Why Reba McEntire Didn’t Have Successful Sitcom Romance Until ‘Happy’s Place’ Story With Rex Linn (Exclusive)

Happy’s Place — and Rex Linn — are finally giving Reba McEntire the chance to have a sitcom romance after multiple failed attempts on her OG Reba series.

During the season finale on Friday, March 21, Isabella (Belissa Escobedo) attempts to set up her half-sister, Bobbie (McEntire), with their coworker Emmett (Linn). The only problem is that both Bobbie and Emmett are worried about ruining their decades-long friend so they pump the breaks. Happy’s Place ends by hinting that Bobbie and Emmett are in it for the long haul, which isn’t what executive producer Kevin Abbott originally had in mind.

“I actually had a different place I was going to wind up with in the first season. It involved that relationship,” he exclusively teased to Us Weekly. “But I couldn’t because we like to track these out and then build them so that when we get there, it is a surprise. It seems obvious the tracks have been laid because we had the 13 episodes and we weren’t told whether or not we were going to get picked up for more.”

Happy’s Place ultimately received an additional four-episode order but the writers’ room decided not to rush the romance, with Abbott adding, “I didn’t have time to build where I wanted to build to. But I wanted to start that relationship because the one thing I never got to do on the old Reba show was relationships.”

Before working with McEntire, 69, on Happy’s Place, the duo collaborated on Reba, which ran from 2001 to 2007. Abbott used what did — and didn’t — work on Reba when reuniting with McEntire on NBC’s new hit sitcom about coworkers at a tavern.

“For whatever reason, Reba can do almost anything. The one story we could not tell on the original show was relationships. There were love interests but the chemistry never worked,” he recalled. “We tried a couple different times and those were horrible episodes — from my point of view. They were always very tough episodes for me because they just didn’t work well.”

Happy’s Place didn’t have that issue because McEntire was paired off with Linn, 68, who was already her real-life boyfriend.

“She’s with Rex now and we thought, ‘If it’s ever going to work, this is going to work.’ For me it works. They are just wonderful together,” Abbott gushed. “So I’m interested in following that track and seeing how it goes. That was the plan even before we cast Rex — believe it or not. Because we did cast him and that was always intended as a possible love interest because I’ve got some of those stories I want to tell. I wasn’t able to tell them in the old Reba sitcom.”

McEntire and Linn originally met while filming 1991’s The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, but they didn’t pursue a romance until nearly three decades later. After reconnecting, McEntire and Linn have had fun starring in the same projects, including Big Sky and now Happy’s Place.

The NBC series, which premiered in 2024, features McEntire as a tavern owner who inherited her father’s business and discovered a new professional partner in a half-sister she didn’t know she had. Linn, meanwhile, plays a cook named Emmett who has a crush on Bobbie, which will be explored in the already-ordered season 2.

Happy’s Place also stars Melissa Peterman, which Reba fans remember from the original sitcom. But just because Happy’s Place reunited the costars doesn’t make it a copy and paste version of the Reba series.

“I did the original Reba show with Reba and she’s everything that you would hope she’d be as a person — let alone as a performer. We didn’t quite tell all the stories that we wanted to tell in the original Reba. That was an odd ending to that show. We were actually looking at doing a reboot of the original show,” he recalled about the pilot that was eventually not picked up. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of [doing something different with Happy’s Place].”

He continued: “We didn’t want to do another family show with kids because we’d done a lot of that. So we wanted to just do an adult workplace show. We’ve been really happy with it. I’m thrilled to be back with these people.”

Happy’s Place has been renewed for season 2. Season 1 is now streaming on Peacock.