Teachers: The Katydids Preview TV Land’s New Comedy [Exclusive Interview]

There’s a new comedy series coming to TV Land, and it’s one you aren’t going to want to miss. Teachers is hilarious, smart, and honest. It’s also completely unexpected.

The series stars Caitlin Barlow, Katy Colloton, Cate Freedman, Kate Lambert, Katie O’Brien, and Kathryn Renée Thomas – also known as The Katydids. This group of amazing women started out as an improv group who created their own web series. Now, that very web series has evolved into TV Land’s newest comedy.

I got the chance to talk with The Katydids about how the series began, how they conceived of their characters, and what kinds of things we can look forward to this season.

Katie O’Brien, who plays Ms. Mary Louise Bennigan, gave a little backstory on how the new TV Land series came to be. “We were all performing improv in and around Chicago. And Caitlin Barlow just knew a bunch of funny girls named Katie in the improv community,” O’Brien explained. “She got us together, and we started doing shows together and really loved performing together.”

O’Brien went on to explain how the group developed their web series, which was eventually discovered by TV Land. “A friend of ours says to all of us, ‘You know you all look like mid-western teachers, and we should do a web series about teaching.’ That was Matt Miller. So we co-created the series with him. And then that was really wonderful, and then we released it, and TV Land discovered it, and here we are!”

Something else that makes the show so special is how much of it truly is run by women. “One thing we’re really proud of is almost the entire show is predominately female driven,” O’Brien said. “We have an almost exclusive female writers room.”

In addition to writing and starring in the show, The Katydids serve as executive producers along with Community’s Alison Brie and showrunners Ian Roberts and Jay Martel.

Cate Freedman, who plays Ms. A.J. Feldman, said she couldn’t be more excited. “It’s really surreal for us to have our comedy be out there for such a wide audience. You know, we were just an improv group from Chicago, and now we’re having our dreams come true. Literally, the wildest dreams we’ve had are coming true. It’s just a really, really exciting time.”

Each of the teachers on the series is unique, quirky, and incredibly flawed. One of things that makes these characters so fantastic is that they’re inspired in some small way by the lives of their creators. “When we wrote the web series, we decided we should all just take something that was a small part of our personality or our experience and heighten it,” said Kathryn Renée Thomas, who plays Ms. Deb Adler.

“So, a lot of our characters in the web series really started as very much blown up versions of ourselves. Myself in particular — my character is based on me at fifteen who had never grown out of my angsty Goth phase,” Thomas said. She also explained that the characters are even more exaggerated for the TV show than they are in the original web series. “We have to blow them up even more, because it’s a little too similar in the web series and we needed to differentiate.”

While the web series started as a conversation about how much The Katydids looked like a group of teachers, ironically, one member of the group also actually was a teacher.

Caitlin Barlow, who plays Ms. Cecilia Cannon, was a fourth grade teacher in Chicago. “Something that we wanted to do when we were writing the series, is that we wanted to ground the comedy in the actual experience of teaching,” Barlow said. “So a lot of what we did was based off my experience. When you’re a teacher, you do recess duty, and sometimes you have inappropriate conversations with your co-workers. Or you’ll go to the bar after work and talk about the parents that you hate.”

Katy Colloton, who plays Ms. Chelsea Snap, said Matt Miller pointed out to the group that teaching is “one of the top five most respected professions, but also one of the top five most adulterous.” That’s one of the reasons the group thought this idea for a series would be especially fun. “That combination is really fun to explore,” Colloton said. “And I think we just really loved the idea that, you know, when you’re young, and you’re in your twenties – and you’re trying to figure out who you are as an adult, you make mistakes.”

Regardless of profession, this is a show that women in their twenties and thirties are absolutely going to be able to relate to, which Kathryn Renée Thomas said is one of the hopes for the series. “So many of the things we wrote came from conversations we had with girlfriends,” she said. “So much of it comes from our lives. We really hope that twenty-something [and] thirty-something women can really relate to this.”

The show also explores the kinds of things we all remember from childhood, as Kate Lambert, who plays Ms. Caroline Watson, pointed out. “It’s such a classic time for everyone, and it’s such a nostalgic time. So I think when we explored certain ideas for elementary school, we try to go for common experiences or common events, and then explore those with our own twisted spin on it,” Lambert said. “Bullying is something that I feel like almost every kid deals with in elementary school, but we almost wanted to show that – in our particular episode – the funny thing is that the bullying wasn’t a problem until the teachers got involved.”

The Katydids were also excited to share some of their favorite episodes from this first season, and let me tell you, we have a LOT to look forward to. Freedman said one of the most memorable episodes for her is “an episode where Deb Adler gets mistaken for a porn star. It’s really fun. It’s really funny. And the reason why that episode is also so special to us is because we got to cast a lot of dads in it, and we got to bring in a lot of our Chicago friends from the improv and comedy scene.”

Thomas also shared one of her favorite episodes, “Picture Day.” “There’s some hilarious hi-jinks involving death and how Ms. Caroline Watson has to deal with death and explaining it to her children,” she said. “It’s gonna be a good one.”

For Colloton, her favorite upcoming episode is titled, “Sex-Ed.” “It’s exploring sexual education with the character of Mary Louise Bennigan, who might not be the most experienced person. So there’s a lot of humor in someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about explaining it to kids who have so much access to the internet.”

That episode will also include one of Barlow’s favorite characters, “the hot dad.” “It’s this wonderful actor named Ryan Caltagirone. He plays just like, a really hot dad, who we never name. And he drives all the teachers crazy. In a good way,” Barlow said.

“He appears in multiple episodes, so he has a big enough part that we should have named him,” Barlow continued. The Katydids decided not to, though, partially because they felt their characters would never refer to him by name. “He’s too hot to name! There are no words.” Of course, that’s just one more detail that shows how these stories are inspired by things that happen in real life. “I can tell you, that is a thing. In every grade, everyone knows who the hot dad is. You always want that kid in your class!” Barlow exclaimed.

One thing is for certain: you do not want to miss this funny, smart new comedy from this amazing group of ladies. Check out the promo video below for a sneak peek.

Teachers premieres tonight at 11/10c on TV Land. Don’t miss it!