Fresh Off the Boat: Laura McCreary on what it's like to film in Costco — while it's open

Every week, the cast and crew of ABC's Taiwanese American family comedy, Fresh Off the Boat, is taking EW behind the scenes. For each episode, one member is recapping, sharing thoughts on what went down, and walking us through the ins-and-outs of the show. This week writer Laura McCreary brings us into the sixth episode of season 3, "WWJD: What Would Jessica Do?"

Costco. It all started with a joke from Ali Wong that Costco was like Chinese people’s church. A pilgrimage if you will, every Sunday, to the gods of bulk deals. So the writers (myself included) set out to find the best way to tell this story. And I’ll tell you, it’s fun in the writers' room — pitching jokes about industrial size jars of mayonnaise and 144-pack rolls of toilet paper. And then it’s more fun at the table read when jokes about sample carts work on their feet and our amazing cast makes the episode start to come to life. And then you realize, oh yeah, we have to actually shoot this.

Props came to us with the news that A: a 144-pack of toilet paper is obviously way too large to fit anywhere (hey, we’re writers, not physicists – and yes I just had to look up how to spell ‘physicist.’) and B: even that comically large TP would be way too heavy for a human being to carry. Oh yeah, stuff like that… My background is in animation. You mean you can't draw the toilet paper pack towering up towards the ceiling, and make Jessica’s biceps a little bigger with strain lines coming off them? No? OK, then. We’ll figure it out.

In the same vein, it was great news when we learned that we were going to get to shoot in an actual Costco — on a show with a different budget, you’d be forcing tight angles against one wall of canned goods in the corner of a sound stage. But again, the practicality set in. We had to start shooting way before dawn, and even so, most of the time we were working, Costco would be open. Like, open to customers rolling carts of screaming children through our shots, open. I won’t lie, there were upsides — I had big plans to rush off to the liquor aisle to stock up on high-end tequila between takes.

Instead, between takes, I rushed to the bathroom, crouched in a corner to gobble a (delicious) slice of Costco pizza and handed shoppers double bottles of olive oil and 12-pound cans of pickles from the aisle we had cordoned off for shooting. It was a long day. But fruitful. The expansive shots of Costco look amazing, and Constance Wu and Ian Chen (and bonus! guest star Yeardley Smith, who's hilarious) worked their asses off all day. A few curious shoppers stopped by to ask what we were doing, but for the most part, we were more interested in them than they were in us. (Why do they put their kids in the deep cart instead of in the seat built for kids? Should we have written that in? Too late, we’re already in the egg aisle!)

Eventually, we got everything we needed and more. And Ali was right, Costco was church. I prayed that we’d get done in time, I worshiped our DP (who had to change the lighting countless times to adjust to the whims of Mr. Kirkland’s fluorescents), and at the end of the day, I confessed to the amount of hot dogs I ate. Three. Just kidding. Or am I? That’s between me and God.

Fresh Off the Boat airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.