Meet Abby Quinn — The Super Talented Actress Playing Mabel Buchman In The 'Mad About You' Reboot
Paul and Jamie's daughter Mabel is all grown up.
Instagram The reboot of beloved 90s sitcom "Mad About You", which premiered last week on Spectrum, has been one of the most anticipated streaming events in entertainment news.
Audiences are excited to catch up with Paul and Jamie Buchman, played once again by Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt, and their daughter Mabel, who was born during the season five finale, appropriately titled, "The Birth."
While Abby Quinn, who plays the Buchmans' daughter, is a newcomer to the show, the 23-year old actress been on the scene for years.
She started performing as a child and spent a year pursuing theatre training at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh before making the leap to pursue professional film and television work in Los Angeles.
Who is Abby Quinn?
Read on for seven fascinating details about the actress playing Mabel Buchman on "Mad About You."
1. Abby's early life
Abby is a native of Bloomfield, Michigan — a large suburb of Detroit — and she has been performing in theatre since she was a child.
She attended Carnegie Mellon University, intending to pursue a bachelor's degree in theater, but found herself torn between staying in college and pursuing opportunities in film and television that were starting to open up to her.
She revealed in an interview that she had to have a hard conversation with herself about what she was going to do with the next few years of her life.
"I just had this moment of like, ‘I have these opportunities right now and who knows if I’m going to have them when I actually graduate here. And it’s turning into a very stressful thing for me and I don’t want that to be the case. So I’m just going to take a year and actually be in L.A. Or New York and audition and give myself an opportunity before coming back to school,’" she said.
2. She already has an impressive list of film and TV credits
Her year in L.A. turned out to be a good choice and has led to years of work as an actress.
She's logged a steady list of film and TV of credits, including work on films The Journey Is The Destination, The Sisterhood of Night and Radium Girls, as well as popular series "Law and Order SVU", "Black Mirror", and "Better Call Saul".
She's received great reviews for her role in the comedy Good Girls Get High, which premiered at the 2018 Los Angeles Film Festival and was released in theaters in November 2019.
3. She's also a singer and songwriter
Quinn isn't only an actress, she's also a talented singer. Quinn is signed to record label Varèse Sarabande and has a song called "Knew You For A Moment" — which she also wrote — on the soundtrack for newly released film After The Wedding, In which she also costars with major Hollywood players such as Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup and Julianne Moore.
Recalling how that song came to be, Quinn explained that the film's director, Bart Freundlich, told her he was hoping to use one of her songs in the film.
"After talking to him," she recalls, "I went home and wrote a new song from the perspective of Michelle Williams’ character, Isabel. I think what I enjoyed most is not having a plan before writing, and seeing where the process took me. I hadn’t been planning on writing from Isabel’s perspective, so it was really interesting to me when the song started taking shape in that way."
4. She's too young to remember watching the original "Mad About You"
Abby was only a child during the original run of "Mad About You." So while it wasn't a show she watched at the time, she recalls adults in her life looking forward to it as part of NBC's popular "Must See TV" Thursday night line up — along with "Friends", "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" — at the time.
The show revolved around newlyweds Paul and Jamie Buchman and their daily life in New York City. Like many 1990s sitcoms, the main characters were surrounded by a group of quirky friends and relatives as they navigated situations ranging from the very silly — such as arguing about buying a couch — to very serious — such as infidelity and trying to get pregnant.
By the end of the series, the couple had given birth to their daughter Mabel and were settling into family life. The 1999 series finale, titled "The Final Frontier", featured actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo as a grown-up version of Mabel, showing a documentary she's made of her parents' live, including struggles in their marriage and a brief separation.
5. Quinn is one of the only "Mad About You" cast members not to have been in the original series
Twenty years after the show ended, the original cast is reuniting for a reboot of the series. The show picks up with Paul and Jamie happily married and Mabel getting ready to leave for college.
Given that Garofolo was 35 at the time she played grown-up Mabel, and there's really no way to make a 55-year-old Mabel work for the reboot (after all, Helen Hunt is 56 and Paul Reiser is 63), Quinn was a far more appropriate casting choice to play their daughter 20 years later.
Reviews of the new season have been mostly warm, with critics noting that the cast returned to their familiar dynamics and the show stays true to its roots.
As one of the few newcomers to the cast, Quinn has said stepping into that environment was both exciting and intimidating.
"I didn’t think it was going to be intimidating," she says, "but then when you’re there just for the first table read, there are, I think four new characters and then everyone else has known each other for 20 some years. But at the same time, because they all know each other so well, I think they’re so excited and open to having new people, too."
6. The reboot is only available to a limited audience
Currently the reboot is only available to a limited audience. Unlike the reboots of shows like "Will and Grace" that aired on their original networks, new episodes of "Mad About You" are only accessible as an on-demand option for customrs of Spectrum Cable.
Moreover, Spectrum isn't available everywhere, so even if you were willing to get a new cable subscription just to see the show, you might not have the option.
You can also sign up for Spectrum TV Choice, a stand alone streaming service, for $25 per month if you really want to watch the show and can't wait to find out if Spectrum will distribute it more widely.
And if you've been hit by the nostalgia bug and want to revisit the original episodes from the 90s, they're currently streaming on Starz.
7. What's next for Abby?
But never fear if you're worried Spectrum is keeping Abby Quinn hidden away from a wider audience. "Mad About You" may not be a nationwide phenomenon, but her next film certainly will be.
She'll appear as Annie Moffat in the latest version of Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women, which is set for release on Christmas Day.
The movie also stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlon and Laura Dern and was directed by Greta Gerwig.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.