‘Clean Slate’ Was Originally Pitched As ‘Sanford and Son’ Reboot
Everyone seems to love Clean Slate, the sitcom with “a trans story right when it’s needed the most.” But comedian George Wallace had a very different idea in mind when he first pitched the show to legendary producer Norman Lear — he wanted to update classic ‘70s sitcom Sanford and Son.
“Sanford and Son makes everybody feel good,” Wallace told The Hollywood Reporter. “Just hearing the music, already that smile comes on your face. So I said, ‘Let me go to Norman Lear.’ I had known him for 30 years, and I said, ‘I want to reboot Sanford and Son.’ He says, ‘Are you kidding? You can’t do that show. Get a twist and come back.’”
Lear knew a little something about Sanford and Son — he developed the show as NBC’s answer to All in the Family. While the sitcom doesn’t show up much in syndication these days, it was a monster hit, landing in the top 10 most-watched shows in five different seasons. Sanford was so popular that it knocked The Brady Bunch off the air entirely.
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In his final years, Lear did bring back some of his old hits like One Day at A Time but only when producers came up with a fresh take on the material. Wallace was charged with just that task. But how could he twist it?
“At that time, Orange Is the New Black was very popular,” he remembered. “I never watched the show, but I kept hearing about this Laverne Cox. Who the hell is Laverne Cox? But thinking about her show, I wondered, what if I had a son that left home and came back and it was 23 years later and my child says, ‘Dad, I’m coming home tomorrow.’”
And when the son comes home, it’s as a daughter now.
At this point, the concept had little connection to Sanford and Son — or did it? The core of the ‘70s sitcom was the generational divide between Redd Foxx’s Fred and Demond Wilson’s Lamont. Fred was cranky and bigoted while Lamont was politically aware and socially conscious. Like All in the Family, Sanford and Son generated comedy from the outmoded opinions of an outspoken main character stuck in the ethos of an older generation. We’re kind of there again in Clean Slate, though Wallace’s Harry is much more open-minded than Archie Bunker or Fred Sanford ever were.
Lear likely had the right idea when he told Wallace to get creative with his reboot idea. But Wallace was right about one thing all along: The Sanford and Son theme song still slaps.
