Creators of "Eternally Yours" Jo Port and Joe Wiseman on reviving their vampire comedy series for CBS

Spoiler alert! This post contains details from the Eternally Yours pilot. Moving on to the residents of Woodston Manor, another supernatural family joins CBS's Thursday nights. Jo Port and Joe Wiseman, creators of Ghosts, showcased their long-running vampire comedy Eternally Yours last week after more than a decade in development. Eternally Yours is based on a […]

Spoiler alert! This post contains details of the Eternally Yours pilot.

Move over residents of Woodstone Mansion, there's another supernatural family joining CBS on Thursday nights. Ghosts creators Joe Porte and Joe Wiseman premiered their long-running vampire comedy Eternally Yours last week after more than a decade in the making.

Eternally Yours is based on a simple premise with a world of storytelling possibilities: it's easier to swear than 'til death do us part, when you're not going to live forever. So, what happens when you actually have to spend centuries with your loved ones? RELATED NEWS: CBS announces 'Pillsbury Bake-Off Classic' with Drew Barrymore as host.

Ed Weeks plays Charles, the archaic head of the house who isn't as open to the progressive state of the world as his wife Liz (Allegra Edwards). They live with their daughter Emma (Helen J. Shane) and son Jesse (Parker Young), two younger vampires they've met along the way in the last 500 years, their human bride Phyllis (Rose Abdo), and their half-human, half-vampire granddaughter Henry, Morelina (Shylo Moult). Watch on Deadline

After last Tuesday's pilot, their family is about to get bigger, as Emma's boyfriend Max (Jaren Levison) is also a vampire. Thanks Mort for that one

"The focus on these three cases is a lot of different couples, all at different stages of the relationship, and there's going to be a lot of research on that." Port talks about how the first season will continue.

After selling the pilot to CBS more than 11 years ago, Port and Wiseman say they thought the idea was long dead. That is, until they started working on Ghosts. In the interview below, Port and Wiseman discuss bringing Eternally Yours to life and what's to come from the first season, as Max learns to be a vampire.

DEADLINE: What was the inspiration when you first conceived the show all those years ago?

Joe Wiseman: So, believe it or not, the main relationship of the show, Liz and Charles, is kind of based on Joe and me. At the time, we had been writing partners for 15 or 16 years. We love each other, but we annoy each other, and we just started talking about: How can we make a show about two people who are contractually bound together? And we took it to the nth degree, well, vampires live forever, and what if in our mythology they weren't allowed to divorce and you've been married for 500 years? So it was kind of an inspiration.

Joe Porte: I think I've always thought it was funny, those scenes in movies like Twilight where they make that commitment without really thinking about the consequences, and you never really see the consequences in most of those movies and shows. So it seemed like a natural comedic thing to explore. After lust dies the moment you ask someone to turn you into a vampire so you can be with them forever, what is it really like to see what forever is like?

DEADLINE: How did the pilot change and how did the idea change over the years as you worked on other projects?

Port: Honestly, not much. It's very similar to the script we wrote 11 years ago. We made changes based on the necessity of shooting in Montreal in the winter. The accident where Max gets hit in the head and ends up being turned into a vampire used to be a car accident outside. But we love this thing where they were experimenting with telekinesis because it's obviously very vampiric. I think more than anything, it just affected the actors that we ended up working with because the timing allowed us to get these actors and the people were the right age, and we're really happy with who we got.

Deadline: This project eventually led to Ghosts, where you were adapting the existing format. Did you take anything away from the process that you think helped you here?

Weisman: Sure. We've been doing Ghosts for a long time, and I think we've established in our minds the idea that we're doing an incredibly entertaining show, but the stories have to be relatable and grounded to the audience. So, ultimately, we do stories that anyone can relate to, and then we have this super cute outfit to wear, which makes it unique and fun. But it was really knowing that we still had to be grounded and real. I think that was one of the biggest things we learned from Ghosts.

Port: I think playing Ghosts for the last six years has been very helpful in terms of giving us a mythological and legendary template. It's good to break things down slowly. Also, how to sort of pace and deal with multiple characters in one season. It was a great training ground.

DEADLINE: Did you find that you had a different kind of creative attachment to the show as you were going through the process of recruiting other collaborators, casting, etc.? You've been working on it for a long time. I'm just wondering what it was like to finally bring other people into it?

Port: It's very exciting for us. We've written about and shot too many pilots that didn't make it, and you never get a chance to revisit them. So this one had never been filmed before, but I think we just assumed it would never be made. So it's exciting to have the opportunity to revisit. In terms of which one we relate to the most, I really like Ghosts, and we're very similar to that one. It was our first show ever and it went well. So we're emotionally attached to Ghosts, but obviously we hope to be on this as well, and it's autobiographical from the start, as Joe was talking about. So that's why it's special to us.

Weissman: The two are very intertwined. We first sold and wrote Eternally Yours for CBS, and then it didn't get shot. But because of that, when they got the property of spirits, they were thinking of us. They were like, "Hey, they wrote that supernatural comedy." "Maybe they will be interested." So because of Eternally Yours, we got Ghosts, and then because of the success of Ghosts, we were able to revisit. So the two are very intertwined in our minds and we love both. They are both our babies.

Deadline: Have you thought about crossover opportunities?

Weisman: Yes, we have discussed this a lot. This is something we will definitely try to do.

Deadline: Who was the hardest to choose from Eternally Yours?

Port: That's a good question. I mean, it's always hard to cast kids. We hadn't really picked kids before. In Ghosts, we obviously don't have kids. So I thought that was probably the most difficult part to cast. We're really excited about everyone we ended up with. Ed Weeks was the one who - we had done a Dead Pilot Society table read like six years ago, and he sang the Charles part, and we've always had his voice in our heads ever since. Some of the other people we had as guest stars on Ghosts. [Casting directors] Liz Barnes and Tanis Vallee, they both play the show, and they always bring us amazing choices. I usually find that it's the people that we brought in on day one or the ones that end up taking the role on day two, even if we go through a process and it takes a month to vet others.

Deadline: I love Rose Abdo on the show. He's so cute, and I saw him recently on Amy's Carpet, and he was just talking to everybody.

Port: His character is growing a lot this season. We start and it's a bit of a joke that he thinks he's going to wipe him out, but we kept it for a reason. Max's presence now helps us and our characters explore some of the moral and ethical implications of this sort of thing. As the season begins, he comes in contact with many things he didn't know before.

DEADLINE: This is a good series because I wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about the vampire that Max is going to be.

Weissman: Max is a little bit in denial at first, but he's kind of a naive student [and] becomes obsessed and really interested in learning everything he can about the vampire lore, eventually. So he would be a very avid vampire. Although, some of the darker aspects, vampires have traditionally killed and fed on humans, and he's not into all that. It's kind of like going through puberty. It can be a long, long, awkward process when you become a vampire and develop different powers and learn how to deal with different urges you've never experienced before.

Bandar: Maturity is an analogy. I would also say it's like converting to a new religion and being the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable person in the family about it, even if you didn't start with it.

Deadline: As soon as Max becomes a vampire, many stories open up to explore between all of these characters, especially the three couples. What should we expect from the dynamics at home this season?

Port: It's going to focus on these three very different couples, all at different stages of their relationships, and there's going to be a lot of exploration of that. Max, who is new in this covenant, is a bit of an agent of change, and he wants to weigh in on things that have long been grievances and issues, and shed new light on them and help people discover ways to move past them. It's also a family show. We have these really cute teenage twin boys, one of whom has all the powers of a good vampire. Another can only read a dog's mind. We will check it. So I think it's really a show that has a lot of entry points for different people.

Weisman: We have a Halloween episode. We have a Christmas episode. So we want to see how our vampire family looks at those holidays and how they celebrate them.

DEADLINE: I'm glad you mentioned the holiday episodes, because the Ghosts Halloween episode is right around the corner. What are you waiting for?

Weisman: This is a really good episode. We are introduced to a new kind of spirit that we have never seen before. We meet Hattie's mustachioed sister Margaret, whom we've never met before. Many things happen. A lot of very exciting and big things are happening.

The second episode of Eternally Yours airs Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. on CBS. ET/PT. Ghosts will return for a special Halloween episode on October 29.

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