Mayne stars in Web series

ESPNKenny Mayne stars in ESPN’s first original scripted web series, “Mayne Street.” The three to five minute webisodes debut tomorrow.

Mayne, who has worked for ESPN for 13 years, will soon roll out his a new project, “Mayne Street.” The show will be ESPN.com’s first original scripted web series, and will be comprised of 15 three to five minute “webisodes.” The series will debut Tuesday.

Mayne, who will be starring in the Internet show, plays himself in a “fictionalized version of life at the center of sports television,” according to an ESPN news release.

Although the series is scripted, it’s not too far of a stretch from the day-to-day routine that Mayne has experienced over his time at ESPN.

“There are always odd situations that arise; at every shoot something funny happens,” Mayne said.

Mayne said he wanted to do this project from the moment he heard about it.

“I was coming up on the end of my contract and I wanted something that could go straight to production as my next project,” Mayne said.

“Mayne Street” also includes special guest appearances including Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics; Dominic Chianese, who plays Uncle Junior on “The Sopranos;” and chef Bobby Flay from the Food Network, Mayne said.

“My favorite episode is one that we filmed with a group of elderly baseball players,” Mayne said. “The things they said were far funnier than anything we had scripted.”

The show is a sports-related version of the popular TV show “The Office,” portraying a satirical representation of co-worker relations and office norms.

“I’m a huge fan of ‘The Office.’ we like to put ‘Mayne Street’ in that category, along with ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’,” Mayne said. “Our goal is to be 10 percent as good as Larry David.”

Producer Todd Pellegrino, who presented the concept to Mayne with Josh Shelov, said the show is designed to bring more comedy to ESPN.

“Originally we wanted it to be a full 30 minute TV show, but in order to speed up production ESPN turned it into a web series,” Shelov said. “The medium of the day is the Internet and we are happy to be a part of that.”

Both Pellegrino and Shelov have worked with Mayne on several past projects and the three said they collaborated on “Mayne Street” very well.

“There is even a producer character that kind of represents our alter-ego at ESPN with a strong sense of humor,” Shelov said.

According to Mayne, the three were able to have fun while making “Mayne Street.”

“Far too often people think that to excel you have to get red in the face, yelling and stressed; but to me fun leads to success,” Mayne said.

Pellegrino agreed, saying that, to them, success is about the fun they had and the fun people will have watching the show, not the number of hits the Web site gets from viewers.

“What we really want to do with the show is make people laugh,” Mayne said.

Shelov said they would be happy as long as people saw the show and wanted to spread it around.

“We want people to post it on their Facebooks and e-mail it to their friends and family,” Shelov said. “We want to be in a place where people say, ‘I love them’ and really want to see the next episode.”

Mayne said he is very enthusiastic for the show and that he thought everyone left the project thinking they had created something great.

However, he couldn’t resist playing the role of a big shot, as he added in his typically witty fashion, “I personally want to bypass TV and move straight to a full-length movie.”

Molly Gray can be reached at [email protected].