All 10 episodes of Rooster Season 1 are airing on HBO.
The first season of Rooster just wrapped, but the team behind the breakout HBO comedy is already deep into planning Season 2. I spoke to showrunners BIll Lawrence, who also created Scrubs and Ted Lasso, and Matt Tarses (Sports Night, The Goldbergs) ahead of the Season 1 finale to break down what we can expect from a new batch of episodes – which are coming sooner rather than later.
Season 2 of HBO’s Rooster will consist of 10 episodes and air within a year
“We’ve broken the first four episodes,” Lawrence says. “We’re doing 10, and HBO wants it on within a year or less. They’ve got us grinding, so we’ve been at it for a while.”
“Bill’s looking to his right and seeing the board,” Tarses added, referring to a wall of notecards breaking down episode and story beats for Season 2. Lawrence pointed the camera at the cards but slyly whipped it away before I got the chance to read any details.
The Rooster Season 1 finale saw tons of major decisions and milestones from the staff and students at the fictional Ludlow College. Bestselling-author-turned-college-instructor Greg (Steve Carell) decided to stay at Ludlow after finding both professional personal fulfillment. Meanwhile both Greg’s daughter Katie (Charly Clive) and grad student Sunny (Lauren Tsai) both dumped pompous professor Archie (Phil Dunster) and started new chapters. According to Lawrence, the finale’s trajectory remained largely unchanged because the writers were anticipating a renewal.
“We were feeling pretty confident because the show premiered really well,” Lawrence says. “[There were three] things that we kept [in the finale] that we knew we wanted to do at the start. One was we wanted to do a big parallel from Greg at the beginning as a lonely guy who had to invent people that were giving him a going away party [who then] at the end gets to realize his self-worth a little bit [and be] super important to a bunch of people.
“We [also] wanted to make sure that Connie Britain [took] Greg's world and made it her own at the end with a little cliffhanger. And then the last thing we wanted to do – we knew we wanted to end the year with both Sunny and Katie as women that [were] free of the burden of a toxic guy. That's a story generator for next year.”
Rooster showrunners reveal which characters will have expanded roles in Season 2
Key to feeding Season 2’s “story generator” is the array of characters that inhabit the show’s universe.
“I've been doing this forever on [shows like] Scrubs,” Lawrence says. “We would be remiss if we didn't open up Annie Mumolo’s life as [as Walt’s] assistant [Cristle] or Maximo who played [Cristle’s son] Tommy. The same for Robby Hoffman who plays Mo. [They should be] bigger characters in the show because I found myself going like, ‘Wow, they're doing amazing work.’”
“It was an embarrassment of riches,” Tarses says. “Rory Scoville [who plays campus police officer Mullins] is just, the minute he opens his mouth, I can't stop laughing. I love Scott MacArthur, [who plays] the hockey coach. He’s going to be back in a significant way if we can steal him away from [Netflix’s] Running Point for enough time. I think we saw a side of Sunny at the end in the last episode that kind of gave her depth that we hadn't seen as much of, and I think we're going to explore that.”
Will John C. McGinley’s Walter Mann return in Rooster Season 2?
When I spoke to John C. McGinley about his role as Ludlow college president Walter Mann, he teased that “everyone at Ludlow College [was] expendable.” In the Season 1 finale, Walt finds himself out of a job and replaced by Greg’s ex-wife Beth (Connie Britton). But don’t fret, McGinley is confirmed to return in Season 2.
“He’s a regular,” Tarses says. “Next semester is a transition semester and then [Beth] is not coming until the semester after that. So [Walt] talks about his swan song with Greg. He’s going to be dealing with this new situation and Greg's going to help him through it as we go forward. It would be mean of us to just send him away.”
