Making of "Dirty Sexy Money"

Have you ever wondered how "Dirty Sexy Money" was conceived? Let's take a quick look at the evolution of the "Untitled Craig Wright" project into a hip ABC prime-time soap.

It all began in December 2005 when Suan Juan-born playwright Craig Wright signed a lucrative deal with Touchstone Television studio (today's ABC Studio).

In addition to writing scripts for ABC's "LOST" and later "Brothers & Sisters," the former "Six Feet Under" scribe was also tapped to develop a series of his own.


When former "Everwood" producer Greg Berlanti parted ways with his longtime producing partner Mickey Liddell in the summer of 2006 and renamed his Touchstone TV-based company Berlanti Television, he set up 2 projects at ABC.

One of the two projects was a "legal drama about an idealistic lawyer who takes on the job of tending to the legal and sometimes illegal needs of a wealthy and colorful New York family."

The Craig Wright-penned hour only had a script commitment by that point and Berlanti and Wright were both going to executive produce the pilot which was planned for the 2007-2008 season.

In August 2006, Berlanti was asked to replace "Brothers & Sisters" executive producer Marti Noxon who reportedly exited her role as showrunner of the series due to unspecified creative differences.

Meanwhile, Wright wrote the final version of the pilot and called it "The Ruins." The family name was Rooney, but the tabloids referred to them as "the Ruins." However, at a meeting, it was decided that the title was too dark.

According to Wright, someone at the meeting said: "These people have problems, but there's something nice about them." Wright responded by saying, "They're sort of darling," and it was suggested that they rename the show "The Darlings."

ABC didn't want to sell an ironic title, so someone suggested that they call the series "Filthy Rich" or "Dirty Money." At this point another person responded, "Why don't we call it 'Dirty Sexy Money?' " and the show title was born.



In January 2007, ABC ordered the project now officially dubbed "Dirty Sexy Money" to pilot and the studio tapped Peter Horton ("Grey's Anatomy") to direct the pilot episode.

Shortly after that, the studio began casting the actors. Seth Gabel was the first to get the role on the show in the first week of February, as one of the five troubled Darling children, Jeremy.

Three days later, Craig Wright was happy that actor Peter Krause, whom he befriended while working on HBO's "Six Feet Under" accepted the role of Nick, because he originally wrote it with Krause in mind.

Krause declined the role three times because he didn't want to commit to something that could evolve into a long-term series as, he said, working on one can be grueling. In the end, however, Krause came on board.

By mid February the producers cast Glenn Fitzgerald to play the role of Brian, followed by Jill Clayburgh (Letitia), Natalie Zea (Karen), Samaire Armstrong (Juliet) and William Baldwin (Patrick).

The casting of Donald Sutherland in the final principal role of the family patriarch Tripp Darling was announced on March 1 at which point the preproduction and rehearsals got under way in New York.

The pilot was filmed in the second half on March 2007 in New York with many of the scenes taking place at the former James B Duke House which is now The New York University Institute of Fine Arts which served as the original Darling family townhouse, The Imperial.



Two more actors were added to the cast and appeared in the original pilot: Las Alonzo ("The Unit") who played Nick's partner at the law firm and Victoria Pratt ("Day Break") who played a Vanity fair-style magazine editor-in-chief who was interviewing Nick about the Darlings. Both roles were subsequently scrapped and the scenes in which they appear were either reshot without them or entirely deleted.



Following the postproduction work in early April, the pilot was ready to be screened by the network and focus groups. After the pilot tested well, the network decided to pick the pilot up to series and made the original order for 13 episodes.

In mid-May ABC announced its fall schedule at the Upfronts event in New York and said the show would air as part of an all-new line-up anchored by Kate Walsh's "Grey's Anatomy" spin-off, leading out of "Private Practice" on Wednesdays at 10 p.m.

By mid July, the studio built the sets for the show in Los Angeles and the writers came up with several scripts. ABC announced in a press release dated July 17, 2007 that production on the show had begun.

On July 25 the network set the premiere date for Wednesday, September 26. Several days later they also announced that Blair Underwood was joining the series as Simon Elder, a nemesis for the Darling family.

A new set of promotional stills including a cast group photo with Blair Underwood was made in the final days of July replacing the original cast photo made on the staircase of the Institute of Fine Arts in late March.



Most of the cast members were given a substantial makeover, as obvious when comparing the two images. Due to the changes in the original pilot and because of the modern look of the new sets which were radically different from the traditional look of the Institute of Fine Arts, many of the scenes in the original pilot were reshot.



Some of the scenes in the new episodes were filmed on location: the cast gathered to film a lavish party scene at the Bvlgari flagship store in Los Angeles on August 1 for "The Italian Banker" episode; Sierra Madre in California was used as an Italian backdrop for "The Chiavennasca" episode on August 15 and the cast filmed scenes for the upcoming "The Country House" episode on October 9 at a mansion in Pasadena.



In late August filming of episode #105 "The Bridge" was interrupted with a week-long production shut down at which point the network and the producers realized their series needed a bit of fine-tuning ahead of the September 26 premiere date.

The filming quickly resumed with some of the previously filmed scenes being somewhat tweaked or entirely tossed. Karen's wedding scenes for episode #7 were filmed two days after the pilot premiered on ABC.

As the writers began putting finishing touches on the last of the 13 scripts, ABC ordered three more scripts on October 25. The network was still not sure whether they wanted to order the back 9 episodes, but they wanted to keep the scripts coming in case a writers' strike began before Christmas.



Unfortunately, the strike began sooner than some had anticipated, in early November, when the cast and crew were completing production of the Christmas episode (#110) titled "The Nutcracker."

At this point, there was a lot of uncertainty whether "Dirty Sexy Money" would survive. The show which premiered to over 10.4 million viewers, lost some steam in the course of October averaging 8.2 to 8.8 million viewers.

Craig Wright was interviewed saying he was afraid the last episode of the show to air would be episode #110, as it appeared that due to the trike the cast and crew would not even be able to complete the initial episode order leaving the final two scripts unfilmed and episode #111 possibly unaired.



But it all changed two days ago when despite all obstacles, ABC decided to keep investing in the show and ordered the back-9, bringing the episode total to a standard 22. The studio was meanwhile doing preproduction of episode #112 titled "The Silent Auction" which should begin lensing on Wednesday.

That means the studio may in the end manage to complete all 13 episodes. Once the strike is resolved, and over the past few days a step in the right direction was made when the feuding sides agreed to resume talks after Thanksgiving, the back 9 episodes could be written and filmed.

The network is hoping the strike will end in time to resume production and film the remaining episode prior to the end of the season. "Dirty Sexy Blog" will keep you up to date on developments behind the scenes.

This is
DIRTY SEXY BLOG

You Can't Be Filthy Rich,
Without Getting a Little Dirty

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DIRTY SEXY MONEY
Wednesdays at 10/9c on ABC