‘The Grinder’ Creators on Casting Rob Lowe as Ultimate ‘Rob Lowe-Type’ and Showrunners Shakeup

“The Grinder” creators Andrew Mogul and Jarrad Paul did about as well as producers could possibly do when casting their “Rob Lowe type” — they landed Rob Lowe.

On “The Grinder,” Lowe plays television lawyer Dean Sanderson, who moves back to his small hometown after a stint in Hollywood, thinking his time on the small-screen qualifies him to run his family’s law firm.

“If you’re gonna go into cardiac arrest around somebody you’d rather it be Noah Wyle,” Mogul recalled a recurring hypothetical conversation he and Paul had well before their idea for “The Grinder” actually hit paper. “They pick something up along the way.”

So that’s exactly what they did with their new Fox comedy — the duo just swapped occupations to focus on the world of attorneys. And by the way, that “E.R.” joke made it into the pilot, essentially verbatim.

For the role of Dean, the executive producers said they wanted someone who had done both legal procedural and comedic acting.

“He knows the tropes of these legal dramas and brings it to the character — even the writing — in a really, really smart way,” Mogul told TheWrap of scoring Lowe as their somewhat meta lead.

Once they had the ex-“Parks & Rec” actor, they needed to find his on-screen brother, Stewart. That proved more difficult, as former child star-turned-director Fred Savage — whose kids conveniently go to school with other EP Nicholas Stoller‘s children — wasn’t really into returning to the other side of the camera.

It took much convincing, but once they got the ex-“Wonder Years” actor onboard, both Mogul and Paul were blown away by how “remarkable” his comedic timing still was. Savage gets almost every laugh in the pilot, save some big ones courtesy of guest star Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”).

While speaking to Mogul and Paul makes it sound like the table read is a total love fest, there has been at least one piece of key turnover atop the writers room: “The Grinder” swapped showrunners from Greg Malins to Ben Wexler last month.

“It’s very common for this to happen,” Paul explained of the Malins dismissal. “You do the pilot, and then the series starts happening, and you hire a bunch of people — and sometimes you don’t know how it’s all gonna fit and how it’s all gonna work.”

“In finding where the show should go, you don’t always agree,” Mogul added.

“Sometimes it’s not the perfect fit,” Paul said, praising Malins but touting Wexler as a more kindred spirit tonally. “It certainly wasn’t this big problem or didn’t slow us down or anything. We worked for a couple months and just felt like, ‘OK, there could be a little shift in here process’ … we just dealt with this early on.”

“The Grinder” premieres Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox, following the 8 o’clock debut of “Grandfathered.”