Kutcher, Moore romance inspires sitcom
Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES—Actor Ashton Kutcher, whose May-to-December romance with screen star Demi Moore has riveted the tabloids for months, is producing a Fox TV sitcom pilot inspired by the couple’s recent real-life marriage. The show, about a man closer in age to his eldest stepdaughter than his bride, is “loosely based” on Kutcher’s new blended-family life, with some key variations, 20th Century Fox Television spokesman Chris Alexander said on Tuesday.
Tentatively titled “30-Year-Old Grandpa,” the comedy is set in Chicago rather than Hollywood, and neither of the two lead characters are entertainers. Instead, it centres on a 30-year-old nightclub owner and a fortysomething businesswoman who get married and discover they’re expecting a child.
At the same time, the woman’s 22-year-old unwed daughter announces she is pregnant and plans to move home to raise her baby — turning the show’s leading man into a grandfather overnight. The woman’s younger daughter, who had been living with her father, decides she, too, wants to live with mom and the new stepdad.
“It becomes a very modern, messy look at an extended American family,” Kutcher’s producing partner, Karey Burke, told Daily Variety. Like the fictional club owner in his sitcom pilot, Kutcher, 27, became a stepfather when he tied the knot last month with Moore, 42, who has three daughters — aged 11, 14 and 17 — from her previous marriage to actor Bruce Willis.
Exclusive wedding photos of Moore and Kutcher were published in OK! magazine last week, finally confirming the union of a celebrity couple whose marital intentions had been the subject of intense media speculation for months. Kutcher and Moore are not known to be expecting children, but the actress said in a recent Harper’s Bazaar magazine interview that she wanted to “expand our family.”
Moore, who starred in “Ghost,” “G.I. Jane” and “Striptease,” began dating Kutcher in 2003 as she was making a highly publicized return to the screen as a high-kicking villain in “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” Kutcher, whose break came as a star on television’s “That ‘70s Show,” is co-creator of the MTV reality show “Punk’d.” His films include “Guess Who,” “A Lot Like Love,” “Just Married” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
TV writer Holly Hester, who worked on “The Drew Carey Show,” will pen the script for “30 Year Old Grandpa,” one of several pilot comedies Fox has ordered developed as possible future additions to its prime-time schedule.
No casting decisions have been made. Alexander said he doubted that either Kutcher or Moore would appear in the series, but added, “I suppose anything is possible.” If the show does get picked up by Fox, it would hardly be the first of its kind. “Living with Fran,” a sitcom on the WB network, stars Fran Drescher as a fortysomething interior decorator whose boyfriend, in his late 20s, shares her home with her teenage daughter and college graduate son.