A romantic comedy about the unlikely romance between a working-class baker and a gorgeous supermodel, “The Baker and the Beauty” was a big hit in Israel, where its two seasons aired in 2013-2014 and 2017.
The Keshet Studios production has undergone significant changes in its move to American television while preserving the central idea and tone. Set in Tel Aviv in the original half-hour version with an Ashkenazi-Sephardic love story, it now takes place in Miami in a Cuban-American family’s bakery and will air in hourlong episodes on ABC.
“It’s the same general premise as the Israeli series: falling in love turns your world upside down, with the added element of constantly being followed by paparazzi,” Keshet senior vice president and series executive producer Rachel Kaplan told the Journal. “It is a universal love story about two people getting together, beyond the obstacles. There’s so much potential but constant intervening circumstances — an issue with business, her father, her desire to become an actress or travel that may take her out of town for three months, and on his side, keeping the bakery going while being pulled into her world.”
The romantic fantasy elements are still there, but Daniel, the baker played by Victor Rasuk, “is adorable and approachable, but he’s now more of an everyman” than his Israeli counterpart, Kaplan said. All the characters are Hispanic, albeit of various ancestry. “The minority aspect added to the upstairs/downstairs [aspect] of the relationship. We wanted to make Noa (Nathalie Kelley) Latino also so the aspirational quality of being in a relationship with her had nothing to do with her ethnic background.”
“It’s the same general premise as the Israeli series: falling in love turns your world upside down, with the added element of constantly being followed by paparazzi.” — Rachel Kaplan
The entire cast is Spanish-speaking, including Jewish actor Dan Bucatinsky (“24: Legacy,” “Scandal,” “Web Therapy”), who portrays Noa’s manager. His parents were born in Argentina, his Russian and Polish grandparents having fled to South America from Europe. Fluency came in handy on the set, as the series was filmed in Puerto Rico, standing in for Miami.
“We wanted to shoot something on the beach and have it be sunny and that narrowed the choices down a bit,” Kaplan said, noting that Puerto Rico was chosen “for the tax credit. There isn’t one in Florida.”
“The Baker and the Beauty” isn’t the only project that Keshet hopes to bring to American screens. “Rise and Kill First,” based on Ronen Bergman’s book about the history of the Mossad, is being adapted for HBO. The Israeli miniseries “Stockholm” is being reimagined as a movie, and the hit movie comedy “Tel Aviv on Fire” may be headed for home screens as a series. “All the Rivers,” from Dorit Rabinyan’s novel about a romance between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, is in development with Gal Gadot’s production company.
Kaplan, who is of Russian Jewish heritage and visits Israel several times a year, explained why it has become a great source of entertainment properties ripe for remake. “It’s a small country that’s very close to ours politically and socially,” she said. “[Israelis] have a lot of the same ideologies. They laugh at the same jokes. They don’t get to make a lot of shows — there are four networks in Israel. But what they do get to make is incredibly refined and cultivated and beautifully done. They don’t have the budgets we do so they think very practically about production value. We try to replicate that here because we’re always looking to save a dime.”
Keshet Studios president and series executive producer Peter Traugott, whose father’s family escaped Germany after Kristallnacht, finds that “the cultural aspect of being Jewish has become a much bigger part of my life” since he joined the company in 2015. He loved “The Baker and the Beauty” “from the get-go” as “great wish fulfillment, a ‘Cinderella’-style romantic comedy [and] the equivalent of ‘Notting Hill.’ [But] at the time, it felt like the market wasn’t ready for something like that, so we sat on it for a while. And now, here we are,” he said.
“We’ve made countless shows, but there’s something about this one,” Traugott added. “You just want to escape for an hour and be in their world. There’s nothing controversial about it. Of course there’s drama in it, but it’s not dark or edgy. It’s just a nice world to be in. I think if the audience comes to it, they’ll stay with it.”
Kaplan noted that the majority of viewers who streamed one episode of the Hebrew version on Netflix watched the entire series. “That’s something we’d like to replicate,” she said. “We are hopeful that the show’s positive message of love will be a welcome distraction for the people quarantined at home and will inspire them to tune in.”
“The Baker and the Beauty” premieres April 13 on ABC.
