Greg Garcia interview

In Script Magazine (pdf file), Debra L. Eckerling talks to My Name Is Earl creator, Greg Garcia.

Garcia was on vacation with his wife’s family in North Carolina when he came up with the idea for My Name is Earl.

“I didn’t really start with anything in particular, other than the fact that I believe in karma, I like stories about people starting fresh later in life, and I’ve always been attracted to the world of trailer parks. So, I guess I took those three things and came up with this idea.”

Garcia pitched the idea to Fox, and they turned it down. He took two weeks to write the pilot anyway. Fox and the rest of the networks turned Earl down, so it sat on a shelf for a year and a half.

“Then I was having lunch with NBC, and they mentioned they had read Earl and wanted to do a show with me,” Garcia explains. “I was like, ‘Let’s just do that show.’ They thought about it and said, ‘Yeah. Why not? Let’s give it a shot.’”

Find out more about Script Magazine.

Ethan Suplee in My Name Is Earl, written by Greg Garcia.