Author: Paige Phelan

April 26, 2015 8:00pm PT by Paige Phelan

 Paul Schiraldi

“Dan’s not going to be happy until he successfully runs for Senate and is assassinated,” the actor told THR, while chatting about his ruthless character’s path this season.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the Sunday, April 26 episode of Veep, “Data”]

Well, that was fast.

Sunday’s latest episode of the HBO’s witty political satire Veep found Selina Meyer’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) burgeoning administration already embroiled in a serious, federal-crime-involving scandal that even Olivia Pope would have trouble fixing. As a result, a head needed to roll (thankfully, in this D.C., that’s metaphorical.)

While plugging her new Families First bill, Selina accidentally outed a young girl with HIV after a data breach revealed personal information and medical records from her constituents. Amongst the misuses of this stolen government data? A kid-oriented direct mail campaign targeted at recently bereaved parents.

After a low-level staff firing failed to gain appease the masses and potential scape goats were named, it was Dan Egan (Reid Scott) who ended up on the chopping block.

The actor’s first reaction? “[Luckily] it wasn’t a moment of, ‘Oh my god, am I leaving the show?’ because [series creator Armando Iannucci] told me, ‘Look, trust me, you’re not going anywhere,” Scott said of his character’s big change. “This gives us the opportunity to explore a different side of DC that we haven’t seen yet.”

What might that different side be? The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Scott to discuss that, egos, and his Jonah (Timothy C. Simons) curse.

Dan has always been this hyper-ambitious go-getter and this year he’s made it to the White House. What would season one Dan think of where he is now? Is working for a president everything he’s hoped?

Yes and no. Dan’s a guy that’s just perpetually unsatisfied with his status, with whatever power — however limited — he can wield at the time. He’s very pleased with himself and thinks this is where he should be right now, but somehow he always has his sights set higher. I used to joke with the writers and the producers that Dan’s not going to be happy until he successfully runs for Senate and is assassinated.

Barely into its first term and this administration is already embroiled in a huge scandal. Can this group of people actually succeed at this level?

Some of them can. Kent, because he lacks any sort of human emotion, is appropriately robotic for that position. Also, Kevin Dunn’s character [Ben] is pretty well equipped. This is third administration that he’s been through, so he’s an old pro. Those two guys strike me as ‘been there, done that, seen it all.’ Everyone else is floundering. You have these people that think they’re cut out to be doing this, but if you really peel away all the bravado, they’re all horrible at their jobs.

Of course, the big twist this episode was that Dan was fired resigned in disgrace. What was your reaction when you first read that scene? Ben gives Dan quite a few choices words.

I was really excited by it. Kevin and I have gotten to be really good friends and one of the things we’ve always wanted to do is go toe-to-toe. [We’ve] always said that our characters — Ben and Dan — while there is some mutual respect there, which we see a little bit at the end of season three, they may be cut from the same cloth, but they certainly don’t like each other. So, we were just chomping at the bit to do that scene that day and we had a blast doing it.

Now Dan’s not only jobless, but he’s also become a D.C. pariah of sorts. How will he deal with his newfound unemployment? Is this worse than last year’s mental breakdown?

[With] the mental breakdown, he had to realize that he couldn’t do it all. He realized that he wasn’t the superman that he thought he was and it certainly was a huge blow to his ego. This is different. His talents got him in this position and he understands how the game is played. He’s not happy that it has to be him, but in Dan’s twisted little mind he sees it as ‘You’re firing me because you’re taking down the quarterback, you’re taking down the most talented guy on the team because that’s what you have to do.’ Obviously that’s a big hurdle to get over in D.C. because, once you’re out, you’re pretty much out, but he wears it with a certain bit of pride.

Will Dan try to clear his name at all or is he just going to keep moving forward? Where does he go from here?

Dan’s a pro and he realizes that the one thing you don’t want to do is besmirch the administration that you just left. He leaves and, while he’s not happy about it, he does it the way it’s supposed to be done — bites his tongue, puts his tail between his legs, and quietly exits stage left. In D.C., if you bite the hand that has ever fed you, you’re just done. It’s all just living the price of another day. Some great blast from the past characters come back to come to Dan’s aid.

Is it possible that Dan will be working alongside future guest star Hugh Laurie?

No, not exactly. When everyone sees it, they’re going to be like, “Oh, God, of course, this is where Dan goes.”

One of the great antagonistic relationships on this show is between Dan and Jonah. Now that Dan is basically where Jonah was last season, how will we see that relationship evolve?

Dan ends up in a position where he’s almost forced to deal with Jonah again and again and again. That relationship is just so funny and now with the addition of Sam Richardson’s character [Richard], the three of them have just some amazing moments together throughout the season. Dan can’t seem to shake Jonah. That’s just his curse. I don’t know what he did in a past life to deserve that, but Jonah and Ryan just won’t go away.

Dan has a line in this episode about how much of a jerk he can be, but he’s still likeable. How important was it for you to make him more than just a jerk? Is it important?

To a certain extent. You don’t want to pull his teeth out so much and not go as far as the character would, but it’s something we actually talked about from the beginning: How do you make a likeable asshole? I don’t know. One of the great things on the show is that just when someone is beaming with pride and ego, you cut them down a little bit and just when they’re at the lowest depths, they somehow get a little boost. It’s all about keeping them human and keeping them honest.

With everyone on this show being at least a little bit of an asshole, where do you think Dan stands on the Veep spectrum of assholes?

He’s a triple-AAA, top class asshole. He might be right under Selina. She plays the game better than anybody, and, at the end of the day, they’re all horrible people. Mike is so endearing, Mike might be the only non-asshole in the bunch and it’s just because he doesn’t know how to be [one]. But Dan aspires to be that player, that D.C. mover and shaker, that horrible asshole. He’s been working on it a very long time.

Theories on where Dan goes from here? Shocked he was the fall guy? Sound off in the comments below!

Veep airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.

April 26, 2015 7:00pm PT by Paige Phelan

 Jordin Althaus/FOX

“We’re starting to see possibly a chink in his good guy armor,” the actor tells THR about the show’s latest twist.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the April 26 episode of Last Man on Earth, “The Tandyman Can.”]

Tucson, we have a (new) Phil Miller problem.

After roaring heroically onto the scene in last week’s episode of the breakout Fox comedy, the handsome new Phil Miller (Boris Kodjoe) continued his streak of occasionally-shirtless perfection this week — fixing up appliances, building things, and even rigging up a hot shower much to the satisfaction of the show’s female characters, especially Carol (Kristen Schaal).

Less satisfied with the most recent addition to the “Alive in Tucson” gang? The group’s other two men, Phil Miller Tandy (Will Forte) and Todd (Mel Rodriguez). While the resentment is pretty much par for the course for Phil/Tandy, it’s a 180-degree turn of events for Rodriguez’s normally happy Todd. Fueled by jealousy and doubt, he ended his suddenly rocky relationship with Melissa (January Jones).

“We’re starting to see possibly a chink in his good guy armor,” said Rodriguez. “Everything was cool when it was me and Phil and the girls, but then this dude shows up. It’s going to add some stress and Todd [doesn’t] handle stress well.”

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Rodriguez, who has been making the comedy rounds with parts on Getting On, Better Call Saul, and the now-canceled Fox show Enlisted, about what’s next for Todd.

You’ve been all over TV comedies these days. What about Last Man on Earth sets it apart from the rest? What makes it unique?

Last Man is different from anything I’ve ever seen or done. Mainly, we are encased within this bubble. On some other shows, we all create [a bubble], but on this show we’re really forced to, in some capacity, only have one another and have to co-exist. You will always have that one person who would rather not be there or have other people not be there. In a day-to-day way, usually when we go on set, there’s not a ton of people there besides the crew. Sometimes it will be all this crew and just me and Will or me and January. I remember being on the soundstage and it just being really quiet. You really feel like this little thing in this vast world.

Much has been made about the twists in this show, your arrival was one of the earliest. How far in advance do you know what’s going to happen? Did they tell you upfront or do you just learn as you go along?

I did get some hints [early on] because Will and I are friends, so when we talked about doing it, he [told me] this will be the path of your character and this is what will be going on. But I didn’t know Boris was coming and I didn’t know Mary [Steenburgen] and Cleopatra [Coleman] were coming. We get these few scripts, and things will literally change on the day too. We’re on set with some of the greatest comedic writers in the world — all SNL dudes — and they are just so quick. It never feels stagnant.

After a rough patch last week, Todd let his jealousy overcome him and broke up with Melissa. Is this perhaps some shades of what he was like before the virus hit?

Coming in, we didn’t talk about [the virus] too much, I did think for myself: ‘We all had two years to ourselves post-virus. What happened?’ We’ve all been through the spectrum in some way and we’ve really gotten to see Phil’s spectrum. Todd probably had his own meltdown where he was like, putting out cigarette butts on chicken thighs and leaving dirty plates, and then decided one day, ‘I’m going to pull it together here and start tucking in my damn shirt.’ But anybody on this show is capable of anything.

Are they capable of being killers? We saw Todd and Phil/Tandy voice their desire to kill new Phil at the end of the episode.

I don’t know if we’d go that far. Maybe, if you can kill someone in a funny way. I don’t think killing is [particularly] funny, so probably not.

Now that Todd and Phil/Tandy are united by a common enemy, how will we see the relationship change between them?

We [do] have this enemy in common and Tandy is obviously very threatened by him as well. He was just about to score the world and was so close and he had it all ripped away so quickly. It’s a lot like Survivor in which people create these alliances. This definitely might lead to Phil, or Tandy now, and Todd having some new conversations and hanging out because [before] Todd was really disappointed in Tandy — I can’t say that name without laughing because it’s just so stupid. I love it so much.

Fox announced a few weeks back that the show would be coming back for a second season, a much more pleasant turn of events than last year at this time [when Rodriguez’s show Enlisted was not renewed]. What was your reaction to the news?

The first reaction is just like, “[This is] amazing and we get to do more of these [episodes] with these people!” We’re constantly laughing so hard. January and I are always cracking up and getting Mary to crack up. Mary will actually get us to crack up a lot. Then there was, “Oh great, we get to maybe cover some of this stuff that people were questioning and you hear a lot of stuff on Twitter about.” We’ll have more time to explore things. You can only do so much in 13 episodes, so we’ll have a bunch more to do and say.

Switching gears, you are also on Getting On, which HBO announced was returning for a third and final season. Is there anything you can tease about the final run? How much do you know about how it will it end?

I know nothing. [Showrunners Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer] get together and they just hide out. We get all six episodes at once and then we read them straight through on the first day, it’s almost like you’re doing a three-hour thing. I’m hoping it won’t be our final season. The girls on that are just so wonderful, I feel like it should have some more seasons to explore. I hope we get a chance, but we’ll see.

Will Todd and Tandy follow through on their promise? Did the name Tandy also make you laugh? Sound off in the comments below.

Last Man on Earth airs Sundays at 9:30 p.m. on Fox.

April 19, 2015 8:00pm PT by Paige Phelan

The actor talks with THR about co-dependency, ‘Arrested Development’ and what’s actually in Gary’s bag.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Veep’s “East Wing” episode.]

Who knew that President Selina Meyer’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) most loyal employee had that in his bag up his sleeve?

After years of doting and fulfilling her every whim, Gary [Tony Hale] finally clapped back against the new president, as Sunday’s installment of HBO’s Armando Iannucci comedy Veep saw things finally come to a head between the devoted bagman and his boss in a verbal sparring for the ages.

Assisting with decoration and planning for the POTUS’ first state dinner, Gary goes a tad overboard.

“He went all Louis XIV on it,” Hale tells The Hollywood Reporter of Gary’s antics. “He went crazy and wasted the budget. Gary, it’s not [HGTV]! In his mind, she’s the queen, so for every dinner she needs a castle, it should be top-notch.”

Of course, the lavish spending did not come without a cost, as the over-budget dinner painted the new administration as careless with the people’s money and resulted in Gary drawing the ire of his exalted boss in a blowup of epic proportions. It was a rare moment of pure drama in the heavily comedic series.

“Mistakes that we make as vice president can sometimes be hidden. It’s tougher to make mistakes in this position,” adds Hale, who won an Emmy for his role in 2013 and was nominated again last year. “This position requires Gary stepping up to the plate and Gary doesn’t step up to the plate very well.”

Here, Hale breaks down the big fight, Selina and Gary’s relationship and whether we’ll see more of his other alter-ego, Buster Bluth, on Arrested Development.

Gary has struggled a bit so far this season as Selina has ascended to the presidency. How has this shifted dynamic affected him and can he handle the pressure of working for a president?

He was pretty content being by her side as the vice president because she was second-in-command, which means he had a lot more of her attention, which is Gary’s nirvana. Now everybody in the country wants her attention, and that’s just Gary’s nightmare. Gary would much rather her hurl insults at him than have distance from him. That’s just emotional suicide.

The big scene this episode was the blowup between Selina and Gary. How long do you think he’s been keeping that in?

Selina is his queen, his everything. She has abused him and made him do things like break up with her boyfriend or dig through her trash and he happily does it. He’s never wanted to blow up with her. He’s wanted to blow up with everybody else — Dan [Reid Scott], Jonah [Timothy C. Simons], Mike [Matt Walsh], and all those guys — but never Selina because that’s blasphemy. So when she spoke up and said what she really thought of Gary — that he’s a middle-aged man who gets her — that’s news to him and [sends] him reeling. But it also brings up the fact that she has had an awareness that Gary has been there for her. But, neither one of those people should ever be in the position that they’re in. The country is in trauma.

How will this fight change their relationship going forward? Will Gary re-evaluate his position in Selina’s life?

No, [actually] they stick together a little more. There are so many things in Gary’s life that he needs to re-evaluate that he’s not even going there. There are the co-dependency issues. The fact that he’s even in a position that people tend to leave when they’re in their 20s. There are so many therapy topics that could be touched upon.

Will we dig more into Gary’s co-dependency to Selina this season and why he’s so devoted to her?

From a background standpoint, Gary [hasn’t] ever had much of an identity in a very positive light for himself, so he needs a very powerful person and attaches their identity to his identity. He has no identity. His identity is Selina Meyer. If she ever leaves the presidency, he’ll be carrying her purse to the grocery store because he doesn’t know life outside of that. That has been his existence. He goes and practices and thinks about pleasing her for the next day. He’s got versions of everything that is in that bag that he carries around.

Do you have a favorite item you’ve pulled out of that bag? What’s the most scandalous item you think he has in there?

There’s a lot secrets in that bag! Potential prescriptions and some things that might be under lock and key that Gary knows about. There’s that scene last year where she started pulling stuff out of the bag [to help a shocked and nose-bleeding Gary.] There was a book on bicycles in the bag. There was a magnifying glass, which I still can’t figure out. When stuff like that comes out [it’s like], ‘Wow, this is really painting more of a picture of Gary for me.’ He loves him some bicycles.

Do you actually have props in the bag when filming?

If something’s in the scene I’m pulling out, I obviously do, but for the most part, Gary would be mortified if he knew what Tony Hale carries in that bag. It is old script pages and empty water bottles.

Brian Grazer said that Arrested Development is coming back for another 17 episodes. Have you heard of any plans or seen any scripts? 

Honestly, I don’t really know what is specifically going on, but what I do know is whether it’s seven episodes or 17 episodes, everybody is on board. My hope is that it will happen again. I want to find out what happens with Buster because there’s a cliffhanger at the end of the [season four] and mainly because everything that has come out of [creator] Mitch Hurwitz’s mind has always surprised me. I remember throwing out ideas on set when we were shooting and saying [something like] ‘What if Buster’s on Dancing With the Stars?’ and he’s like, ‘That’s funny, but I’m thinking of having a seal bite off your hand.’ He always topped it. I get excited about just finding out about where all the chaos he’s planned.

Did you get to keep the hook hand?

I didn’t. I should have, but I didn’t. The first time around when we finished we didn’t know if we were going to be back, so no one grabbed stuff. Thinking back, I should have grabbed the hand chair, there’s a lot stuff I could have grabbed. I could have just grabbed some argyle socks!

Buster and Gary share quite a few traits. How do you see these characters as similar?

There are definitely similarities. [The scene where Gary hides from Selina] is totally like when Buster was neither seen nor heard. They both have huge mommy issues, that’s for sure, but the main difference for me is that, for instance, Buster has a difficult time just going outside on the sidewalk before he has to go back inside. And though Buster loves Lucille, I don’t think he’d ever fight for Lucille. [Whereas for] Gary, his world is Selina, and he would definitely fight for his world.

Would you say that Gary loves Selina more than Buster loves Lucille One?

Yes. Gary loves Selina definitely more, but there is an equal amount of co-dependence for both of them. They both could use a very long therapy retreat. Or they should just be committed.

Thoughts on Gary and Selina’s big moment? Excited for more Arrested Development? Sound off in the comments below. Veep airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.

Twitter: @NotPhelan