Author: Paige Phelan

April 12, 2015 10:00pm PT by Paige Phelan

 Frank Ockenfels/FOX

The “Alive in Tucson” gang are faced with another shocking reveal and THR caught up with an actress behind it all.

[Warning: The story contains spoilers from Sunday’s back-to-back episodes of Last Man on Earth, “The Do-Over” and “Pranks for Nothin.’”]

And then there were two — more that is.

The life of former Last Man on Earth Phil Miller (Will Forte) got just a little bit more crowded, as Sunday’s episodes saw two more survivors — Gail (Mary Steenburgen) and Erica (Cleopatra Coleman) — join the ever-growing “Alive in Tucson” gang and complicate things even further.

As Phil’s frustrations with wife Carol (Kristen Schaal) as well as Melissa (January Jones) and Todd’s (Mel Rodriguez) relationship reached an all-time high, Gail and Erica’s arrivals were seen as a godsend. Seeing an opportunity, Phil lied to the new pair about the other survivors to hopefully sleep with get a “do-over” with them.

Needless to say, when the rest of the survivors found out, everything went to pot, as Phil realized that he’s a horrible liar and Carol finally divorced him.

With the world of the show continuing to expand and grow, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with new group member and 2015 guest-star extraordinaire Steenburgen (Justified) to talk Gail, keeping secrets, and what’s next for the group.

After the blowup with Phil, Carol had quite a few harsh words for your characters. Do you think that was fair, given that he was the one who lied? Will she ever forgive them and move forward or will that always be a source of tension?

Kristen’s character had Phil all to herself at one point and then had share him with Melissa in some ways and then we come along, which is probably more than she can take. It was probably just her frustration and the reaction to more invaders on her world and her marriage. So, she changes a little bit in her attitude towards us but I don’t think it’s ever, by the end of this year, fully settled. The jury’s still a little bit out as far as she’s concerned.

Now that Gail and Erica have joined the other survivor’s how will they fit in with the group going forward?

I don’t have all the answers to that because I [only] did five [episodes] so we were still a fairly new part of that world, even at the end of it. [For season two], there’s going to be lots of discussion about where these characters evolve and where they go. I know a few ideas they have for my character and they were very interesting and very out-of-the-box thinking and are quite different than what I started out as.

See more Broadcast TV’s Returning Shows 2015-16

There was a lot of innuendo surrounding your character’s relationship with Erica. How much will we learn about that relationship and see it develop as the show goes on?

There’s definitely other references to it. They didn’t know anyone existed but each other so that was part of that but they genuinely like each other and, as buddies who have been through all types of stuff together (laughs), they each will have their own unique reactions to this new world that they enter.

You’ve guest starred on quite a few shows with strong comedic voices behind them, including Togetherness and Curb Your Enthusiasm. What was the biggest difference in working with the Last Man on Earth team?

With Will, there’s the added component of the fact that he’s doing the scenes with you, which was true with Larry [David] too, so it’s not just the comedic voice but it’s also the actor that you’re working standing in front you. There are some things that are very alive about that. Will is not at all precious about any preconceived ideas he had or any script he had been heavily involved in writing, so he’ll play with that and jump off from that and improvise off that. Of course, Curb was fully improvised, there wasn’t any script. [For] Last Man on Earth, I loved the read through days because the scripts were so much fun and Will just keeps mining them for humor and finding little moments and encouraging us to do the same.

You were also on FX’s Justified this year. What’s the biggest difference in working on a show that’s just ending compared to a show like Last Man which is just getting started?

Justified was such a specific thing because it not only had been going all this time and the actors have been living in these characters for five years before I came on, but it was also in the voice Elmore Leonard originally, who was even part of the show before he passed away. It was like, going to stay in a house that was completely decorated and absolutely fantastic and where you have a good time and go play as opposed to walking into a fairly empty house that you pull together yourself. I’ve clearly been watching too much HGTV (laughs). Whenever we start a new TV series, there’s also a lot of question marks and part of that is finding who you are. There is a wonderful improvisational light to it that I really enjoyed as well.

The show has been picked up for season two. What was your reaction to knowing that you’d be back for another year?

By the time we did the last episode, there was an incredible camaraderie among us. [We had a] really insane email chain that went on for many hours when they announced [season two]. It just got more and more demented. We’re all excited to be a part of something so exciting and unique. Even the show is very different from any other show I’ve been on with the lack of electricity, and our world in Tucson, and this set, the collaborations with everyone, whether it’s the art department or production designers, everybody went wild with their own imaginations. I [have] the best time being part of all that.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Excited to see more of Gail and Erica? Sound off in the comments below. Last Man on Earth airs Sundays at 9pm on Fox.

April 12, 2015 8:00pm PT by Paige Phelan

 Courtesy of HBO

THR caught up with the HBO political comedy’s creator Armando Iannucci to discuss the premiere and what viewers can look forward to this season.

[Editor’s note: This interview was conducted before news of series creator Armando Iannucci‘s departure.] 

Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is back and better (and more presidential) than ever.

Along with medieval battles and tech geeks, the politicos of HBO’s caustic satire Veep, returned Sunday with the show’s fourth season premiere, which found Selina Meyer occupying a new office — one shaped a bit like an Oval.

The season premiere found the newly minted commander-in-chief prepping for her first State of the Union address. However, in typical Veep fashion, everything hit the fan behind the scenes. Amongst the blunders? A teleprompter that stopped working, wrong drafts of the speech being read and Selina promising to increase military spending on that very initiative she was trying to cut.

It’s a less than fortuitous start for the new POTUS, but is it only a preview of what’s to come? Can Selina rise above and be a good president while still trying to run a campaign? The Hollywood Reporter talked with series creator Armando Iannucci to get all the answers on what to expect in season four.

In the premiere, Selina was again let down by members of her staff at the State of the Union address. Is it possible for her to be a good president if she’s being undermined by the competency of her staff?

She makes an announcement that she doesn’t expect to make that brings her applause and will probably improve her poll ratings by accident. What you find about this is that everything that you think of as being a deciding moment of someone’s presidency, if you really examine what went on behind the scenes, you’ll realize how last-minute it was, how shambolic it was, how panicky it was. It’s based on a story about Bill Clinton’s first State of the Union address when they put the wrong draft of the speech in and it came up on the teleprompter, so he improvised for 10 minutes and it as the best 10 minutes of the whole evening. What might look terrible when you see it close up, can also look fine when it’s watched at home on TV news.

With so many mistakes and mix-ups by the members of the staff, is everyone capable enough to work for a president? Who would you say is the most competent and ready for the job?

Someone like Ben (Kevin Dunn), the chief of staff who gives of an air of being worn down, mentally pummeled by the job, but is someone who knows how to fix things. He knows when to threaten people, how knows how to shut things down, knows how to advise. He’s seen it all and therefore he has a plan for every eventuality, even if he doesn’t give the air of someone who has a plan.

The episode we saw some familiar faces but also saw a few new ones, including Patton Oswalt. How will this transition to the Oval Office expand the world and characters in it?

People come and go much more frequently. We actually see faces and you don’t know how long they are going to last, but it’s come as an opportunity to bring quite a few people in across the whole season. We love opening the world. Part of my plan season to season is to open the horizons further and make the world a bit bigger. What we haven’t seen yet is money and the whole lobbying industry and that comes under the microscope in a big, big way.

Speaking of guests, how did you lure Hugh Laurie (House) back to TV?

We wanted a major new character of his particular type for the show. I heard, through the grapevine, that he was a great fan of the show. We connected in the U.K. — the writers are all based in the U.K. — so we met for lunch, chatted with writers and we worked out the character and the storyline. It worked out really well and he was a delight to work with. He has a significant impact on the show when he arrives. 

Any hints at who his character is?

He’s a big hitter, a big figure who vacated the public stage for about three or four years and is now back and when Selina is compared to him, Selina might find him a bit overshadowing because he’s a good operator. He presents Selina — who’s feeling vulnerable as she closes in on the election — with different options, but also difficulties as well.

Your previous series The Thick of It ran for four seasons in the U.K. Now that you’ve reached that same point, how long do you see Veep running?

As long as we can keep reinventing it. Look at season one, she was very much a powerless, marginalized figure and then we gradually brought her closer to the central power, and then we made her campaign, and then we made her president. We’re constantly refreshing her and we can keep refreshing her dynamic within the show — well, obviously, constitutionally there’s a limit unless you slowed down time, she can only be president for so long. Any comedy writer or showrunner will tell you they’ll feel there’s a natural cycle and natural life to their show. Right now we’re very happy. There is certainly more room for this show to explore new areas without putting any definitive limits on it. There’s still loads of work to be done with this presidency.

Veep is one of a handful of political-themed shows on the air right now. Do you watch any of the other ones? Where doe you see Veep’s place in the TV political world?

I dip in and out of [them] but I really never want to be affected by what the other shows are like. We went into [Veep] thinking, up until then, that the portrayal of Washington had either been really melodramatic in the dark arts and corruption or heroic and noble and the president is also a qualified jet pilot who can defend America from an alien invasion. (Laughs). I wanted to do something that was closer to the reality of it, the every day — sometimes exciting and sometimes humdrum and tedious. That was my starting point. I tried to get some sense of the details of the day and the authenticity of it, not to be making a statement in terms of tone, and whether you should be feeling this noble or this is corrupt. [Instead], I just let it feel like the everyday, [and allow you] put yourself in that position and ask yourself whether under the circumstances, would you do the same.

What can you say about the rest of the season?

There’s a trip to Iran! Also, little things that happen in the first three episodes will come back to dominate the second half of the season.

Thoughts on the premiere? Excited for Hugh Laurie to come back to TV? Sound off in the comments below. Veep airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.

April 10, 2015 2:15pm PT by Paige Phelan

 Patrick Harbron

Armando Iannucci talks with THR about what fans can expect from the new season of the HBO comedy.

[Editor’s note: This interview was conducted before news of series creator Armando Iannucci‘s departure.] 

Veep‘s Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is the most powerful person in the country — for now at least.

Veep, HBO’s biting political comedy, returns for its fourth season Sunday to find the stakes have been raised even higher for Selina Meyer — namely, she’s now the first female president of the U.S.

At the end of last season, characters and viewers alike were shocked when the former president stepped down to aid his ailing wife, catapulting a struggling Selina into the position she’s been gunning for her entire life. Of course, her sweet, sweet victory was short-lived as public opinion numbers nose-dived and her campaign lagged.

As the former vice president is set to start her new season legacy in the Oval Office — and hopefully try to outlast America’s shortest-serving president, William Henry Harrison, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Veep creator Armando Iannucci to discuss what viewers can expect from his new leader of the free world.

So the big reveal last season was that the veep was suddenly going to be POTUS. Was that something you had always planned?

It wasn’t always the plan, but I don’t have a grand plan. I didn’t enter season one with a big map of where we would be by season 12. In the same way that each script evolves as we go into the process of making, there’s the season and overall story arc that evolved as we went on. As we went into season three, I thought, given that we were in an election campaign, given that there was this moment, and what’s going to happen, at some point, why not [shock] everyone by bringing it forward sooner than everyone expected? And also it’s putting pressure on us to keep redefining the environment that she’s in.

How has this huge transition affected the show? Did it change anything about how you approached writing this season compared to ones previous?

This season it was about preserving the basic DNA of the show. It should always feel like the show and you should always feel like it’s an episode of that show that you’ve been watching — it shouldn’t feel like tone has completely changed — but we just needed to make sure that now her actions have enormous consequence nationally and internationally. There’s a lot more pressure on her and we felt that her status has changed. People are going to behave differently to her even though they know her really well. They’re going to have to curtail how they talk to her. They can’t talk to her the way they used to talk to her unless she gives them permission. But other people, they’re going to be a bit nervous, or a bit excited in her presence, so that’s important. Some of her opponents are going to have to be a little bit more diplomatic with her.

How will we see Selina deal with this enormous amount of power she now has? Will it go to her head? Will it corrupt her?

As we enter the season, she relishes the new power. Who wouldn’t? It’s not like she has gotten a bigger opportunity to affect change. I wouldn’t say she’s corrupted by it. She’s not a corrupt person. She has a set of moral principles she wants to adhere to, a set of beliefs. But what you’ll see is her working out what the limitations are of that power, the frustrations. I think you can be a prisoner of the office as well as be liberated by being president. Also, it’s the dynamic of working as president [and having] election be only eight months away. That is her essential dilemma. The fact that she’s behind in the opinion polls and yet is the most powerful person in the country is a contradiction she has to live. So there must be in the back of her mind, something telling her that, “The decisions I make, they may be good for the country but are they bad for me. What do I do about that?” So that’s something we will watch as the season progresses.

Of course, being president is all Selina has wanted since the first season. What would the Selina of season one think of where she is now? Will it live up to her expectations or ultimately end up underwhelming?

I don’t think it’s underwhelming. In her head, this has come as no surprise. The more we’ve got to know Selina, the more we felt that she herself felt she was entitled to this job. There was one scene we shot in season three, the line we ended up cutting, where she does end up saying to Ben, “It’s my turn, isn’t it?” This is when she was complaining how there are others campaigning against her, Danny Chung and so on, and she says, “But it was my turn.” And [Ben] said, “Yeah, but you can’t really put that on a poster. You can’t make that your campaign slogan.” (Laughs.) But I think there is a sense that she feels that this is the most natural transition in the world. She is not surprised that she is where she is.

Her team has also made this transition with her. How have the stakes also risen for them?

Well, several things. We worked out that because she’s president, they’ve all [turned] into Jonah in a way, in that he’s always going on about and defines himself by working in the West Wing and now you find that Dan (Reid Scott) and Mike (Matt Walsh) and Amy (Anna Chlumsky) are doing that as well. They get their sense of who they are from the fact that they work for the president, and they can’t help but tell people and remind people of that all the time. So that enhances their [identity] in a very Jonah-esque way.

The other thing you find is that when somebody becomes president, a relationship that may seem very solid with staff for many years prior to that, suddenly becomes much more fluid. When Bill Clinton became president, various people who campaigned with him and had been with him since his Arkansas days, he just thought they weren’t up to [the level] of working for the president. As the season progresses, you will get the sense that no one is safe. There’s a vulnerability and an unpredictably as to who is going to rise to the occasion and who isn’t. It gives us something else to play with.

You mentioned vulnerability and this idea that no one is safe. Who’s at the greatest risk going into the season? Who’s the most likely to have, if not a heart attack, a potential breakdown from the pressure?

The most vulnerable people are the people with the highest profile because they’re the most exposed. In the press, let’s say, anyone who has a public persona or a public profile could potentially harm the president. Ben (Kevin Dunn), the chief of staff, Amy, the campaign manager, or Mike, the press secretary — they’re all high-profile. The other thing you find as the president is that president has to be protected at all times. So if the president makes a mistake, it’s not eventually the president’s fault. The president cannot be blamed or take the blame. Somebody has to be that guy. The last four or five presidents, [you’ll find,] have always lost close allies and associates as a way of preserving themselves. I’m not saying all of those are going to happen, but all those elements are possible. There’s so much at stake there.

Excited for the return of Veep? Curious about Selina’s presidency? Have a favorite line or Jonah insult? Hit the comments below with your thoughts.

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