From 'Friends' to 'Grace and Frankie'

* GRACE AND FRANKIE. Netflix, Friday.

"GRACE and Frankie" were sweethearts. And so were their husbands.

That's the word from Broomall's Marta Kauffman, co-creator of a new comedy, premiering tomorrow on Netflix, that stars Jane Fonda (Grace) and Lily Tomlin (Frankie) as frenemies thrown together when their law-partner husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) announce that they've been having an affair for many years and now want to marry each other.

The Marple Newtown High grad and her former writing partner, Bala Cynwyd's David Crane, co-created "Friends," which made six young people very, very famous.

And, yes, this project, on which she collaborated with Howard J. Morris ("According to Jim"), was different.

"One is, it's intimidating," she said, laughing, in a phone interview yesterday.

"But more than that, you know these are four consummate professionals," she said. "They are amazing, and I am learning from them every day, just in terms of their different processes, how they get to their characters. The ones who work from the inside out, the ones who work from the outside in, all these different approaches to getting to the same place of a deep understanding of their characters."

Plus, they're "well-behaved," she said, sounding slightly amazed.

"This has nothing to do with 'Friends,' but believe me, I've been on enough sets where people are awful. And they misbehave. And they treat each other poorly. And they yell at the props mistress or they yell at the makeup guy. You know, it's horrible. And they're [the "Grace and Frankie" stars] all wonderful to everybody, and I think it's what contributes to a much happier set."

Maybe they're just grown-ups?

"They are grown up," Kauffman said. "They've had an incredible wealth of experiences, and they love what they do."

Tapping into the experience of seventysomethings was something that interested Kauffman, who sees older baby boomers as an underserved audience.

"It started with Jane and Lily," she said. "I was looking for stuff to do and this was always an arena that fascinated me, but once we knew that Jane and Lily [who last co-starred in 1980's "9 to 5"] were interested in doing something together, we had to come up with something that was worthy of these amazing actors. So we wanted to do something that dealt with their age, with things that they literally dealt with every day as people. But we also wanted to do something that was hopeful.

"A lot of the comedies that are on right now are quite chilly. They're pretty dark. They're not hilariously funny because they're so dark. This is, I believe, a more hopeful, aspirational show because the whole point is, it may not be easy, but you can start your life over at any time. And that's a pretty positive thought."

Yet, "Grace and Frankie" doesn't gloss over the pain that fresh starts can cause.

At one point, Fonda's character tells her husband, "It would've been easier if you died," a line that's "very real and true and what she would have said in that moment," Kauffman said.

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