When Kevin Can Wait premiered on CBS back in September 2016, viewers were introduced to a fun new family dynamic in primetime. The sitcom focuses on the Gable family, which originally consisted of two parents, three kids, and one unemployed fiancé. The Gable kids won the hearts of many viewers right off the bat, and Mary-Charles Jones was an immediate delight as middle child Sara Gable. The oldest of three children in real life, Mary-Charles Jones was kind enough to speak with CinemaBlend about how her sisters inspired her performances as Sara, saying this:
I have two younger sisters, Maggie and Lillian. And I actually got to work on two different movies with my sister Maggie, and my sister Lillian also does acting, so we're kind of a whole family... I think that obviously having siblings, just to be able to relate. I've never had a brother, but I think with every sibling there's a dynamic of, you pick on your sibling a little bit more but you also love your sibling and would protect them. And also I definitely don't know what it feels like to be a middle child, but I can make middle child jokes with my sister Maggie, who is the middle child. In the show, when I'm the middle child, I can kind of pull off of that because as everyone says, the middle child is forgotten.
No wonder the dynamic between Sara and her on-screen siblings rings so true! Mary-Charles Jones may not be the middle child of her family, but she is able to draw on her experiences with her two younger sisters to enhance her performance as Sara Gable on Kevin Can Wait. Poor Sara does fall by the wayside from time to time on the show, with older sister Kendra living with her fiancé Chale in the garage and younger brother Jack needing attention at his stage in life. Sara's lot in life might have felt a little bit sad at times if not for Mary-Charles infusing comedy into her scenes. Drawing upon the middle child jokes she shares with her sister Maggie, she is able to add an extra sense of realism to the sibling dynamics on Kevin Can Wait.
Not everybody gets to work with a sibling on a job, and it sounds like Mary-Charles Jones has been pretty lucky to get to spend time with her sister Maggie on projects. The sisters actually played sisters in the 2011 remake of Footloose, and they appeared together again in 2013's Identity Thief. The Jones family seems to be full of talented young actresses, and viewers will be lucky enough to see Mary-Charles on a regular basis in primetime thanks to Kevin Can Wait.
Kevin Can Wait will go through some changes in Season 2 that will provide exciting new story opportunities for the entire Gable family. We learned over the summer that Donna Gable (played wonderfully by Erinn Hayes) will have passed away following the events of the Season 1 finale, and Mary-Charles Jones previously explained how the show will be different without Hayes on board in Season 2. She also teased how the tragic plot twist will affect her character moving forward, saying this about Sara in the second season:
I think that this season that Sara's character, because she doesn't have a mom, is kind of focusing on those teenage years and what you're going through in those years. Going through relationships, learning how to drive, going to dances, doing high school work. Not having a mom there for all those situations. So I'm super excited for everyone to see that type of dynamic of Sara and her trying to weave her way through her teenage life without her mom being present.
Sara's life as a teenage girl in high school was going to be complicated no matter what, as teen years tend to bring a lot of ups and downs. Now that Sara's mother has died, the challenges of being a teen are going to be all the more compelling. The 15-year-old Mary-Charles Jones should be uniquely qualified to portray Sara as a teenager growing up with siblings. Donna's death is obviously a tragedy for the whole Gable family, but the upside is that we'll get to see some intriguing (and undoubtedly funny) stories for Sara and the other kids.
Season 2 will shift some of the focus onto Kevin Gable as a single dad in the wake of his wife's death, which means that he'll end up having some conversations with his teenage daughter that he probably expected would be handled by her mother. We've already seen that Kevin James and Mary-Charles Jones bring a lot of heart to the small screen when they share scenes, and it should be fun to see them in Season 2 now that the family dynamic has shifted.
The cast for Kevin Can Wait will have a new addition in Season 2 as well, as Leah Remini has signed on as a regular. She appeared in a couple of episodes at the end of Season 1 as Kevin Gable's former co-worker on the police force, but we didn't get to see her interact with many of our established characters. Now that she'll be on the series in an increased capacity and spending a lot of time with Kevin, hopefully we'll get to see her character with the rest of the Gable family. Mary-Charles Jones only had nice things to say about Remini as an addition to the Kevin Can Wait cast. All things considered, we have a lot to look forward to when the Gable family returns to primetime for Season 2.
You can catch Mary-Charles Jones back as Sara Gable when Kevin Can Wait premieres its second season on Monday, September 25 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS. Be sure to tune in to see how Sara and the rest of the family enter the new chapter of their lives without Donna. We can bet that the show will have found new and exciting ways to bring the laughs. For your viewing options on the other nights of the week, take a look at our fall TV premiere schedule.
