The cast of ABC's "GCB." (ABC/RICK ROWELL) MIRIAM SHOR, BRAD BEYER, KRISTIN CHENOWETH, LESLIE BIBB, ANNIE POTTS, DAVID JAMES ELLIOTT, JENNIFER ASPEN, MARISOL NICHOLS
GCB has gone through more than one title change while the series was in the works, but that’s not unusual. The show is based on the book Good Christian Bitches by Kim Gatlin – but the likelihood of a major network like ABC using that handle is nil.
So, it changed to Good Christian Belles and eventually GCB, but we all know well what the storylines will be.
GCB centers on Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb), a divorced mom of two who moves back to the Dallas neighborhood where she grew up to get a fresh start. It’s a sort of Desperate Housewives based in the Lone Star state.
The cast is huge with Bibb surrounded by Annie Potts, Kristin Chenowith and a group of other notable women. Do they get bitchy? Sometimes.
“I think maybe we all have moments of being really bitchy, just like I feel like every human being has a moment of being bitchy,” Bibb confesses. “I think what ends up happening on the show is we all sort of test each other and pull out. I think when a woman’s a bitch, it’s based on being scared. You just put up this wall because they’re scared of the mirror that they’re seeing. [On the show] I think everyone has a really beautiful, delicious moment of being bitchy and then a beautiful, great moment of sort of redemption and then they’re a bitch again and we’re nice again. That’s what’s really amazing.”
As for that title change, well, Executive Producer Robert Harling says it was an inevitable progression.
“The use of the title raised a lot of eyebrows,” Harling recalls. “What we were trying to do was really create an environment that was very respectful. The characters that have been created are incredibly unique and are all motivated by a real sense of goodness. So, the idea of calling it Good Christian Bitches was sort of not something that seemed to settle at first. Then, Good Christian Belles sort of popped up. But when we were shooting the pilot in Dallas they’d come up with this GCB logo [for the trucks]. I always thought that’s really cool, like LOL and ROLF and BTW. GCB just kind of stuck and we all thought it was cool.”
GCB debuts Sunday, March 4th, 10:00 p.m. on ABC.