With Workin Moms, Catherine Reitman hit the mother load

Publish date: 2024-08-16

Catherine Reitman was about to blow.

It was the day before she was scheduled to shoot the final scene of “Workin’ Moms,” the hit sitcom she dreamed up out of desperation more than half a decade ago, and she of all the hats — creator, star and executive producer — had a mental to-do list that wouldn’t quit.

So, of course, her husband added to the bill.

“I’m driving home, and he says to me, ‘Look, tomorrow’s your last day on set. It’s been a seven-year journey. How do you want to do this? Do you want to give a speech? Do you want to go out to dinner?’” Reitman said. “And I was so annoyed. I was furious.”

What followed was an off-the-wall scene that could have been written into the seventh season of “Workin’ Moms,” which took its final bow on Netflix on Wednesday.

But more on that later.

The show, which aired for three seasons on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. before teaming with the streaming giant in 2019, is centered on Reitman’s character, Kate, an ad executive and mom of two trying to solve for motherhood, ambition, friendship and marriage. “Workin’ Moms” has found a devout audience among those who like their laughs served relatably with a hearty side of absurdity. It’s “Sex in the Nursery” where the kids get a small fraction of the screen time spent on a group of mom friends stepping on societal norms. There have been fake pregnancies, ugly babies, mean nannies and vagina selfies mistakenly sent to the group chat.

A show that treats mothers as fully realized humans with desires that can’t be crammed into a diaper bag doesn’t seem all that radical these days. Look at Ali Wong in “Beef,” Claire Danes and Lizzy Caplan in “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” But back in 2013, when Reitman started ripping storylines from her diary as a woman trying to make sense of a new all-encompassing identity, moms were cast in “a C-story line at best.”

“Part of the problem was that on all the shows I’d seen, the women were so one-dimensional. They either had to be likable or sympathetic, as my father would say,” Reitman explained, referring to her late father, famed “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman. “Or they were b----es. They were villains, or they were good guys, and there didn’t seem to be anything in between.”

The lightbulb for “Workin’ Moms” went off when Reitman was — surprise! — working. “I was in the throes of postpartum depression and didn’t even know it,” said Reitman, remembering missing her first Mother’s Day while shooting an indie movie thousands of miles from her 6-week-old son. She broke down in tears after some dudes on set joked that her brand new baby was already calling the nanny “Mom.” Not funny. Consoling her on the phone later that night, Reitman’s husband, Philip Sternberg, said, “You gotta write this.”

“I was so desperate. There were no other interesting jobs coming my way,” said Reitman, whose previous credits included semiregular guest spots on “Black-ish” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” “Here, all of a sudden, I felt this deep emotional connection to a storyline that I knew on some level had to be part of the larger picture and couldn’t just be me.”

Or could it?

One network said her concept was way too broad. Another said it was way too specific. “And every time I got that phone call, I was like, this is more than half the population! How is this a niche thing?” Reitman said. It was looking like all passes. But Reitman used her Canadian citizenship to sidestep Hollywood and pitched Canadian Broadcasting Corp. programming executive Sally Catto, who gave the greenlight immediately after watching an eight-minute sizzle.

The original four lead characters are based on Reitman’s flaws (according to the actress). Everyone’s favorite hippie real estate agent, Frankie (Juno Rinaldi), is the embodiment of Reitman’s half-secret wish to “pack it all in and be a lost child.” Mom group dropout Jenny (Jessalyn Wanlim) is self-absorbed beyond what should be possible. Kate is unapologetic about her sometimes blind ambition. And Kate’s best friend, the no-nonsense psychiatrist Anne (Dani Kind), is righteously rage-filled about all the things.

“Not only do I think there is a lot to be angry about as a woman and a mother in this world, but I believe this to be true of all women, and I think Catherine saw that and was brave enough to dive into it,” Kind said. Another brave thing the writer-creator did? Tackling the subject of abortion in the very first season when Kind’s character, a married professional mother of two, decides with her husband to terminate an unplanned pregnancy. The choice is presented as serious but not fraught with trauma.

“I kind of held my breath and braced for backlash when it aired and … nothing. Not a peep,” Kind said. “I think that’s a real testament to how badly we needed and continue to need this on our screens. And by ‘this,’ I mean a true look at who and why women are having abortions. The truth.”

Truth is a word that comes up often in connection to “Workin’ Moms.” While the show is far from representative of all mothers (most of the cast is White and upper middle class), it zooms in on experiences never before told on screen. Writer Karen Kicak, who welcomed her first child while working on the show, said that re-watching the early seasons “was like jack-hammering a raw nerve, but in a good way. I felt the humor and the pain of the show that much more deeply, and in equal measure,” she said. “It’s insane new parents didn’t have it to turn to before.”

Writer and actress Enuka Okuma — who plays Sloane, a high-powered publishing executive whose longing for and fear of motherhood plays out over multiple seasons — addressed the elephant in the writers’ room: The unending have-it-all debate that gets applied only to women.

“Catherine might be sick of me saying this, but she truly was such an inspiration to me,” said Okuma, who, like everyone on set, clocked Reitman doing it all. The show never shied away from the struggles of that balancing act. “We tried to illustrate characters attempting to have it all, only to discover it’s not possible. And that’s ok,” said Okuma.

It’s a lesson Reitman is revisiting. After years of rejection, the actress is landing a successful show and ready to launch another. (The details are under wraps.) And just as she’s peaking professionally, one of her now elementary-school-age sons is having a health issue and needs her at home.

“I’m in this compromised position. It’s not as simple as back in the day when I was just like, ‘Oh, I choose to work’ or ‘I choose to stay at home,’ and guilt be damned,” she said. “There’s nothing more important to [my son] than me. But I’m also trying to keep this job that I have valued for my whole life and it’s finally happening for me. It’s really challenging.”

Reitman, said Okuma and others, was less an example of super womanhood and more of a lesson in diving head first into what you love. She translated her personal failures and wins into 83 episodes of good TV.

“Writing something deeply personal, you strike gold, and then you have to actually show up and reinvent it. That’s a totally different skill set,” said Sternberg, Reitman’s husband and producing partner. Sternberg, who also plays her TV husband, got to observe his wife evolve as a showrunner who’s also No. 1 on the call sheet. “Over time, she went from being a Cessna general aviation plane to an F-14 fighter jet,” he said.

So, back to that last day of shooting, which Reitman described as “bananas.”

Crafting a satisfying series finale was a two-year process that would be over in 24 hours. The emotional weight settled in during Reitman’s drive home. Plus, she had lines to memorize, her boys were coming home from camp, and her older son had impetigo from mosquito bites. The last thing Reitman wanted to do was think about another thing to do. So when Sternberg asked about her real-life wrap-party dream sequence, Reitman blurted out the first ridiculous thing that came to mind.

“I said, I don’t know, Phil. Why don’t you treat me like the coach of an NBA All-Star Game? You know, like, dump a thing of Gatorade on me,” she said.

Challenge accepted. To Sternberg, the suggestion actually made a lot of sense.

“There’s no red carpets. We’re making this show in Canada. It’s not going to get celebrated at American award shows. But it’s seven years of her life, and she’s left it all out on the court,” Sternberg said. “It’s a pinnacle moment.”

Reitman went to bed that night dreaming of her to-do list, while Sternberg got to delegating.

After filming the very last scene of the show, Reitman stood up to thank the cast and crew. That’s when Sternberg and actor Ryan Belleville dumped two giant coolers of blue Gatorade on her head, and the writers sprayed Reitman “directly in the eyeballs” with champagne, while a mariachi band appeared in the background.

“I’m now legally blind, freezing and tainted some sort of Gatorade color when my husband presents me with a trophy the size of a Doberman that has all these quotes from over the seasons that I made. He went all out. It was both extraordinary and chaotic and really deeply troubling and terrifying and satiating all at once,” Reitman said.

That sounds a lot like motherhood.

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With Workin Moms, Catherine Reitman hit the mother load