Entertainment
‘Rooster’ Creators Unpack Those Season 1 Finale Wins for Greg and Katie and Tease ‘Some Serious Conflict’ Ahead
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.
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movies
Obama Relives Tan Suit Debacle In ‘Life, Larry & Pursuit of Unhappiness’
As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.
On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.
Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”
“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”
“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”
As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”
“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”
Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.
David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”
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movies
Matthew McConaughey Performs “Quill” From ‘Rivals of Amziah King’ — Watch
Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.
On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.
Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.
Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.
Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.
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movies
Jane Schoenbrun On Tackling “Toxic Soup” Of Slasher Genre In ‘Camp Miasma’
With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.
The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.
“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”
In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.
Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.
“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”
Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.
DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.”
JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.
SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”
DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you?
SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be.

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie.
SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.
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