Starved
| Starved | |
|---|---|
The main characters
from left to right: Billie, Dan, Sam and Adam |
|
| Created by | Eric Schaeffer |
| Starring | Eric Schaeffer Laura Benanti Del Pentecost Sterling K. Brown |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 7 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Eric Schaeffer Dan Pasternack |
| Producer(s) | Daniel Hank |
| Location(s) | New York City, New York |
| Editor(s) | Ken Eluto |
| Running time | 35 minutes |
| Distributor | 20th Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | FX |
| Original release | August 4 – September 15, 2005 |
Starved is an FX television situation comedy that aired for one season of seven episodes in 2005. The series was about four friends who each suffer from eating disorders, who met at a "shame-based" support group called Belt Tighteners. Its characters included those with bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating disorder. Eric Schaeffer created the show as well as writing, starring in and directing it, based upon his own struggle with eating disorders. In addition to his own life experiences, Schaeffer also drew upon the experiences of the other members of the principal cast, each of whom coincidentally had struggled with food issues of their own.
Starved was the lead-in of FX's hour-long "Other Side of Comedy" block with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. FX executives wanted to use the two series to begin building comedy programming and broaden the network's demographic. The series debuted on August 4, 2005 to poor critical reviews and was cancelled in October 2005, when FX picked Sunny over Starved for renewal.
Series star Eric Schaeffer created Starved. Schaeffer, who is in recovery for alcohol and drug addiction and describes himself as having "anorexic thinking," drew on his own experiences with eating disorders and the experiences of other people he knew in creating scenarios for the series. Other cast members also struggled with food issues. Benanti spent three years fighting anorexia while she danced on Broadway. Pentecost, who weighed 310 pounds at the time of filming, contributed stories from his own life to the series, including a scene in which his character weighs himself on a postal scale because he is too heavy for a conventional bathroom scale. Brown was heavy as a child and describes himself as being "haunted by the 'heavyset kid mentality'." Producers only discovered that each of the principal cast members had food issues after the casting process was completed.
Starved and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia were developed for FX under the auspices of FX president John Landgraf, who sought to expand the network's viewership by providing a wider variety of programming. The shows were the network's first attempts at sitcoms following the short-lived 2003 series Lucky. FX at the time was known primarily for its edgy dramatic series. Bruce Lefkowitz, then executive vice president of Fox Cable Entertainment, outlined the strategy: "We kind of staked out a unique space in dramas that are very different from everybody else’s, so the next natural evolution is to do something in the comedy space." The network ordered seven episodes of each series.
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