Drew Carey on Why ‘The Drew Carey Show’ Tried to Be the ‘Anti-Seinfeld’

“Ohio” might mean “awkward” and “uncool” among Gen Zers, but during the late 1990s the state truly rocked — especially when it came to Cleveland. Sure, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame had a lot to do with it, but there was also The Drew Carey Show to thank, which grew local pride for its titular star’s hometown.

When The Drew Carey Show, a workplace sitcom about a department store middle-manager, debuted in 1995, the show immediately established itself as lighter and sillier than Seinfeld, Friends and Frasier. Drew and his pals broke into musical numbers like “Five O’Clock World,” and characters went on ridiculous adventures like winning the Batmobile and getting breast implants for science. Plus, format-breaking episodes asked audiences to find “What’s wrong with this episode?” or got jokingly melodramatic in a mock-bid to overcome its perceived Emmy snubs long before It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia did the same thing. 

As opposed to viewing the sitcom as a sophisticated art form, The Drew Carey Show blazed its own trail by focusing on being funny and having fun.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the show that made him a household name, I recently chatted over Zoom with its star — and, of course, current host of The Price Is Right — Drew Carey. We spoke about how the show was sold as the “anti-Seinfeld,” whether it went on longer than it should have and what it would take for him to say “yes” to a reboot. 

Leading into The Drew Carey Show, was the dream for you to have your own sitcom, or was that more the path at the time for a successful stand-up comedian?

Man, I just took it one step at a time, if that makes sense. I was in my late 20s when I started doing stand-up, so I was kind of a late-bloomer. I tried doing stand-up when I was in college for a couple of months, and I was really bad at it. This is how bad I was: They hired me to emcee one time, and on Wednesday, they told me to do 10 minutes. On Thursday, they cut me down to five minutes. And on Friday, they told me to just introduce the acts. I was really bad.

Then I was telling a DJ friend about my work woes, and he said, “Well, if you ever think of any jokes for my radio show, I’ll pay you.” I go, “How much?” He said, “I’ll give you 10 or 15 bucks a joke.” I go, “That sounds good.” I didn’t know how to write jokes, so I got a book at the library on how to write jokes. I thought, “Well, I’m going to see if these are funny,” so I started trying them out at the local comedy club. I won 50 bucks on the amateur night, and I just happened to have a suit and those glasses. The suit I got at a Goodwill store. I didn’t have any money, and there was a sale — all you could fit in a shopping bag for $20. And the glasses I was wearing, they were my Marine Corps. BCGs — that’s Marine slang for “birth control glasses.”

So, I walked out in that suit and those glasses, and I had my Marine crew cut and everybody laughed when I walked up on stage. I was happy I got a laugh, but you wonder, “Is this what people do when they see you, but they don’t laugh out loud?”

Sure, like, that’s more laughing at you instead of with you.

Exactly. But I won that amateur night, and there were local comics that were encouraging. Then I got other books on how to write jokes. I started trying them out, and the owner of the club let me emcee again. Then, other local comics were like, “You should do this,” and “If you write this much material, you’d be able to get the middle,” because, emceeing paid like, a hundred bucks, but if you middle, you could get 400 bucks, which was a lot of money to me back then. So, I learned how to write jokes. Then, the more jokes I wrote, the more material I got, the more money I could make. It was always like that. 

Then I just wanted to be on The Tonight Show, so I wrote Tonight Show material that wasn’t too dirty. The Tonight Show was such an important credit. It was a legitimacy that I needed. After I did it, all of a sudden I was getting all these offers.

I got a development deal with Disney, but that didn’t work out. I had that failure, then I got hired during the next pilot season. A friend of mine was doing a pilot and we had the same manager. They asked me if I wanted to be the best friend, and I think I got paid 35 grand for making the pilot. I thought, “Well, fuck, I blew my chance. I guess I’ll be a best friend and that’ll be my career. I’ll be a stand-up comic, and I’ll be a best friend-type on TV.”

That got canceled, but from that, I met the guy who I would create The Drew Carey Show with, Bruce Helford, and he wanted to hire me as a writer on a show he was doing. I wanted to learn about sitcom writing because I was really interested in sitcoms and how they worked. I took a job as a staff writer for $1,500 a week on that show, then that got canceled.

So, I had failure, failure, failure, but I was learning about sitcoms. I got to know some writers from that show, and I’d hang out with them and pick their brains. There were a couple of them who were like, “You should have a show of your own.” So I got together with Bruce Helford and told him I had this idea for a show: “What would I be if I’d never done stand-up comedy?” I was working in restaurants as a waiter, and I thought I’d just end up being a third-shift manager at some chain or some kind of basic position like that. We decided on a department store, and Bruce and I got together and sold it. I still had a little — I don’t want to call it “heat” — but I still had some warmth from The Tonight Show and Bruce had just come off Roseanne and all these shows. He was really well-connected, and they wanted to do a show with him. Anyway, thanks to Bruce, I was able to get The Drew Carey Show.

We got an offer to do 13 episodes for The WB, but we decided to swing for the fences with ABC where we’d make way more money, so we wrote a pilot for them and there was this deadline. There was one Friday where the show had to be picked up by 6 p.m. and then 6 came and went. I was like, “Fuck, well, I guess that’s it, but at least I got to learn how to write a pilot and had these meetings.” 

Then, quarter after six, we got the call that they picked it up. Then we did the pilot, and the pilot barely got picked up. Then we did the first season, and we barely got picked up for a second season. 

They decided they were going to double-pump us during the summer. So it was Roseanne, us, Grace Under Fire, us. Then, we started the second season with this big dance number to “Five O’Clock World” and that kind of hit it and got us rolling. But when I started, I didn’t think, “I’m going to have a sitcom one day” or be a game show host. My only goals were the next steps. That was only as far as I could see or imagine.

That dance number was a real landmark moment for the show. How did it come about?

That was an idea that me and John Caponera had on the show where I played his best friend. There was some scene where we were just rehearsing and laughing, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a Busby Berkeley dance number?” We jokingly pitched to the showrunners, and they were like, “Yeah, why don’t you two slow down?” But then, during The Drew Carey Show, Bruce and I would go on a driving trip after each season, and after the first season, we were driving and a song came on — I think it was “Five O’Clock World” — and we were like, “That’d be a great song to do a dance number to.” 

I told him that Caponera and I had this idea of doing a dance number, and we were just laughing about that in the car. So, we decided on that car trip that we were going to do a dance number.

I read that, when you guys were pitching it, you were calling it the “anti-Seinfeld.” Why was that important?

Well, I mean, that was as a joke. We’re all fans. That’s one of the best shows ever. But I didn’t want it to be in New York, L.A. or Chicago. I wanted it to be in Cleveland. I had a personal grudge against, “Oh, if they want the Midwest, they show Chicago.” There are so many other cities that people live in. It’s just annoying. Cleveland is a major city. We’ve got major sports teams, and we’ve got shit going on here. We see plays too. We’ve got a museum; we’ve got a big orchestra. We didn’t have the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame yet, but I was like, “Yeah, Cleveland’s great. Go fuck yourself if you don’t like Cleveland.”

So I wanted to set it in Cleveland. And, I’m not sophisticated — I have a really lowbrow sense of humor. That's my brand; it's just very common. So we were like, “It’s not going to be like everything else on TV.” That was what the “anti” was. We’re not going to copy what's on TV now.

What I read was that you didn’t want it to be about a bunch of yuppies complaining about minor problems.

Well, I’m not that person, and when you go talk to executives, you have to frame it in terms of things they already know. All day, that’s all they do, they hear pitch after pitch after pitch. That’s a really tough job. They’re looking for stuff to buy, and you have to find a way to sell it to them: “It's not going to be this. This is better than the air fryer you have. This is a double air fryer. You can cook the meat on the top and the vegetables on the bottom! Isn’t that better? It’s like an air fryer, but it’s the anti-air-fryer.” 

You know what I mean? You have to think of your own twist on things. We’re going to be in Cleveland. That’s a different outlook. We’re going to be working class. That’s going to be a different outlook. I’m going to be put-upon — the phrase that Bruce used in the pitch was he called me a “Happy-Sack.” Drew doesn’t have the best whatever, but he’s doing the best that he can with it.

Revisiting The Drew Carey Show recently, one thing I enjoyed was this loose sense of reality to it. With the musical numbers and format-breaking episodes, it felt much looser than other shows at that time that had a more strict sense of reality. Was that a conscious choice?

Well, we just wanted to make ourselves laugh. One of our contributors was Sam Simon from The Simpsons — he became one of my best friends, and he directed a bunch of shows — he’d come in once a week and write on the show and we were just like, “Anything for a laugh.” We didn’t care what it was. And once we started doing certain things, we knew there was no going back. For example, Sam pitched an idea that ended up being a really great episode where Drew wins the Batmobile in a contest. That was Sam’s idea, but it’s bananas — it’s out of a comic book. But Bruce grew up on comic books. I grew up on comic books. We had that MAD Magazine sense to us. So we were like, “Yeah, fuck it. If it’s funny, just put it in there.”

Did you actually get to drive the Batmobile?

Yeah, but we had to go really slow. Well, actually, I don’t remember if I got to drive it or not. I got to sit in it, of course. It’s weird that I don’t remember.

I figured that would be a life-changing experience,

I mean, I’ve done so many cool things. It’s really bizarre. Some of the shit that falls out.

With all the musical sequences in the show, were you living out some song-and-dance-man fantasy or something?

I did when we did “Brotherhood of Man.” Plus, once we did the one, it was really fun. 

When I was in ninth grade, I was Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance in a school musical. That was my acting experience until I got on that show with John Caponera. I remember telling everybody before we were filming the pilot of The Drew Carey Show, “Don’t worry. I was in a school play in ninth grade. I know what I’m doing.” 

So, it was fun to do. The dancing was hard though. We would spend all week learning the steps, then they’d bring in the professional dancers and show them in 15 minutes and they’d have the whole thing down.

It seemed like you had a lot of fun on the show. Like, for lack of a better way to put it, it seemed like it wasn’t as much an “art form” as a fun hang.

It was. It was really fun. We’d waste so much time. The drawback was we would have a 10 a.m. rehearsal, which is late, and people would wander in at 9:30, grab coffee or a bagel from craft services and we'd shoot the shit and it'd be like 10:45 and we’re like, “Oh, shit. We should start rehearsing.” Then at lunch, we'd play Medal of Honor. All the computers in the store were all hooked up with LAN connections and they all worked, so we’d play Medal of Honor with each other and lunch would be an hour, but then an hour and a half would go by and we were like, “All right, everybody, stop. Let’s get back to rehearsal.” I mean, we got it done, but we did a lot of fucking around.

Format-breaking episodes are more common now than they were then. Do you see any influences of The Drew Carey Show out there now?

I don’t watch sitcoms. It’s not that I think they’re bad or anything like that, but I’m on The Price Is Right all day and — this is going to sound weird — but at night I just watch the most dystopian, fucked-up things or documentaries.

Like?

The Great Courses, I’ll watch those. I’ll watch documentaries about serial killers or crime or I’ll watch Severance, Euphoria, Handmaid’s Tale, The Last of Us.

So, “Ohio” has become slang —

I’ve heard this. It’s a slang term used by kids whenever they think something is boring.

Yeah. I wanted to know how Drew Carey feels about that.

That’s kind of right on the money. Honestly, we deserve it. 

I also wanted to ask you about coffee beer. “Buzz Beer,” which was a coffee and beer mix, was a big plotline on The Drew Carey Show. There was basically no such thing as coffee beer back then, but now it’s everywhere.

My God. I tried to make it, but Warner Bros. wouldn’t make it. I got offers to make Buzz Beer, but Warner Bros. wouldn’t license it. They didn't want alcohol associated with the show or something. I remember thinking, “What the fuck? This would be a lot of money!” but they wouldn’t let me license it. But yeah, we were way ahead of the times.

The general feeling among fans of the show is that it stayed on longer than it should have. Do you agree with that assessment?

I really wanted 10 years. That was a nice round number, but I can’t complain about nine years. And yeah, we could have done better with some shows. I don’t know, doing TV is a grind.

Some seasons were like, 28 episodes, which was a lot even back then.

Yeah, they’d order extra episodes, and we’d be like, “Sure!” I remember we heard about some other famous showrunner that was doing another famous show. They wanted him to do extra episodes and he was like, “Oh, we couldn’t possibly, creatively, do any more shows,” and Bruce and I looked at each other like, “What the fuck? Take the money!”

Bruce and I are very money-oriented. There’s a lot of people in show business like me. Like, I just saw Oasis last night. They’re making a hundred million bucks off this tour. I heard they famously don’t get along — maybe now they do that they’re older — and they were having fun, but they’re doing it for money. There are so many things that are money-motivated. If you really seriously talk to an actor or musician and you want to know why they made that album or whatever, the honest answer would be, “I wanted to buy another house,” or “I like going to Europe with my family.” It all comes down to money. Nobody works for free. It’s show business — that’s what I always used to hear. You’ve got to make some money.

What suits you better personally — being a game show host or a sitcom star?

I love doing The Price Is Right. I like doing what I’m doing when I’m doing it. When I’m off, I don’t get up in the morning thinking, “Oh gee, I wish I was going to work today.” I enjoy the day doing whatever I’m doing. If I’m traveling, I enjoy the country I’m in. Don’t get me wrong, I look back fondly on things.

But you don’t pine for it.

No. Especially since I already did it. That’s one of the reasons I can’t watch sitcoms — because I know the art form so well. I can figure out what’s going to happen and write the jokes myself in my head. It’s not an enjoyable experience. I can’t suspend disbelief and watch it as a fan. But I can watch a really good drama because I don’t know anything about them. 

Since reboots are so prevalent now, would you be into a reboot of The Drew Carey Show?

I wouldn’t be opposed to it, if everything worked out right. I’d want the original cast and Bruce.

What would Drew be doing?

He’d still be at a version of Winfred-Lauder. We’d have to come up with a way for him to be back with Mimi and everybody in the office, and Louis would still be a Drug Co. and Oswald would still be hanging on doing something. For Drew, there are a lot of people in this country who are going to retire in 10 years and they’re getting by month-to-month. That’s a very common story everywhere, so I think it could be very relatable, and we could put Drew always behind the eight ball.