by Gill Pringle in LA
For more than two decades, Steve Carell has been one of the most recognisable faces in comedy. Whether he’s playing an awkward boss, a clueless father, or a deeply emotional dramatic character, he has a talent for making audiences laugh while still revealing something human beneath the humour.
Most audiences first fell in love with him during his unforgettable run as Michael Scott on sitcom The Office, a role which effectively turned him into a household name and showed just how skilled he was at blending ridiculous comedy with surprising warmth.
Carell has of course built an impressive career that goes well beyond sitcoms, appearing in hit comedies The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Evan Almighty and Crazy, Stupid, Love.
And, despite forays into darker territory with last year’s misguided Mountainhead and earlier films Foxcatcher and Beautiful Boy, Carell has largely stayed in his comedy lane while becoming one of the most respected actors of his generation.
Today, he returns to TV in HBO dramedy Rooster, portraying best-selling fiction writer Greg Russo – whose books are based on a hero figure named Rooster – who winds up working at the same college where his daughter teaches.
Written and created by Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Scrubs, Shrinking) and Matt Tarses, the show features Charly Clive as Russo’s daughter and Ted Lasso’s Phil Dunster as her husband.
Rounding out the cast is Danielle Deadwyler, Lauren Tsai, John C. McGinley and Connie Britton.
And while the premise might sound simple, the comedy really comes from the complicated relationship between father and daughter; Greg arriving on campus partly to support his daughter during a difficult time, while also dealing with his own personal issues and insecurities.
Like many of Carell’s characters, Greg is flawed, awkward, and well-meaning all at once, “The writing is so specific and good, and one of the things I loved about the pilot was that it felt very lived-in. And pilots are really hard to write, because it’s all exposition, it’s setting up a new world, setting up these characters no one has any familiarity with…” says Carell.
“But these guys were able to thread the needle, I thought, in having all of that and making it funny as well and inviting you in. And sometimes, pilots try to tell you too much about each of the characters and don’t leave any room for where they’re going to go, but with this, the writing was just so good. We don’t know where we’re headed in life, so it’s fun to see each episode unfold.
“I thought a lot about the characters but, for me, so much of the information came from the other actors. When Charly and I first met on Zoom, she was so warm and such a good actor and listened and wanted to explore and be open to anything,” he says of the actress who plays his screen daughter.
“But then, all of the actors turned out to be the same way, and it just felt like a true ensemble. You don’t know what the energy’s going to be like, you don’t know what each of them are going to be like as people. But there was just such a pervasive kindness and generosity, which reminded me of my experience on The Office.”
What makes the show especially interesting is the way that Greg begins to lean into the persona of Rooster, the heroic character from his own bestselling novels.
Students on campus start calling him by that name, and suddenly Greg finds himself trying to live up to this larger-than-life figure that he created. The result is a lot of comedic situations as he struggles to balance who he really is with who people expect him to be.
For Charly Clive’s part, the British actress could not have been more surprised when she landed the role. “When it came into my inbox, it just said ‘Untitled Steve Carell Project’. And I was like, ‘Oh, I would love to be in an Untitled Steve Carell Project’. And my agent was like, ‘Do you want to tape for this? You’re never gonna get it. It’s this big American thing and it’s gonna be in Hollywood’, and I was like, ‘Yeah’,” she recalls.
“And the stakes were very low because I was like, ‘Well, no one’s gonna watch this tape’. And so, I had loads of fun with it, and then a little while later, they were like, ‘Bill Lawrence would like to speak to you with Steve Carell and Matt Tarses’, and I was like, ‘Okay … no pressure’. But I wanted to do the role because the script was so funny and this woman is so all over the place, and that’s so exciting,” she says.
Carell really leaned into the notion of a man who starts to think of himself as the hero from his own books. “It’s all incremental changing, you know, here’s a guy who’s written a series of books with this protagonist named Rooster, who in some ways he aspires to be because it seems like the epitome of who he could be as a human being,” Carell says.
“But, within that, I didn’t want it to be a Walter Mitty character. I didn’t want him to be some sort of schlub who lacks everything that Rooster has. He is a fairly confident guy. He’s not a cartoon,” emphasises Carell.
“Russo is someone who has a sense of humour and self-awareness and he marries a woman who is incredibly competent, so there has to be something about him that would draw her to that.
“But maybe he’s got some rough edges. That to me was the interesting way in. It’s like all the different little shades of who this person is, maybe wants to become, and maybe ultimately doesn’t want exactly what he thinks he wants. So, there is some conflict internally there too and it was a fun thing to explore,” he continues.
“And of course, the relationship with his daughter – which is not exactly my relationship with my daughter – but I can draw from that because I have experience,” says the father of two recent university graduates.
Rooster is streaming now on HBO Max
