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God Friended Me in the Media

formerlyfreedom

By formerlyfreedom
in God Friended Me [V]

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andromeda331
andromeda331

Oh, damn. I really didn't expected it to get canceled. I thought the show was doing really well. Despite the dumb Miles and Cara stuff I really loved this show. Its a good show. Its nice to see people

kaygeeret
kaygeeret

Just found out the show has been cancelled . I really enjoyed this show.  I very much liked the concept and the interactions among the actors.  It seemed that they genuinely liked one another - y

Court
Court

I'm so sad! This show is one of my happy diversion shows. I do hate what they did with the Cara/Miles relationship but I enjoy this show and the cast. I loved Brandon Michael Hall in The Mayor. S

Yeah No

Yeah No

I found this review of Season 2 Episode 1 from TV Fanatic interesting.  It also has a link to an interview with Suraj Sharma regarding the new season with potential mild spoilers that's worth reading.

 

Link to review of Season 2 Episode 2 (The Lady) from TV Fanatic.

Link to review of Season 2 Episode 3 (From Paris with Love) from TV Fanatic.

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Trini

Trini

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Clip from tomorrow's episode and interview with Violett Beane at TV Insider: 'Violett Beane on a Personal Friend Suggestion for Cara'

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Cara struggled with saying "I love you" to Miles. What you enjoyed about how their relationship has changed over these two seasons?

What's really special about their relationship is as an audience member, you've gotten to see it from the very beginning. You've seen them not know each other and then become friends and through that friendship realize they have stronger feelings for each other. That's something a lot of people can relate to. It's also something that's really sensitive because having been friends before, they don't want to lose that aspect of their relationship.

This episode definitely tests them in a way they've never been tested before and some pretty interesting things happen.

Trini

Trini

Episode screening in New York City:

 

https://www.sheencenter.org/shows/friended/

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God Friended Me – CBS Special Screening

Monday, February 10, 2020 @ 7:00 PM

RSVP and join us for a free sneak preview of an episode of the CBS series “God Friended Me.” After the screening, there will be a panel discussion and Q&A with stars Brandon Micheal Hall and Javicia Leslie.

 

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joanne3482

joanne3482

2 hours ago, Brian Cronin said:

Wow, I was not expecting a cancellation at all. Shocking news. And not just cancelled, but cancelled early enough that they were able to write a series finale, so they cancelled it a WHILE ago. Dang.

https://deadline.com/2020/04/god-friended-me-canceled-end-after-two-seasons-cbs-series-finale-date-set-1202908162/

I'm glad they were able to give us a series finale, then.  I prefer that to the sudden cancellation with no means to tie up any loose ends. 

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Trini

Trini

1 hour ago, Court said:

I loved Brandon Michael Hall in The Mayor. So check that out if you miss that smile of his. 

😭 Well, there's another reason why this sucks! I liked him in The Mayor too, so I was glad that he was in this successful show since that one was cancelled. I think he's a really charming actor and I hope another show scoops him up for a major role.

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Yeah No

Yeah No

Another blow I didn't need right now.  I can't help but wonder if the show might have had a chance if not for the pandemic since it is so bad in NYC and it may be some time before things go back to any kind of normal there any time soon.  Not sure I believe the show was "canceled early enough" or that it was primarily ratings related.  I suspect that it was on the fence and they may have filmed alternate season endings just in case it was later canceled.  I remember last season some of us suspected something similar because the season finale could have easily been written to tie everything up and not give us a cliff hanger for the next season.  Still, I think canceling it was a stupid decision, but most cancellations these days are incredibly stupid.

Please say your prayers for one of our frequent GFM forum members that I have been in correspondence with offline, who is in the hospital right now waiting to find out if they have Coronavirus.   They are in my age bracket with an underlying condition.  I don't want to say who it is because they may want privacy but thought I should mention it nonetheless.

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Empress1

Empress1

22 hours ago, Brian Cronin said:

Wow, I was not expecting a cancellation at all. Shocking news. And not just cancelled, but cancelled early enough that they were able to write a series finale, so they cancelled it a WHILE ago. Dang.

https://deadline.com/2020/04/god-friended-me-canceled-end-after-two-seasons-cbs-series-finale-date-set-1202908162/

Aw shit. This was one of my feel-good shows. I find Brandon Micheal Hall so charming, so I hope he lands somewhere.

11 hours ago, Trini said:

😭 Well, there's another reason why this sucks! I liked him in The Mayor too, so I was glad that he was in this successful show since that one was cancelled. I think he's a really charming actor and I hope another show scoops him up for a major role.

My sentiments exactly. 🙂

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andromeda331

andromeda331

Oh, damn. I really didn't expected it to get canceled. I thought the show was doing really well. Despite the dumb Miles and Cara stuff I really loved this show. Its a good show. Its nice to see people out helping. I really lived Miles, Rakesh, Arthur and Ali. I liked that they kept revisiting the old Friend suggestions so we could see what happened with them. It was a really great show and I'm going to miss it.

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kaygeeret

kaygeeret

Just found out the show has been cancelled .

I really enjoyed this show.  I very much liked the concept and the interactions among the actors.  It seemed that they genuinely liked one another - yeah I know, good acting, but still.

I consider this cancellation a mistake and a huge loss for network tv. And of course the watching public.  Gosh, actual thought provoking stories and people trying to help one another instead of mocking or taking advantage or, beating each other up.

Hope it gets a new life somewhere.

I will miss the show.

 

RIP

 

 

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Yeah No

Yeah No

(edited)
On 4/16/2020 at 8:22 PM, kaygeeret said:

Hope it gets a new life somewhere.

So do I, and if anyone finds out about any petitions to show fan support, please post them here.  I will do anything I can to let the network know how I feel even if it doesn't do anything but show some other channel or streaming service that the show deserves to live on somewhere else.  Unfortunately none of the shows I have watched that were cancelled unfairly were ever picked up this way, but it's not unheard of and it CAN happen.

On 4/15/2020 at 4:29 AM, Yeah No said:

Please say your prayers for one of our frequent GFM forum members that I have been in correspondence with offline, who is in the hospital right now waiting to find out if they have Coronavirus.   They are in my age bracket with an underlying condition.  I don't want to say who it is because they may want privacy but thought I should mention it nonetheless.

BTW, I heard from our frequent forum member and they're doing OK, it wasn't Covid-19, THANK GOODNESS!!

Edited by Yeah No
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MissLucas

MissLucas

As much as I wish this show would get a second chance I don't see it happening. It's extremely rare, last time it happened was with the Expanse which received massive geek support and had one great ace up its sleeve: whoever was gonna pick up the paycheck knew where the story was headed and with only one book missing in the series that it had an end plan (and was hopefully going to stick that landing).

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Yeah No

Yeah No

Actually there's a rather long list of recent shows that have found new life on other networks.  I don't doubt it's relatively rare but it can happen.  I just think there are multiple issues with this particular show that might make that a more remote possibility, but some of those returning shows were head scratchers, so you never know.  Lately more shows I watch have been axed after only one or two seasons.  I don't know why, maybe more shows in general are getting the axe or my tastes are not so popular anymore.  But I don't know about that - these days even relatively popular shows are cancelled while shows with lower ratings on the same network are renewed.  I went through that last year with "The Kids are Alright".  The reasons are never stated but might have to do with overall budget vs. ratings, plus shows the networks personally favor, etc.  I also think the network execs are not as smart as they used to be, an opinion I've heard some actors voice on their social media.

Speaking of budget, one of my recent favorites, "The Orville" was renewed for a 3rd season, but I read that Seth McFarland wanted a bigger budget so he decided to take the show to Hulu, supposedly to air later this year (if the pandemic doesn't delay that).

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Trini

Trini

(edited)

Post-finale interview with the showrunners at TV Line (a few excerpts):

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TVLINE | At what point in Season 2 did you know that the show wasn’t going to come back?

BRYAN WYNBRANDT | We didn’t really know for sure until after we finished filming the finale. We ended before we had planned to because of the virus situation in New York. And then when we got back, [during] post-production of that episode and discussing whether or not we would go back to finish it up, it became more and more obvious that things were going to be shut down longer. It started to get apparent to us that the show was coming to an end and that it was likely not going to be renewed, and that’s when Steven and I went to the studio and network with the plan for finishing the finale, which is what you saw.

 

Wow - so I don't know why that first report about the cancellation said they had advance notice, because they clearly did not.

 

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TVLINE | Was the journey of Miles getting back his faith more important to you than answering, explicitly, who or what is behind the God account?

LILIEN | Yeah, a hundred percent… When we talk about Miles, it’s all about his journey, his journey with his family, in wrestling with the idea of what faith is to him [and] people. To end the series correctly, it had to be satisfying on the Miles level. I mean, people are tuning in every week to see our characters and to see what’s going on with their lives, more so than just who’s behind the God account. You can’t touch that, you can’t feel that, you don’t cry over that or laugh over that. You do that with our characters. So it had to be that journey that ended the show.

 

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TVLINE | A feel-good show like this is such a rarity. What did it mean to you to bring the show to TV? And what do you hope viewers take away from it?

WYNBRANDT | It was a dream come true for us to be able to do this show, to be able to make it with the cast and our crew and our writers. The love that we have for the show, it really comes through in the episodes, and I hope what people take away from it is this message of just taking care of one another, looking out for one another and being open-minded to each other regardless of our differences.
LILIEN | We always talked about we didn’t want to have violence and guns in our show. And till the end, it wasn’t a show about that. It was a show truly about just people helping people, and we’re really proud of being able to stay true to that for 42 episodes.

 

Edited by Trini
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Trini

Trini

Interview with the showrunners at Parade (excerpts):

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“From the beginning, we always knew that we wanted Miles to get to that mountaintop and what his emotional journey would be,” Lilien says. “We didn’t anticipate that happening so quickly, but we’d actually shot that footage on the mountain when we did the pilot, because at the time we were thinking about doing a flash forward to it, but we ended up pulling back, so we always had that waiting for us when the day came. It came a little bit sooner than we wanted, but we had that footage, so it was just about making adjustments to the finale to understand that this was ending, getting us from the end of the story of Ali and his emotional journey, to show where he ends up a year from now.” 

 

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What do you want to leave the audience feeling, or how do you want the show to be remembered?

Bryan Wynbrandt: I want the show to be remembered for making people feel something and making them feel in a positive way. We’re very proud that the show really focused on human kindness and empathy and not on violence. There tends to be a lot of what is very popular, mainstream shows having to do with cops or some murder mystery. This show was about the mystery of our own humanity and the mystery of where we come from and what guides us, so I want the show to be remembered for being thoughtful, spiritual and hopeful.

 

They talk about certain things they didn't get to film; and plans for the characters in Season 3.

Trini

Trini

Interview with the showrunners at TV Insider:

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How did the cancellation change your original plan for the Season 2 and series finales? 

Steven Lilien: We had a version of the Season 2 finale that, 90 percent of it is there at its core. We always knew the whole season would be driving towards Miles and how far we could push him on his journey of rediscovering a version of faith. And we always knew from the beginning of the season from when we pitched it to CBS and Warner Bros. that we were going to do a whole back half arc of Ali having cancer and she was going to be our final friend suggestion. From that standpoint, everything stayed the same. Obviously, we did have a version that would launch us into Season 3 that is a little bit different how we decided to end it, but it didn't change the spirit of what we were going for.

 

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Miles and Cara do get back together after a few months. But can you talk about playing out that relationship this season and having them take a break? There were very real issues.

Wynbrandt: It was important for us to explore their relationship, like you said, and see how those real issues came to the forefront with an incredibly pervasive element in their life, the God Account, which ultimately took the legs out from under Cara when it broke up her family and then put her in a position of how does she feel about the God Account and how does it affect her relationship with Miles? They ultimately make a decision to take a break, and sometimes people make those decisions and one person in that relationship is able to move forward, and the other isn't.

For Miles, he started to really resent the fact that he made all these sacrifices for the God Account and wasn't seeing Ali being helped by it ultimately, and felt that losing Cara wasn't something he would've chosen in any other circumstance. It was really important to see that, while the God Account was doing great things for Miles, it was also taking things away from him. That's the prophet's journey. You can't really walk that path and be able to have love and a perfect life and still be this man who's on this mission to help all these people.

Early on in the season with Gideon, played really wonderfully by T.R. Knight, he really set down the standard for Miles saying that the God Account would make him choose, and it ultimately did. But we ultimately felt had the series gone on multiple more seasons or even one more, eventually Miles and Cara would end up together because that always was, in our hearts, what we wanted for them. We just obviously needed to accelerate that for the ending because it would've been disappointing if they didn't end up together in the end.

 

Why would they think that being a "prophet" and having a love life can't co-exist??

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Trini

Trini

Another showrunners interview at Deadline: https://deadline.com/2020/04/god-friended-me-finale-1202917648/

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DEADLINE: How do you feel now that God Friended Me has ended?

Bryan Wynbrandt: I feel relieved that we have an ending that we feel is satisfactory. We were in New York directing this episode and had to pull the plug and we had no real idea if we were going to get to finish. Then a couple of weeks ago, conversations with Warner Bros and CBS started to lean towards us not getting a renewal so Steven and I crafted a plan to finish the finale. We’d only filmed five days so we had to get crafty and pull footage from previous episodes. The fact that we were able to pull it off was a pretty monumental thing and we’re pretty proud of it.

Steven Lilien: When we were in New York we didn’t know at the time that the show was going to be over, all we knew what was going on in the world with the virus so once it became clear that we were going to have to shut down, we still had a few days left to shoot. It wasn’t until we were looking at the footage and knew we weren’t going to go back anytime soon, that we started to hear that the show might not come back. That’s when we started to look and ask ‘how much material do we have’ so that we could end it satisfactorily on an emotional level. Thankfully, the stuff at the end with the mountaintop, we filmed that for the pilot but we never used. We were toying with it being a flash forward. The idea was always to get Miles on the mountaintop and we had that footage sitting there for two years after we went to Utah to film at 11,000 feet. We had that great footage, we were just hoping that we weren’t going to have to use it for another couple of years. Then we crafted a montage leading into it with all of our characters and all of the friend suggestions that had left a mark as a love letter to the fans.

Wynbrandt: It was Friday 13th [March] when we finally pulled the plug and we were planning on filming in a church. Miles does go to a church in the final episode but what we were able to do was to build scenes from previous episodes where he had gone to church in practically the same wardrobe and a little bit of color timing and we were able to remove characters and through guiding the footage with our editor Ben, we were able to find all of these great moments that really spoke to what was supposed to happen in the episode and we used voiceover to get it there. It was really a mad dash to find all of the footage and rewrite it a little better so we could present it to CBS and Warner Bros. It was a big leap of faith, pun intended, and we were able to pull it off.

 

Trini

Trini

Video is at the end of the article: Brandon Michael Hall joins Afterbuzz to discuss the process of ending God Friended Me in the midst of pandemic

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Brandon Micheal Hall, the star of CBS’ God Friended Me, joined hosts Franceli Chapman and Mina Naidine Sunday evening to discuss the season finale of this heartwarming and uplifting show. He dished all about how the show was salvaged in editing, despite the sudden and mandatory halt in filming due to the coronavirus and his reaction to the ending and the series as a whole.

 

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Yeah No

Yeah No

On 5/11/2020 at 7:04 PM, andromeda331 said:
On 5/6/2020 at 9:00 PM, Lonesome Rhodes said:

CBS has renewed almost all its shows.  This stings when they had a perfectly nice, family/moral show like GFM, but dumped it.  Ugh.

 

 

Yeah, that makes it worse. 

Lately it's all the shows I like best that get the axe and undeservedly so too because it's not like they had lower ratings than other renewed shows on the same network.  I'm thoroughly convinced that this says something about the direction of our society, and not something good.

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Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin

Wow, Javicia Leslie, who played Ali, just got cast as the new Batwoman on the Batwoman TV series! What's with this series and superheroes (as Violett Beane was previously a superhero on Flash)?

Congrats to Leslie! I gotta be frank, she's not the cast member who I would have expected to break out big from this show. Good for her!

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Trini

Trini

(edited)

BTW, the Batwoman season premiere with Javicia is this Sunday, Jan. 17 on CW. And the episodes are usually up on CWTV.com the next day.

Article about Javicia and her new role at EW: https://ew.com/tv/batwoman-javicia-leslie-digital-cover/

Here's an excerpt that mentions God Friended Me:

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... In 2014, she was cast in Swim at Your Own Risk, a Lifetime TV romantic thriller and her first leading role. Then, four years later, she landed her first series regular gig on God Friended Me, an earnest drama that ran for two seasons on CBS. Leslie played Ali, a cheery churchgoing psychology student whose atheist brother Miles (Brandon Micheal Hall) was investigating God's mysterious Facebook account.

"[Hall] showed me how to lead a project [through] his integrity, the way he fought for people, and the way he always stood up for what was right," says Leslie. "His work ethic. His consistency. That's something that I take with me as a lead of my show."

For his part, Hall was equally impressed by Leslie well-roundedness. "She's constantly learning or reading books, or trying to figure out new ways to improve herself as a human being," he says. "She keeps herself in balance."

Like your typical superhero, Leslie has experience juggling dueling identities. While working on the New York-based God Friended Me, she frequently flew back to Los Angeles because she was simultaneously playing a ferocious spoiled brat and femme fatale on BET+'s dark crime drama The Family Business.

"There's nothing she can't do," says Yvette Nicole Brown, who pushed to cast Leslie as the lead of the 2019 romantic comedy Always a Bridesmaid, which Brown wrote. "I call her little Chaka Khan because she's every woman." 

Reflecting on the many different kinds of Black women she's already played in the last three years, Leslie says: "I think it was important for me to have those roles before this, because it's just a constant reminder of how dynamic we are, how necessary we are, and how important it is to see us on screen." 

 

Edited by Trini
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