How do your spouses feel about the autobiographical aspects of the show?

I know it’s weird for my wife to hear things in the show that are practically transcriptions of things that happened to her or to us. But I think they get a laugh out of it, and we tell them so they’re aware of what’s happening in the scripts and stuff. We’re also friends with our spouses and we care what they think about what we do. And both our spouses are both very funny as well.

How much of the show is scripted?

The show is one hundred percent scripted. There’s almost no improvisation. We’re despots that way. Improvisation produces amazing, amazing comedy and many people use it to brilliant effect. We generally don’t because we’re acting out all the roles constantly as we read and re-read the scripts to each other, because that’s how we work. So by the time we got ready to shoot it, it was pretty locked, since we agonized over every syllable that every character says.

How did Carrie Fisher get involved in the project?

We saw her give an award to Graham Norton at the Attitude magazine awards last year and she was so amazing, and Sharon said, “We should see if we could get her to play your mom.” And I thought that was crazy. I mean, how the hell? But then we just went through the normal channels. It was ridiculous! I didn’t believe it until we had her fully shot. I didn’t even believe it when I saw her walk onto the set. Why wouldn’t she in the middle of the day come to her senses and think: What the hell am I doing with these clowns?

Your show has been credited with revitalizing the romantic comedy genre. How do you feel about that?

You know what, that’s sort of a silly conversation because the trends reflect that maybe the fact that a smaller percentage of annual global film budgets is being devoted to romantic comedies and who seriously cares about that? Especially when you’re trying to make something good, you can’t concern yourself with trends, or you’ll just make silly garbage. People want to file it under romantic comedy, that’s fine with me. That’s not my place to do it. Our job is to make compelling story that is funny.

Are you worried about season two living up to season one?

I’m totally worried about it. I’m one hundred percent worried about it. The pressure comes from Sharon and myself because the network will be forgiven, but we won’t. So it’s our duty to make it excellent.

What can we expect in season two?

The only thing we’re saying about the second season is that it will be in the future. And I suppose you might say more of sequel than a continuation. You can only show a couple meeting for so long, and now they’ve met. So it’s going to be a different ball of wax. We’re casting for season two right now. And it’s so fun, I’m going to throw up.

This interview has been edited and condensed