HBO’s Rooster, starring Steve Carell, Danielle Deadwyler, John C. McGinely, and more, features a cornucopia of comedy: biting sarcasm, emotional awkwardness, meet-cutes, and… bed-breaking farce?
The comedy series, which airs weekly on Sunday nights, features Carell as Greg Russo, a famous author who is suckered into teaching at a quiet college to help get his daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), out of hot water. Key to the show’s humor is scene after scene of laugh-out-loud slapstick comedy.
Last night’s episode culminated in Katie accidentally letting slip to her father that her estranged husband/ Russian studies professor Archie (Dunster) got his mistress, grad student Sunny (Lauren Tsai), pregnant. Cue Greg scampering across campus and accosting Archie with a ladle while he is giving an interview to the BBC from a hotel room. The two engage in a hilarious knock-down, drag-out fight all while live on the air. Archie even neglected to put on pants (some COVID habits die hard).
Before the camera cuts, Greg throws Archie onto a bed, which promptly collapses. It seems that little flourish wasn’t by design.
“They broke the bed by accident,” Rooster co-creator Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Shrinking) says. “We could show hours of that if we wanted to because they kept doing it and it was equally as disturbing every time. [It was] insane.”
“They really broke that bed,” Matt Tarses, Lawrence’s producing partner, adds. “It was crazy.”
Carell says his on-camera fight with Dunster was one of his favorite moments of the show.
“Wrestling with Phil, that was a difficult one to get through because as we were doing it, it was so funny to me what was happening,” Carell says. “I was trying very hard not to lose it. You don’t want to break because you’ll ruin it.
“We don’t watch playback on the show at all. We actually watched that. We watched it three times after we shot it because it was so funny. We wanted to see what it looked like. Because you didn’t know. The camera falls down and we didn’t really know what it looked like. And we’re like, ‘We’ve got to. We have to see. Was that as funny as maybe we think it was?’”
“I really do love being an idiot,” Dunster jokes. “The fight is very, very fun, and Greg comes in and has a little tête-à-tête, a little bit of grappling with Archie.That was quite a fever dream moment.”
Episodes 1 and 2 of Rooster are now streaming on HBO Max. Read why we gave the Episodes 1-6 a 10/10.
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton
