Note: This story contains spoilers from “Rooster” Season 1, Episode 5
When Bill Lawrence first reached out to Connie Britton for a guest spot in his new HBO comedy, “Rooster,” Britton recalled he started the message by saying, “In case you didn’t know, I’m kind of a big deal now.”
“I was like, ‘You dumb, dumb. What are you doing?’” Britton recalled to TheWrap, before Lawrence cut to the chase with a request for her to guest star as the ex-wife of Steve Carell’s Greg Russo. “It was literally like, ‘can you come do this tomorrow?’”
While the last-minute request made it clear someone had fallen out of the role, Britton was available for the quick shoot down the street at the Warner Bros. lot and was eager to team back up with Lawrence 30 years after working together on “Spin City,” as well as to work with Carell. “I thought, I’m gonna just jump in, even though I have no idea what this is,” Britton said.
The quick turnaround meant Britton was absorbing her character, Elizabeth — the ex-wife of Carell’s Steve and mother of Charly Clive’s Katie, who visits the college — on the job during and in between scenes. “The way Bill works is so conducive to just discovery and so that was very relieving for me, because I was kind of coming in, like … ‘Where are we? Who are you? Who am I?’” Britton said.
“We were given so much freedom to discover who our characters are in the moment, that helped for us to create the relationships that we could then say, ‘Oh, so this is what our relationship was for 20 years,’” Britton said, noting that once she watched the first two episodes of “Rooster” at the NYC premiere she started to piece together more of the background. “I was on a need-to-know basis.”
Nevertheless, Britton called the experience of working on the college-set comedy “joyous,” in part due to the challenge of playing a character that was a bit out-of-the-box from the maternal characters Britton typically finds herself playing, explaining, “she’s not the kind of warm, fuzzy mom that I’ll sometimes be mistaken for.”
“Whenever I play any character, a particularly character like that, I’m always trying to play it from the inside out, so that … I don’t have any judgment over her,” Britton said. “I’m always thinking, ‘Well, why is she behaving this way? Who does she want to be? How does she want to put herself out into the world? Who does she want to be in this relationship? Who does she want to be as a mother?Who does she want to be as an ex-wife?”
While it’s clear Greg is still working through getting over their relationship, Elizabeth might be farther along in the process, with Britton noting that the separation has enabled her to enjoy “this person that she always enjoyed, and in fact, fell in love with, and maybe still has a flame for you know, but … safely enough away from him that she doesn’t have to feel bad about it all the time.”
“I definitely played it that she really does care for him, and I tried to really play into the things that worked so well in their relationship,” Britton said. “She was always just enamored with him, and found him to be so much fun … but she’s also very driven and very ambitious, and it was hard for them to find a path in that way.”
Elizabeth finds herself in a tough position during the trip, both when Greg brings up her infidelity in a conversation with Dylan (Danielle Deadwyler), and again when she sees that Greg has held onto a photo from their Italian vacation, a moment that Britton said hits Elizabeth hard, saying “the holding on that he’s doing is still painful.”
“It was fun throughout the episodes … uncovering her vulnerability and finding how she covers that up with her success and who she is in the world, but as we all are, she also has vulnerability,” Britton said. “A lot of the humor around the character is that she’s not vulnerable, and that she’s very self-involved … but when I’m presented with a character like that, and immediately I’m thinking … ‘Where are the cracks?’”
That vulnerability comes through when Elizabeth encourages Katie to be selfish and go after what she wants, while admitting it hasn’t always worked out the best for her. “I loved the idea of a mother telling her daughter to be selfish and unapologetic … even acknowledging, it doesn’t work for me all the time,” Britton said. “That’s a very interesting dynamic that we don’t see every day as women, and so that was really fun to play with, and really fun to see handled … where it has dimension to it.”
While Britton teased that Elizabeth will be back in a future episode, she said she’s all in on returning should “Rooster” continue at HBO, saying “it’s fun to work with people who have really hit their stride,” referring to Carell, Lawrence and co-creator Matt Tarses.
Next up for Britton is shooting the Hulu mystery series “Phony” alongside Sam Nivola before heading back into the world of “Overcompensating” for its second season, extending her time in the comedy space.
“I grew up on comedy. Especially in the world now, it’s really all I watch … comedy is one of the best ways that we can know ourselves as human beings,” Britton said. “Comedy that’s well done is my favorite genre, because we can see our deepest sadness through the best comedy, as well as our greatest joys and victories.”
She continued: “People say, ‘Well, do you prefer comedy or drama?’ I always say I prefer both at the same time.’ And so now that I’m getting the great opportunity to play in these incredible comedies, I’m gonna always make sure that there’s that drama right underneath.”
