Just Shoot Me!

The character of Maya Gallo is portrayed by Laura San Giacomo. Maya is largely portrayed as a hot-tempered, sassy journalist who takes a job at the fictional glamour fashion magazine Blush, owned by her father Jack Gallo, in the pilot after she is fired for tampering with an anchorwoman's teleprompter and making her cry on the air. She has been shown to have headstrong smarts despite her naïveté about life and sometimes even love. Though she is also clearly attractive and will on occasion use this if a situation calls for it, Maya frowns upon men looking at women solely as objects of sexual desire, and in keeping with her feminist views, instead encourages people to admire women for their intelligence or other attributes. Unfortunately for her, this is not a popular view for a fashion magazine and it, therefore, puts her at odds with much of the magazine's staff, thus providing much of the comedic conflict of the series.

She is usually mistaken for Puerto Rican. Her birthday is January 1, but her father Jack is unable to remember it. In the episode "Nina Van Grandma," Jack claims, "I was in that delivery room 14 hours on the hottest day of the year... then why did it snow today." Maya is often shown dating on the show. She and Elliot are a couple for quite some time, and they were briefly engaged. However, Elliot's fear of commitment causes him to instantly have a panic attack moments after he proposes to her. Among her other dates were Michael Tenzer (David Rasche), Chris (Dean Cain), Ray Liotta, and another man named Chris (Joe Rogan). Although she is involved in several relationships, she is never depicted getting (legally) married in the series. She is also very skilled at pitching; when she pitches a baseball to Dennis Finch, he thinks his hand is broken. However, if Maya starts pitching, she can't stop (she wants to practice softball with Finch in the rain).

The character of Jack Gallo, portrayed by George Segal, is the owner and publisher of Blush. During his daughter Maya's childhood, Jack was an absent workaholic. The relationship between the two of them develops throughout the series reaching its pinnacle when he hands the magazine over to Maya in the series finale after retiring. When extolling the virtues of an assistant to Maya, he notes that an assistant (in his case Finch) can even become one's "best friend," although the sentiment was slightly dulled by his use of the pronoun "it" to refer to the hypothetical assistant (and therefore to Finch).

Jack is four times divorced, although he was married to Maya's high school classmate Allie for the first half of the series. They have a daughter (Maya's half-sister) named Hannah who was born in the first episode, "Back Issues." Jack showers Hannah with affection, prompting Maya's jealousy. This resentment disappears when Jack explains that he did not want to repeat with Hannah the mistakes he made with Maya. Jack has a running contest with Donald Trump as to who is, among other topics, the smartest, the richest, and the best gift giver.

In The Book of "Jack," Finch refers to Jack as 'Jackson Gilbert Gallo'; however, in "La Cage" Nina refers to Jack as 'Jackson H. Gallo'.

The character of Nina Van Horn (born Claire Noodleman in Colby, Kansas in 1953), portrayed by Wendie Malick, is the fashion editor at Blush. As a teenager, she had a daughter (Cloe) whom she gave up for adoption. When reuniting with her and finding out Cloe has a teenager daughter (Tess) she is initially shocked, but later proudly accepts that she is a grandmother. She was a cover girl and movie star in the 1970s and 1980s. She found that when she retired, people forgot her as quickly as they knew her. In a special Biography program about her, Pat Sajak says that no one is able to guess her name, and the contestants are sent home. Her partying once caused her to die in 1986 (to which she responded, "it was only for 12 minutes, I'm obviously fine!"). At one point, she mentions that she slept with Mick Jagger, was the one who broke up music bands such as The Eagles and the Jackson 5 (as well as having toured with Iggy Pop).

Nina is considered an alcoholic partially due to her casual nips of alcohol during the day at work. Due to her former status as a supermodel, she has been plagued by an obsession to party all night long and to return to work the following morning with a hangover. She is also, if no longer an addict, extremely experienced in recreational pharmacy with a wide knowledge of (and access to) uppers, downers, mood regulators, and hallucinogenic compounds (she is able to identify not only that a Chinese sweet "Lemon Wacky Hello" is a hallucinogen, but also its chemical make up, by taste alone). She is understood to be promiscuous and possibly bisexual.

Nina is obsessed with her age and looks. In one episode, she mentioned that she had the telephone number of a plastic surgeon on speed dial, and when her age is nearly revealed over the P.A., she runs into Jack's office to destroy the P.A. so nobody will know her age. Throughout the run of the show, she was vaguely in her late forties to early fifties, once blurting out that life's no fun at fifty (Ep. "Sid and Nina").

In most seasons, Nina often talks about her friend Binny. She is never seen but is heard about all the time. This usually leads to groans by other members of Blush who have to listen. In the episode "The Mask," Finch and Elliot try to prove Binny isn't real, only to find out she is real at the end. In the episode "Bye Bye Binny," we hear that Binny dies and Nina must face the fact that she lost her only friend. Binny appears as a ghost to Nina in "Strange Bedfellows," but her face is almost never shown. The exception is a black-and-white clip, when her face was partially bandaged after a facelift.

The character of Elliot DiMauro, portrayed by Enrico Colantoni, is the lead photographer for Blush who often dates the models. Elliot was "discovered" by Jack, who found him selling his photography on the street, which all happens before the series begins. He also dated Maya for a period of time. In one episode, when he mentions that he is not allowed to vote in an election, he spills that he was once arrested and spent time in jail. In a season four episode, it is revealed that he had planned to propose to a former girlfriend but as he was buying flowers, he was subsequently the victim of a hit-and-run—the driver turned out to be Nina. Though Elliot was angry at Nina for ruining his chances (his and his girlfriend's relationship ended the night of the accident), upon meeting his ex later, Elliot discovered that his ex-girlfriend had three husbands who died in accidents involving boats. Elliot also has a brother (in the episode "Slow Donnie") named Donnie (played by David Cross).

The character of Dennis Quimby Finch, the executive assistant to Jack often referred to as simply "Finch", was portrayed by David Spade. Born in Albany, New York (of Norwegian ancestry), Dennis attended Hudson River Junior College where he joined the cheerleading team. Dennis' father and brother are both firemen and they have suspected that Dennis may have been gay due to his effeminacy.

In general, Finch has been described as "a self-centered horny pig who'd stop at nothing to get laid." He is discovered to be well endowed but does not realize this until Jack and Elliot bring it to his attention; they react with disgust when Finch says he always believed he was merely "a little above average" as he'd only seen other naked men in porn movies. Surreptitiously, Dennis writes articles for the "Dear Miss Pretty" advice column. Dennis used to compete in figure skating, as revealed in the season 3 episode, 'Softball'. Dennis also likes to collect action figures and ceramic kittens. He lives in an apartment, number 803, in New York City (Manhattan), which was formerly Maya's apartment before she moved in with Elliot.

He is also known to have a fear of owls from his mother's side. He works as the executive assistant of Blush owner Jack Gallo, toward whom he has a slavish devotion (he once claimed he expected to be buried with Jack) and with whom he has a virtually telepathic rapport, enabling him to foresee Gallo's every need and provide answers to even his vaguest questions (e.g. "What's that song that I like?"). He also has a seemingly mystical ability to tell when something sexual is happening or even being mentioned; for example, he was able to figure out that Maya and Elliot were in a relationship simply by mentally comparing Elliot's bite mark on an apple he was eating with a hickey on Maya's neck, as well as seemingly appearing to cross a massive distance across countries to appear in a room just as Maya was propositioned by a photographer. In season 4, he marries a supermodel, Adrienne (Rebecca Romijn); however, early in season 4, she asks for a divorce.

Highly intelligent, as a child he was able to hack into a German bank and steal $18,000 worth of Deutsche Mark as disclosed in season 3; he also reveals in the season 2 episode "Jack's Old Partner" that he is so adept at twisting tax laws to favor him that the previous year, the IRS paid him $20,000 not to grow corn. In Season 6, episodes 2 and 3, it is discovered that his entire personality is stolen from a girl he saw at college on his first day at the freshmen mixer, Betsy Frayne (Amy Sedaris). This is revealed when she ends up working as a security guard for Blush.

The character of Kevin Liotta, portrayed by Brian Posehn on a recurring basis, was the mail guy at Blush and in the show's sixth season is discovered to be a cousin of film actor Ray Liotta. He is known for having an obsessive crush on Nina Van Horn, which often disturbed her. However, in one episode he develops a brief crush on Maya, about which she becomes disturbed after initially thinking when he was still interested in Nina that she should give him a chance. He is also found to be a very good operatic singer, which Jack discovers.

The character of Vicki Costa, portrayed by Rena Sofer, was hired by Jack and worked at Blush for part of the seventh and final season. Throughout her time on the show, she served as a creative consultant. She is not afraid to be honest with her coworkers and has proven to be tough when necessary. However, she was written out of the series midway through the last season with the character opting to resign from Blush.

Wally (portrayed by Chris Hogan) is Maya's roommate in season 1, but was discarded when the writing staff thought it would be better to follow Blush magazine instead of Maya's life at home and at work.

Just Shoot Me! has aired on different channels in the UK, including Channel 4, Sky1, E4, and Comedy Central. The series has aired in Ireland on RTÉ Two and TV3 and its digital channel 3e.

Just Shoot Me! has aired in Australia on Network Ten (1998–2004), on the Nine Network (2008–2009) and GO! (a sub-channel of Nine) (2009–2011), on 7mate (2014) and 7flix (2016–present), and on pay-TV channel TV1.[6][7] The show is broadcast on TV2 in New Zealand at 6:00 p.m. weeknights starting from January 14, 2013, replacing Friends.

The show is broadcast in India on STAR World, WB and Zee Café.

In Serbia, the show initially aired on RTV Pink. Beginning in April 2011, reruns have been aired on B92.[8]

In South Africa, the show initially aired on SABC3, free-to-air channel e.tv and rerun on satellite provider Sony Channel[9]