Note: This story contains spoilers from “Rooster” Season 1, Episode 8.
Over the course of “Rooster’s” weekly airings on HBO, co-showrunners Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses have been hearing from impatient fans ready for Charly Clive’s Katie to get over Phil Dunster’s Archie. Luckily for those viewers, the Season 1 finale sees Katie shut the door on her marriage with Archie once and for all.
“It wasn’t fast enough for the internet,” Lawrence joked, noting that the entirety of Season 1 takes place within about a month. “Everyone was like, ‘why can’t these women move past this asshole guy?’ … I feel like, often, it takes people longer than a month.”
It’s certainly shorter than the time it took for Steve Carell’s Greg to get over his ex-wife, Beth (Connie Britton), who nearly opens up that wound again with an advance that Greg has enough restraint to turn down (more on that below).
“They’re very similar — he’s just for a little bit further along in that process, and and he’s had some growth, and they both had some growth,” Tarses told TheWrap. “By the end of it, she seems like she’s …. doing [it] a little faster and a little and a little better, and then we’re going to play that out in the next season … she’s going to have new problems, but it’s maybe not going to be as much about Archie.”
One of those conflict areas will likely continue to be setting boundaries within her relationship with her father Greg after giving him permission to stay on as a professor at Ludlow — a victory that Tarses calls “wish fulfillment” for himself, Lawrence and Carell, who all have daughters between the ages of 23-25.
“We knew that the end victory of …. at least the first season, was a father backing out and the reveal that you know now — that he’s been kind of making all these little decisions for his daughter and doing things for her behind her back, and backing out and letting her make her own decisions in her life, and her being not only grateful for it, but the second she realized that’s who he is, and maybe letting him stay around in her life a little bit,” Lawrence said.
The whole family will be on campus next semester, as Britton’s Beth kicks off the transition into taking over as president from John C. McGinley’s Walt, a storyline that “evolved quicker” due to how great Britton is. Britton won’t be bumping up to a series regular in Season 2, but will be around “a lot” next season, per the showrunners.
“Next semester, spring semester, will be Walt and Greg’s swan song together, because she’ll just be kind of transitioning in,” Lawrence said. “But [I] always thought that that kind of, ‘I think I finally found a place that was my world and my community and my people, and in some ways, I’m in danger of being right back where I started,’ was an interesting thing to do for Greg.”
Beyond helping Walt navigate the transition, the creators teased “some serious conflict” and “some body blows and introspection” for Greg after feeling like the big man on campus. “It’s not going to be as easy a ride as he would think and hope,” Lawrence said.
Below, Lawrence and Tarses unpack the end of Season 1 and what’s ahead below.
TheWrap: We saw Katie go through a lot this season, but she finally seems to find some peace by the finale. Can you talk a bit about her journey and what you envision for her next season?
Lawrence: We had Katie realize that she had kind of defined herself, which is a very youthful thing, as Archie’s wife … a lot of the shows about loneliness, in some ways, but … she said she’d didn’t have a lot of other friends, she met him a couple of weeks after she got to that school. And when we meet her, to everybody in campus, she’s just the poor woman that got cheated on. For her to start a second year as an independent person that has to kind of make their own way — it’s not a spoiler, but for us, that relationship and that part of her life is completely behind her, and so she gets to kind of figure out who she wants to be as an adult now on her own, which is something we’re excited about, especially with Charly, she’s such a good actress.
Tarses: The same way Steve has sort of spent that first season building a community, I think she’ll have a little bit of a chance to do that on her own. We’ll meet some new people and we’ll watch as her world grows.
We’ve only gotten to see Connie’s character in small bites. What are you excited to explore with her?
Lawrence: Connie and I …. “Spin City” was kind of both of our first big things. She had done “The Brothers McMullen” and I had written on shows, but never my own show. She’s such a skilled comedian now. The hassle for this show is the regulars are all amazing, but then we brought in this kind of outside cast of characters that we want to serve as all of them. It’s Connie and it’s Alan Ruck, and it’s Maximo [Salas] who plays Tommy, and Annie Mumolo, who plays Cristle and Rory Scoville and Robby Hoffman and all these kids, Scott MacArthur from “Running Point,” who plays the very troubled hockey coach. So for us, part of the fun of this show is this just a world of characters in this kind of fishbowl world — Connie being now firmly one of them, and we just want to keep doing as much as we can for all of us. We’re going to use Connie as much as she’s open to.
There’s a moment where Beth nearly crosses the line with Greg in the finale. Is their remaining relationship something you want to keep exploring or are you content leaving it there?
Tarses: We liked that Greg had sort of gotten the strength over the course of the season to push her away when she made the advance. For us, it wasn’t her falling back in love with Greg, it was sort of about a control thing or a power dynamic. I think they’re going to be friends. We’re not setting up this idea that they’re going to end up back together. No, I think we’re setting up that he’s growing …
Lawrence: The idea was if she had done that at the beginning of the year, he would have kissed her back, and at the end of the year, he found kind of a strength and community and self-worth [that] he was able to say no.
Greg had a couple fires in the flames, but Dylan says she’s glad they didn’t sleep together. Does that comment completely close the door on something with Dylan?
Lawrence: Obviously we put easter eggs and stuff in and but I’m always interested in exploring friendship between characters, because then, if there is anything romantic, it’s even got more stakes to it. I always just say one of the fun things about this show is the slow play of it — these characters connected, but they’ve really only known each other for a month. Part of the fun is to see where the second season starts, and how much deeper these relationships are.
What else are you hoping to explore in Danielle’s character?
Lawrence: She’s so good. We looked at her professional stuff last year, but really unpacking her personal life, because we’ve set up a lot of easter eggs we plan to kind of explore this year. One is, when you talk about professors coming back and stuff and the people who make an appearance, I remember the first year she said, “I said, ‘I love you’ to one person, but then I took it back.” I think would be criminal when she’s so good, if we didn’t see who that person was, especially at the small college.
Tarses: That’s a pretty big spoiler.
We still have Archie and Sunny in the mix, but they’re a bit separate with Archie and Katie split up. Will they still be in the main cast?
Lawrence: All these guys are still regulars. I think a lot of people are like when are these two women going to move on past this narcissistic asshole, and for us, the end of the show being just that is super, super healthy, and then being able to explore those two female characters in terms of who they want to be and not who they are relationship to some dude, I think that’s part of the fun. And then Phil, we told him from the start that he’s going to be a reprehensible character, but that we can’t kind of have him have any self-awareness or be looking to change who he is until he truly bottoms out. My opinion as a writer is that he’s close, but he’s not there yet, but he’s very close.
Tarses: His relationship with both of them will will change. They’re all still on the show …. and it’s a tiny little world. So they’re going to see each other all the time. We certainly don’t want to repeat ourselves, so … that relationship will start to evolve as he starts to kind of gain some of that self-awareness, and I could see that begin to happen in the next season.
Where are you at in Season 2 prep? Are you targeting an annual release schedule?
Lawrence: Yeah, it’s really important to our partners at HBO and stuff that this show is — because we’re already into the writing season — [that] this show is on without too big a gap in between seasons. Definitely within a year, if not less.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Rooster” Season 1 is now streaming on HBO Max.
