Attention women of all ages! I Feel Bad, NBC’s new sitcom about the perfect mother learning that it’s OK to be imperfect, has quite the meaning behind it – and every viewer will be able to relate. The show, created by Aseem Batra and produced by Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler, stars Sarayu Blue as Emet, a mother and wife who constantly feels bad about something she’s doing in her life – whether it’s having a dream about another man or lying to her kids.
“This is a show about a working mother who has to figure out why she feels bad all the time about all things,” Poehler, 47, explains in a new sneak peek. “It’s a comedy that celebrates how women are constantly torturing themselves for not getting everything right all the time … I regret nothing and feel bad about nothing.”
Blue, 43, absolutely loves the show because she, too, can relate. “I love the idea of I Feel Bad because we feel bad about things that we shouldn’t have to feel bad about,” she says.
“Each week we explore a new ‘I feel bad.’ Really, at the end this ‘feel bad’ is not a negative,”Batra says.
Batra also opened up about her own “I feel bad” moment during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. “I feel bad that I love doing this job, but it means I miss out on seeing my kid a lot. And then sometimes I feel bad that I don’t miss him as much as I should,” she admitted. “The night that we saw Sarayu audition for this, my kid lost his first tooth. I texted Amy. I said, ‘Amy, the nanny just sent me a video of him losing his first tooth.’”
“I think any working woman is constantly being asked about how she balances it all. It’s a question we’re asked all the time,” Poehler then chimed in. “It’s a question that we always have to give an answer to. So, with the balance of a working woman’s life, there’s always something that feels like it’s getting shorted. There’s something very specific about being a mom these days and being expected to be handling everything really, really well that is still unexplored territory on television.”
I Feel Bad premieres on NBC Thursday, October 4, at 9:30 p.m. ET.
