For ‘Marry Me’ star Casey Wilson, Chicago’s a good place to find humor, husband

Casey Wilson isn’t a Chicagoan, but she plays one on TV. A lot.

Both of her roles as series regulars — first as Penny on ABC’s “Happy Endings” and more recently as Annie on NBC’s freshman comedy “Marry Me” — have been a city girl with a 312/773 area code and a gaggle of quirky friends.

And both were created by the man who became her husband earlier this year: Glencoe native David Caspe.

“He’s a very proud Chicagoan, so I feel certainly an allegiance,” Wilson said Monday at the Peninsula Chicago. The “Gone Girl” actress is making a quick visit to her pseudo-hometown to tape Steve Harvey’s daytime chatfest. “I’m forced to watch all the Bulls games.”

The newlyweds, who are expecting their first child (she’s four months pregnant), live in Los Angeles, where “Marry Me” is filmed.

RELATED: Lori Rackl says ‘Marry Me’ is a keeper (REVIEW)

“He likes to set everything in Chicago,” Wilson said about her husband, whose writers’ room is stocked with several of his childhood buddies and fellow New Trier grads, Jordan Cahan and brothers Daniel and Matthew Libman.

Airing at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on WMAQ-Channel 5, the rom-com stars Wilson and Ken Marino as Annie and Jake, a couple whose engagement goes horribly and hilariously wrong in the pilot.

Caspe’s real-life attempt to put a ring on it went much better.

“Our proposal was very smooth,” she said. “David had bought a house that we renovated for about a year. It was one of those awkward things where I didn’t know quite if I’d be living in the house, so I would give light suggestions. In hindsight I wish I’d given more suggestions. The night that he moved in, he asked me to come over and he proposed. It was very beautiful. No drama.”

While Wilson has visited Chicago a few times with her husband, it was another man who first introduced her to the city.

“My dad used to bring me to Chicago … when I was younger, to see Second City,” said the NYU grad who grew up outside Washington, D.C. “I was really into comedy. I remember sitting in the audience and thinking this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I couldn’t believe people were getting paid to do this.”

Chicago also is the place where Wilson stood up Oprah Winfrey.

“This is a regret I’ll never get over: I slept through the last-season show of ‘Oprah’ I had tickets to,” said the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member. Wilson and her “SNL” buddy Abby Elliott scored tickets to a taping, but they’d partied too hard the night before and overslept.

“The show went on,” Wilson said. “I heard it lost its luster without a couple audience members.”

Hear more from Casey Wilson in this video, shot Monday at the Peninsula: