'Axe Murderer' Bride Is New TV Mom At CBS Radford Studios

With the new fall TV season gearing up, a new sitcom sets up shop at the CBS Radford Studios in town. Last Man Standing is comedian Tim Allen’s return to television comedy. This time, the former “tool man” plays a nature photographer downsized to a website blog, working at home with three daughters while his wife goes back to work.

Nancy Travis plays Last Man Standing’s TV mom. Already a sitcom veteran from Becker and The Bill Engvall Show, Travis leads a quartet of modern women on the show. Their oldest daughter is a single mom. Their youngest is a tomboy athlete and their middle child is in those awkward teenage years with on again/off again boyfriends. Dad is torn between teaching them independence and self-reliance, but maintaining traditional family values.

As a movie star, Travis’s big break came with Three Men and a Baby, as the mother. The cult hit So I Married an Axe Murderer followed along with many others. At the ABC network party for the Television Critics Association, I found Travis in a quiet corner of the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s ballroom. While other ABC stars roamed around, stalked by reporters, I caught up with our latest local TV star. Last Man Standing premieres Oct. 11 on ABC.

Q: Have you ever worked at Radford before?

NT: I did, I did The Bill Engvall Show there. Oh my God, I’ve been doing this for so many years I can’t even remember. Something somewhere, I feel like I’ve been in and out of that lot a million times.

Q: What do you love about working at this studo?

NT: First of all, it’s a manageable lot. It’s a terrific size. I live on the west side so it’s not so far away. It’s in a good location, compared to Warner Bros. which is farther. It’s just a beautiful lot, great history there, Trader Joe’s across the street. Can’t miss.

Q: Sounds like it would be a long drive from the west side.

NT: You know, if you’ve got to come over the hill, it’s the first stop over the hill.

Q: What do you take to get there?

NT: The hideous 405. The nightmare 405. There’s no way around it. I mean, there is, but really? Yeah.

Q: You said you like the Trader Joe’s across the street. Do you do your grocery shopping before you leave?

NT: I do. It’s a sitcom so the hours are fantastic. I get out, I go to Trader Joe’s, get stuff for dinner, go home. It works.

Q: Do you like any other Studio City shops?

NT: I like the Artisan Cheese shop which is great. The original Katsuya across the street and down a little bit is good. I think it’s the original one. My folks used to live on Hortense.

Q: How long ago was that that you had family in the area?

NT: About two years ago. God, my parents were all over Ventura and I would meet them there. Daily Grill and everything in there. That’s a big place. There’s a new place I want to try that just opened, it’s got a great façade, Sweet Butter. And obviously Bamboo the Chinese place. That’s a once a week thing.

Q: Obviously Tim Allen has a comedy persona. Is your character the right person to set him up for those jokes?

NT: It’s interesting you say that because we do bounce off each other really well. I’ve got to say he’s got a brand of comedy that’s somewhat known but he’s also very generous in terms of punchlines. Thinking of tossing a comedy ball back and forth, he’s not egotistical about it in any way. So we each try out different things and we each get to be each other’s straight man and we each get the punch lines.

Q: Does she like setting him up with his daughter’s problems?

NT: Maybe. It’s interesting, we did the pilot and whenever you’re starting a brand new show, you’re just opening that door to who these people are and what the stories are going to be. So I think it’ll be a lot of that, setting him up. Based on the premise of the pilot, he is now basically going to be working from home and I‘m going to be working out of the house more. So we’re going to see what it’s like for him to be in a house full of women and dealing with that and me out in the workplace.

Q: In the first episode, she must know her daughter’s crying about Glee and he’s not going to know what Glee is.

NT: Let that happen. Let him flounder around and see what happens and I think there’s going to be a lot of setup things and a lot of things that he’s going to feel it’s his obligation as a man to handle and take care of. She’s going to know just look in the yellow pages.

Q: It’s interesting this balance between wanting someone to be independent and also have that protective instinct, like teaching her to change a tire herself but also wanting a young mother to have a husband. How will that play out in the comedy?

NT: Gosh, I think there’s a myriad of different avenues to take and I think they’re going to mine every one of them for whatever it’s worth. It’s an interesting dynamic too because I’ve even had this conversation with my own husband. This whole dude guy around the house/fix it guy must skip a generation. It’s gone. What we do now, and we have children so what do you do? If you have a person who doesn’t really know how to fix anything or maintain things, is that something you pass on or is that something you want to change and teach your kids how to do things? My father made me take a small engines class. He thought I should know how to fix a lawnmower. We don’t even use a lawnmower. We have a gardener so it’s a whole different sort of culture.

Q: I still use AAA.

NT: Right. See, do I ever do it, but I could look in your car’s engine and I could probably fix certain things.

Q: Do you lean towards the traditional or more independent side?

NT: I think psychologically, basically I lean towards the traditional side but in actual fact, the way I live my life is more the other side.

Q: I liked the youngest daughter was good at soccer, but also wanted a boy to think she’s pretty. I thought that was sweet.

NT: Right, and it’s not a one dimensional thing. There’s different ways to look at things and we don’t just have one dimensional types of traits. We’re multi-faceted. I think the true talent in writers is to be able to find those nuances. That’ll make a show relatable and real and interesting and not just schticky.

Q: What are the movies fans like to talk to you about?

NT: Gosh, well, So I Married an Axe Murderer is a big one, always comes up. Three Men and a Baby. We were just in Africa and Victoria Falls of all places where there’s thousands of tourists and somebody from I think Germany said, “Oh my God, it’s you. You are the one from the movie the Three Men and a Baby. Oh my God, I love it.” So it still lives.