Note: This story contains spoilers from “Rooster” Season 1, Episode 3.
“Rooster” threw a curve ball at Danielle Deadwyler’s Dylan in Episode 3, when Alan Ruck’s Dean Riggs suffers from an abrupt heart attack in front of her, making her the de facto interim dean of faculty.
“I was shocked,” Deadwyler told TheWrap of the shakeup. “Dylan’s navigating, calling in things and handling them well … [she’s] really stepping into what she says she wants to do, or is alluding to underneath the bones of it all.”
As Dylan expands her purview to oversee strategic decisions for the college, Deadwyler recalls discussing Dylan’s reluctance for moving into the leadership position and “taking the reins of influence” with Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, explaining that audiences see her grapple with it throughout the season.
“We see that in the way that she’s navigating the guys and students and just the campus in general,” Deadwyler said. “She’s learning to take control, and she wants to do well professionally, but we’re wondering about the personal side too.”
On that personal side is her new friendship with Steve Carell’s Greg Russo, who has done everything to get on Dylan’s bad side, from taking her friend’s job to rejecting her advances in the series premiere. Their will-they-won’t-they is in the quintessential nature of a show like “Rooster,” according to Deadwyler, who also applauded the pair’s somewhat unusual friendship.
“It is beautiful to see people build friendship, to find kinship in someone that they are unexpectedly brought to,” Deadwyler said. “This is the kind of environment where those things happen. You never know what’s in the sauce of a small college — there are people coming from all kinds of places and spaces, and to allow yourself to have that kind of surprise is what’s exciting.”
“Rooster” brings Deadwyler back into the world of comedy after more recently shifting her attention to dramas, with the actress joking, “It’s been a minute, ain’t it!”
“I just think it’s important to balance,” she said. “As an actor, you should be able to do many things — multidisciplinary, baby, let’s roll — and when this came up, it was in the vein of the things that I wanted to do: something smart, something grounded and still heartwarming and yet a little raw.”
Beyond the story on the page, Deadwyler was attracted by the great ensemble, made up by Carell, Charly Clive, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley and Lauren Tsai, saying, “that’s the biggest connectivity — you saw these people on the page.”
“That is why you want to do this kind of work, because you want to work with folks who are deeply invested,” she said. “The audition for me was like a workshop process, and it was great to do it with Steve, because Steve wanted to work it again and again and again, so then you’re crafting before you even set foot on the stage. That’s the joy of this kind of stuff. It’s all about people.”
“Rooster” airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
