Was it always Erica that was going to be pregnant? Did you guys contemplate at all over having Melissa or Gail end up with the pregnancy?

First of all, shout out to Matt Marshall, who was our writer’s assistant in season one, and then became a really great addition to our writing staff. It feels good when you can help someone get their big break, and Matt has been awesome.

As for the pregnancy, yes we had lots of discussion about it, going all the way back to early season one. Some inside baseball here, but originally Carol was going to get pregnant in season one in the episode where Melissa says she’s horny. I think that’s 104. Melissa says, “I’m horny,” (by the way, lots of discussion about that specific word – the women in the room said no woman would ever use it, but we steamrolled them and I regret it, and now as penance I’m voting for Hillary). So Melissa says she’s horny, and Phil runs back to tell Carol he wants a divorce and Carol says she’s pregnant, which would have been a very big moment.

And we wrote that script, and we wrote several scripts following that one where Carol was pregnant. And it just didn’t sit well with a lot of people. It affects how you feel about Tandy, if he’s acting out and his wife is pregnant. But Will, and many of us, were still really attached to that pregnancy moment because it would have been so powerful – Phil wants a divorce but his wife is pregnant, that’s powerful stuff. Liz spearheaded the change. She actually took 3 or 4 scripts home one night and just re-jiggered them to remove the pregnancy. She just wanted to see if there was a way to remove that and still have the impact of it. What she proved was that it’s deeper to have Phil change his mind because of emotions rather than circumstances. He sees the wreath she made and he melts. He’s a better man because of that moment.

Anyway, getting back to your question, we talked about maybe Melissa being the one, which would give us that cruel irony that we generally love in this show. But ultimately Erica felt like the best choice because it directly affected Phil 2.