans for the rest of the day in-
clude working on the kids’projects
for the upcoming Palisades Ele-
mentary Charter School Science
Fair on Feb. 1.
“We’re making home-made
lightning,” says Grandy, who had
just received news that his lat-
est TV comedy project—“Dumb
Prince” with co-executive produc-
er and longtime friend Amy Poe-
hler—got picked up for a pilot.
Will the science fair project
and his new show be winners?
That remains to be seen, but you
can bet Grandy will have a whole
lot of fun in the process.
Additional reporting by Fran-
ces Sharpe
(Continued from page 13)