Meet the new boss — not the same as the old boss.
Rooster‘s Season 1 finale revealed that regime change is coming to sleepy, leafy, and entirely fictional Ludlow College. In a behind-the-scenes power move, high-powered businesswoman Elizabeth Stoddard (Connie Britton) has pushed out the liberal arts institution’s sauna-favoring current president, Walter Mann (John C. McGinley). That complicates things for the rest of Beth’s family, who also happen to be on the Ludlow payroll: her ex-husband, Greg (Steve Carell), bestselling author-turned-writer in residence, and their professor daughter, Katie (Charly Clive).
The transition from President Mann to President Stoddard will play out over the course of the hit HBO comedy’s sophomore year. But Rooster creators Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses are quick note that Britton isn’t becoming a series regular in Season 2, even as she becomes more of a presence in her family’s lives. “Connie’s not a regular next year, but we’ll use her as much as we can if we love her,” confirms Lawrence, who is juggling three Emmy-contending comedies this awards cycle. Besides Rooster, he also has Apple TV’s Shrinking and ABC’s Scrubs revival jockeying for attention with a fourth season of Ted Lasso set to launch this summer.
“We made it pretty clear in the episode that Beth isn’t starting full time until the semester after this next one,” adds the prolific creator and producer. “This gives us an excuse to have her around causing conflict. Greg thought that he had finally resolved his stuff with his ex, but now she’s going to be back in his world and complicating things for him.”
Tarses is also quick to note that Mann’s usurpation doesn’t mean that McGinley is headed for the exit ahead of Season 2. “Walter surprised us throughout the whole season, because he’s supposed to be this comedic foil,” the co-creator reveals. “Instead, people found him to be so empathetic, so it really worked to give him this gut punch at the end of the season. The audience is invested in him as a character, and they’re exited to see what’s going to happen. There are some people who might feel like he’s not going to be on the show anymore — but John will be on the show.”
The home sauna industry will be thrilled.
The ex files
Just like the Terminator, Britton always knew that Beth would be back following her first appearance midway through Season 1. “Elizabeth has deep relationships with both Greg and Katie, but she’s also out of their lives to some degree,” the actress told us then. “What I’ve loved about this whole process is the way that Bill and Matt bring everybody together.”
Britton also revealed that her 11th hour casting made her suspect that she wasn’t Lawrence’s first choice for the role — a theory that the producer now confirms. “There was another actress connected to the show and to Steve that we thought was doing it,” Lawrence says, declining to identify the original performer. When that actress stepped out — for personal, not creative reasons — Britton stepped up, reuniting with Lawrence for the first time since their time on the late ’90s sitcom, Spin City.
“It’s funny, because I haven’t worked with Connie or Alan Ruck since Spin City,” Lawrence says, laughing. (Ruck has a recurring Rooster role as a Ludlow professor whose views and attitude are definitely out of step with the current times.) “But that series is too old for anybody to realize they were on the same show before! I’ve admired Connie’s career so much since then, and just think that she’s a rock star human being.”
Lawrence also credits Britton with bringing a fresh take to Beth that wasn’t necessarily on the page. “Connie embraced this idea of the character being someone that’s one hundred percent selfish and not ashamed about it,” he remarks. “That was really funny and gave us story-generating stuff for Beth’s relationship with Katie during the season and moving forward into next year.”
Beth is also plenty selfish in her relationship with Greg, a personality trait that’s driven home in a key finale moment when she lingers just a little too long in an embrace with her ex — a less-than-subtle suggestion that she’s down for the occasional hook-up, no matter how emotionally confusing that is for him. Tarses reveals that he and Lawrence contemplated having Beth make that move earlier in the season, but ultimately decided that they needed more runway to land that proverbial plane.
“Initially, it was going to blow up whatever progress Greg had made,” he explains. “He would have kissed her back, fallen into bed with her and it would have f–ked up his life again. By doing it at the end of the season, we were able to dramatize his growth. He’s now able to tell her, ‘I don’t want to do this.'”
But temptation will almost certainly present itself again once his ex-wife takes over Walter’s office, staffed by executive assistant Cristle (Annie Mumolo) — who also happens to be Greg’s post-Beth fling. The last shot of the finale shows Greg taking a magazine portrait of Beth down from his wall, which the creators interpret in two different ways. “For me, it’s Greg saying, ‘Even though I’m past this, it’s going to cause me a lot more problems moving forward,'” says Tarses.
“He’s past it, but her picture is still in his hand at the end,” Lawrence counters with a grin. “Matt and I always argue, because he favors the rom-com elements of everything. That’s one of the reasons why we have such a good partnership. That shot is the best of both worlds.”
Death becomes him
In a notable swerve from some of Carell’s recent TV roles — including The Morning Show and The Four Seasons — Greg doesn’t die in a car accident in the Rooster season finale, something that the actor was grateful for. “He hasn’t not died in a long time,” Lawerence jokes. “Steve was like, ‘Wait, I’m coming back?’ Now we have a responsibility to eventually kill him again.”
Far from dying, Greg’s time at Ludlow has granted him a second life. That’s among the reasons why he decides not to follow through on his initial intention to head back to Florida and signs on for another semester. Obviously, that decision isn’t much of a shock given that there wouldn’t be a Rooster without… well, Rooster — something that the creators were unsurprisingly cognizant of.
“Matt and I are super-aware that anybody who watches television knows the odds are pretty high that the main character isn’t going to leave the show,” Lawrence says. “So we did ask ourselves, ‘Should we even bother with that story?’ And the reason we decided to bother with it is because it’s a plot device that’s also a wonderful metaphor for a character realizing he’s found his community and the place where he belongs. Especially for a show that’s on some level about loneliness, that’s an important development.
“Also, this show is about fathers and daughters, and Katie was definitely not psyched about Greg landing in her world at first,” the co-creator continues. “But now she’s gotten to a place where she can say, ‘Hey, I don’t mind you staying in my world.’ That’s wish-fulfillment for Matt and me, because we both have daughters that are about Katie’s age who are excited for us to not be super-involved in their lives!”
No villains allowed
Lawerence’s shows rarely feature traditional villains, but Phil Dunster‘s Archie — Katie’s ex and Ludlow’s resident Russian literature expert — could certainly be described as a bad guy. After blowing up his marriage by sleeping with now-pregnant grad student Sunny (Lauren Tsai), the finale finds him also blowing up that relationship in the hopes of rekindling things with Katie. But she ultimately declines to take him back, and with Sunny also decamping for Wisconsin, Archie is deservedly left alone and adrift as the season comes to an end.
“I promised Phil that if he would play this reprehensible character, he’d have a journey on this show — but not until he completely bottomed out,” Lawrence says of what’s ahead for his Ted Lasso collaborator in Season 2. “He’s on his way, but he’s not there yet. He’s still this narcissistic guy who thinks he’s going to fix everything.”
Speaking of character journeys, Rooster‘s creators are currently in the midst of deciding what Greg’s will look like in the show’s sophomore year. “He started off as a guy who is talented at what he does, but doesn’t really believe he belongs anywhere,” says Tarses. “Now he’s in a place where he’s made an impact on people and they’ve made an impact on him. So he’s solved that problem — what we’re discussing right now is how to give him a new problem.”
“Steve played one angle of the character in Season 1,” echoes Lawrence. “But now he’ll be returning to campus as more of a conquering hero, and something we’ve been talking about in the writers room is him realizing what he’s signed up for — both professionally and personally.”
