Drew Carey Celebrates 30 Years of His Hit Show Set in Cleveland

Comedian Drew Carey put his hometown of Cleveland — and, by extension, the entire southern coast of Lake Erie — on the map with “The Drew Carey Show.” Thirty years after ABC-TV first aired the sitcom on Sept. 13, 1995, fans once again can laugh at the escapades of his character, a hapless bachelor employed as an assistant personnel director at a fictional Cleveland department store. All nine seasons are included in “The Drew Carey Show: The Complete Series,” distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment on DVD and for digital purchase.

Carey, now in his 18th year hosting the long-running “The Price Is Right” game show, spoke with us about how his foray into television began, the development of his eponymous character, the things he and his alter ego have in common, and the possibility of a “Drew Carey Show” reboot.

Hard Knocks

Carey’s road to sitcom fame and fortune wasn’t smooth. A development deal with Disney inked after a first appearance on “The Tonight Show” in November 1991 was voided by an F-bomb-laced complaint he muttered after a producer asked him to make a change during the taping of a few scenes to give higher-ups an idea of the unnamed show’s tone.

“That afternoon, I was fired,” he recalls.

A subsequent stint as fellow comedian John Caponera’s character’s best friend on “The Good Life” ended when the midseason-replacement show was canceled shortly after it debuted on NBC in early 1994. And accepting an invitation from TV writer/producer Bruce Helford, who’d worked on “The Good Life” as a consultant, to join the writing staff of his new sitcom, “Someone Like Me”, turned out to be one of the worst experiences of his career.       

 “Bruce was fired after the fourth episode we filmed,” he says. Things got so bad that Carey sprinkled Tums over a pizza he ordered for the writers’ room. “I just wanted to make everybody laugh, but in my head, I was like,’ This is just what I need.’ I was under such stress, and my diet was so bad [that] I had a container of Tums at the table with me.” He returned to standup before NBC canceled the show in April 1994, a month after it debuted. Before he left, a couple of other writers told him he should have a show of his own.

“Now that I knew a little bit about writing, I thought, What kind of show could I have? What would I be? How would I have ended up if I didn’t become a standup comic?” he remembers.

Carey met Helford for lunch and told him about his idea. They refined it, then pitched it to Warner Bros. and ABC.

 “We barely got picked up for a series,” he says. “After the first season, we barely got picked up for a second season _ the second season is when we did the [show-opening] dance number [to The Vogues’ ‘Five O’Clock World’]. That kind of solidified the whole thing.”

Art Imitates Life

Carey endowed his character with the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality typically developed by Clevelanders and other Rust Belt inhabitants after years of listening to people disparage their hometowns.

“We wanted it to be working class, dirty blue collar, because that’s the kind of neighborhood I grew up in,” he explains.

He describes his native Old Brooklyn neighborhood as the kind of place where everyone maintained their own cars — changed the oil, rotated the tires, replaced the spark plugs — because they didn’t have the money to pay a dealer or auto shop. “When anybody got a new car, you’d say, ‘Oh yeah? What year is it?’ Nobody bought a new car.” And trips to or on Lake Erie were rare, despite its proximity. “I couldn’t afford to go on the Goodtime II [boat cruise]. I couldn’t afford a boat.”

The More Things Change

Carey flies first class, vacations in exotic locales such as India and the Galapagos Islands, and helicopters to the Electric Daisy Carnival electronic-dance music festival in Las Vegas, where he gets a table with bottle service. “But if you look at my closet, it’s all clothes from J. Crew,” he says. He extols the virtues of his “easy to park, fun to drive” Mini Cooper rather than his Lucid electric car and talks about the three-prong electric plugs he had installed in the childhood home purchased from his mother instead of the pool that now dominates the back yard.

“[The house] was so old that it had two-prong plugs,” he remembers. “We had orange adaptors on every single plug on every single wall so we could use appliances.”

Home Again

Carey estimates he gets back to Cleveland once every couple of years. He hangs out with friends and relatives and drives around the old neighborhood — “the oh-that-used-to-be-there kind of thing.” His return with a couple of friends this fall will include a stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum and a Guardians baseball game. “I might rent a boat and go on the lake,” he says. “I told my friends it would be a fun thing to do.” His own “must-do,” however, is a day at Cedar Point.

 “I’ve been there a million times,” he says of the Sandusky, Ohio, amusement park. “But I can’t wait to go back.” He likes to people-watch and listen to the music groups at various venues. “I’d be happy to go to Cedar Point and just walk around. A few of my friends will want to go on the rides, so I’ll go on the rides. But I don’t need the thrill.”

A "Drew Carey" Show Reboot?

Carey is open to reviving the sitcom. He envisions his character still working in human resources, dealing with millennials or Gen Zers always looking to take a personal day. “Drew in the sitcom was kind of stuck,” he observes. “But we always described him as a happysack — ‘You’re stuck there. Might as well make the most of it.’” That attitude wouldn’t change. Any reboot, however, would be in addition to his game-show hosting duties.

“I wouldn’t give up my gig at ‘The Price Is Right’ for anything,” he declares. The pay and hours are great. “Everybody’s in such a good mood,” he adds. “No matter what’s going on in my life, as soon as the doors open, I’m like, ‘Ah!’ I’m in a happy place.”

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