It’s not easy when one of your favorite shows just disappears from the schedule. No warning. No closure. It’s just gone. Fans of the imaginative, funny and beautiful PUSHING DAISIES know this all to well. We all followed the ratings, we knew the story. We knew that this season would be the last for PUSHING DAISIES, but I don’t think we the fans anticipated that ABC would just pull the show away from us before airing all the final episodes. It seemed abrupt and unfair.

Supposedly ABC is obligated to air the final three episodes.  When this will happen is a bit up in the air.  Those associated with the show have their fingers crossed for a summer airing, but it’s all up to ABC.

Despite the show being off the air for months now, PUSHING DAISIES fans are still visiting this site and others to keep the spirit of PUSHING DAISIES alive in the hopes of one day being able to see the final three episodes and properly close out this particular chapter of PUSHING DAISIES.

Not too long ago ThePieMaker.com had the distinct honor of being invited to the cast and crew screening of those final three episodes. Although Dan sadly wasn’t able to make it, I quickly jumped on a plane and headed out to L.A..  I was thrilled to not only represent this site and its readers but, by virtue of being the only in the room not associated with the show, I guess I was there representing all PUSHING DAISIES fans. A true honor.

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Starpulse was lucky enough to talk with PUSHING DAISIES writers, an real-life married couple, Chad and Dara Creasy about how they met, fell in love and became a successful writing duo.

I suppose it’s worth noting that we recently got an update about what some of the former PUSHING DAISIES writers are up to and we are happy to report that everyone is working on exciting projects.  When we are at liberty to say we will fill you in.  I’m sure like us you’ll want to support the PD writers in their new endeavors.

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art: Q&A With ‘Pushing Daisies’ Writers Chad & Dara Creasey
At first the tale of this up-and-coming Hollywood power couple sounds like the plot to one of the romantic comedies they’ve made their “bread and butter on.” They met in the Peter Stark producing program at USC, started writing together, fell in love, got married, started writing for television, moved to a house in the Hollywood Hills and lived happily ever after. Not bad for a couple in their late twenties. How did “a pseudo-intellectual Jew from the Upper East Side,” and a man “from the plains of Colorado” get so lucky? (Continue reading at Starpulse)

iFMagazine.com recently had the pleasure of interviewing Lee Pace.  Based on the questions they asked, I bet this interview was done a little bit ago.  But it’s Lee, so we are here to share it with you.

Sadly for fans who proved immensely passionate but not numerous enough, PUSHING DAISIES has been canceled. However, ABC has committed to running all of the episodes that have been filmed; the quirky fantasy series, about a pie-maker whose touch can raise the dead and put them back again, in love with a resurrected woman he may never make physical contact with, is in its last days of production.

Lee Pace, the Texas native who plays Ned the pie-maker, talks about why he loves PUSHING DAISIES so much in this exclusive interview.

iF Magazine: First of all, congratulations on your Best Actor Emmy nomination for Season One.

LEE PACE: Thank you.

iF: Was that possibility at all in your frame of consciousness before it happened?

PACE: Well, this thing happened right before the Emmys where they were doing all these lists of people who were likely going to be nominated, and I stopped paying attention to it. My dog wakes me up every morning about six-thirty, seven, to go for a hike, and he woke me up, and I looked at my phone, and I saw about twenty missed calls and I imagined I was nominated – or my mother was in the hospital. [Continue Reading]

We love Swoosie and Swoosie loves PUSHING DAISIES.

But Hoda Kotbe and Kathie Lee Gifford?  Geesh, how about not interrupting your guests!

Passing along a great interview with PUSHING DAISIES producer Dan Jinks.

Q&A: Dan Jinks, Executive Producer of Pushing Daisies
by Cassandra Handley

VF Daily’s new Q&A series features interviews with the top talent from television’s best shows. ABC’s Emmy Award–winning Pushing Daisies is a whimsical, forensic fantasy where a introverted pie-maker named Ned uses his ability to resuscitate the dead with a single touch to revive his childhood sweetheart and solve murder mysteries. Pushing Daisies airs Wednesday nights at nine p.m. E.S.T.

Executive producer Dan Jinks, along with his co-producer, Bruce Cohen, has been directly involved in every facet of the show, from picking the design team to selecting the actors, to editing the dialogue. “Part of my job is to do everything that I can to support the show’s creator, Bryan Fuller, and, when possible, ease the giant workload that rests on his shoulders.,” Jinks says.

VF Daily: Pushing Daisies is known for its cast, but also for its unique aesthetic. Where does the look and feel of the show originate?

Dan Jinks:Bryan Fuller has one of the most delightful and imaginative voices that I have ever read in a script. Early on, [Bruce] Cohen and I had a tremendous collaboration with Fuller, our director Barry Sonnenfeld, production designer Michael Wiley, and director of photography Michael Weaver. These inventive minds helped give the show its very distinctive look. We feel that these behind-the-scenes types are just as much the stars of the show as are the on-screen cast members.

Is it a coincidence that the visual production reminds many people of Tim Burton’s Big Fish, which you had a hand in producing?

That’s not the first time I have heard that comparison, but to give credit where it is due, Barry Sonnenfeld is a major director with a huge career, and as much as we adore Tim Burton and treasure working with him, Sonnenfeld has displayed in movies such as Men in Black and The Addams Family that he has a very strong, original, colorful design aesthetic, and I think that really comes through in a big way for Pushing Daisies.

What is the allure of producing and watching a fanciful show during such a serious time in history? 

I think that viewers want to watch a program where they can escape from their own personal worlds and find themselves in our characters’ charming universe. The show takes place in modern times, but it really occurs in a timeless version of today where the characters don’t use cell phones, computers, or other technology. I feel very fortunate to be a part of something where I can visit the set, watch these incredibly gifted actors take already wonderful lines and enhance them to match the show’s innate quirkiness.

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Our friends’ over at BuzzSugar got to spend some time on the set of PUSHING DAISIES during the summer press tour. While there they got to chat it up with the cast. They just posted their interview with Emerson Cod himself, Chi McBride.

Here’s a bit of that interview for your reading pleasure.

BuzzSugar: Does Emerson’s function on the show shift at all this year?
Chi: He’s on a mission to find his daughter, but he’s going to go about it in a very unconventional way. He’s also a huge fan of pop-up books, and he wants to create a pop-up book that will lead a little girl who reads it to find her father. He feels sure that some little girl is out there wondering, “Where’s my daddy?” And so he writes this book to try to see if he can get her to find him since he can’t find her, so that’s his mission this year. And in the meantime, if he happens to make a couple bucks, well, good! It’s not just about getting stacks and stacks of money. I think that him being a provider, or not being able to be one, probably has a lot to do with why he’s so obsessed with money. He just takes on a completely different tone once you start peeling those layers and finding out what he’s really after.

Do you feel like it’s a problem to have been off the air for so long?
Chi: I hope not, I really do. That’s one thing I really wish people would wake up and understand, is that . . . audiences do not like to be played with. Sometimes I think we’re in this business and we take it for granted —”Aw, everybody wants to go to the movies! What are you worried about?” Look, the audience does not like to be fooled around with! When baseball went on strike, it took years and a juiced ball and steroids to get everybody back. . . . Television’s the same way. People take this stuff really seriously. They want to get home, they want to kick their shoes off, they want to watch their television shows. You start messing around with that, especially when you can make reality shows for nothing and get any schmo off the street to open his train wreck of a life, and people are saying “Hey, what’s that?”

Continue reading at BuzzSugar.com >>

Amrie from My Take on TV, is a good friend of ThePieMaker.com’s and now a friend of the Pie Maker himself. Amrie had the opportunity to have a little one-on-one phone time with Lee Pace this week. They talked about the season thus far and how Lee thinks Ned has changed, among other things.

We are so happy that Amrie got to talk to Lee…really. We aren’t ridiculously jealous of the opportunity. Nope not at all. He he.

Enjoy this excerpt

Amrie: I have seen the first three episodes, and I’m just in love with the show. I’ve been in love with the show since minute one.

Lee: Oh good, what do you think of the second season? Do you think it’s coming together?

The words I’m using to describe it so far are brilliant, and lovely. Every good word you can imagine to describe it, I’m using.

Lee:Oh good, thanks. That’s good. I really love how this season is. It’s different from the first season in a lot of ways, I think Bryan really found his stride, coming back from the strike this year.

Last year, you had the set up, and you had to learn a lot about these characters, and this year, you can kind of let them live, and breathe a bit, because we know enough about them.

Lee: That’s true. One thing I was kind of glad to see in the episodes, in last week’s episode, I wanted to make Ned have changed from the last episode of last year because it’s been a year since. In their world, too, a year has past, and I wanted there to be an impact, for Chuck to have had an impact on his life. Having spent time with her, having spent a year living with her, doing the cases with her, I wanted to give him a level of enthusiasm. In a way, kind of a willingness to change, become a better man, ya know?

It’s complicated and he’s got deep issues that he’s trying to deal with but he’s dealing with him. I think in every episode you see him taking a little step forward.

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Lee Pace, Ellen Greene and Swoosie Kurtz share their thoughts on what makes PUSHING DAISIES such a special show.

Thanks to Becky for sending us this vid.

In their latest Emmy spotlight piece, USA Today interviews Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy nominee Kristin Chenoweth. In the interview Kristin talks about her reaction to her nomination, the projects that have been keeping her very busy as well as a little bit about the upcoming season of PUSHING DAISIES (a little spoilery so be warned).

Here’s an excerpt from the piece.

Q: So how does it feel to be nominated?
A: Surprising and shocking. I certainly was thrilled and happy and all the emotions that anyone would experience, but I was mainly surprised just because it was our first year. (The show) ended up getting 12 nominations, so that was really, really cool.

Q: How did you celebrate?
A: I was the one making the announcements with Neil Patrick (Harris), so I was like, “What?!” I was so surprised! Then they were like, “You have to do press.” And I was like, “Wait a minute! Can I have a glass of Champagne?” I got several bottles of Cristal right then and had a couple of glasses of Champagne. I went to a photo shoot right after that, so I was very relaxed for the shoot. A little goes a long way with me.

Continue reading here.

Terri Schwartz from BLAST Magazine has a good in-depth interview with Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller that talks a little bit about Aunt Lily’s secret and the direction of Season 2.

BLAST: Can you give us a preview of what we might be seeing in the second season?
Bryan Fuller: Well all the cliff-hangers that we had; we had the cliff-hanger with Swoosie Kurtz’s character Lily, that plays a big factor in the first three episodes. Really, beyond that, it really is just a big game changer that affects all of the characters; we understand why that secret was kept and why Lily made the choices that she did to not be honest with Chuck about their relationship and we see what happens when Olive, who has been keeping all these secrets from everybody, how her breakdown sends her off to a nunnery to keep those secrets and what happens when she comes back and lets Chuck know and where does that take Chuck, what’s Chuck’s reaction.

Click here to read the entire interview with Bryan Fuller