In Rooster, Greg (Steve Carell) reluctantly accepts a job as a guest lecturer at the university where his daughter Katie (Charly Clive) teaches as a way to spend more time with her as she’s going through a rough patch. As she’s transitioning to a new role of her own, Dylan (Danielle Deadwyler) helps him acclimate to being on the faculty, while Dean Walter Mann (John C. McGinley) is more than happy to throw him to the wolves, certain he’ll find a way to succeed.
Awards Buzz spoke with Deadwyler about how this project is very different from what she’s been doing recently. Here’s what she would say fans of hers should expect:
“Not what they’ve seen in the past, that’s for sure! I just think that they should be encouraged to come with a lighter heart. People always say weird stuff, ‘Oh my god, this one made me cry! I can’t watch it because I don’t want to feel.’ You do want to feel, and you want to feel in all the ways, and I think that Rooster enables you to feel in all the ways, especially with a good handful of chuckles and a good warmhearted connectivity too.”
On whether academia and acting are similar, she laughed and replied:
“A little bit. People trying to assert themselves and their value in a certain kind of way, yeah, that’s in there. Having to, in the background, push forward the things that you find valuable or the projects that you have that you want to be looked upon. That’s a thing. All weirdo characters on a collegiate institutional ground, as there are weirdos abound in Hollywood and weirdos abound in the world. The world has everything like that, and a collegiate institution is just a place where disparate folks have been dropped into a bubble together, and they are there to challenge each other and to encourage each other and to come into a new framework of mind.”
Watch the video above to hear more about her experience working the rest of the cast and what she’s been exciting about watching recently.
New episodes of Rooster premiere Sundays at 10pm on HBO through the season finale on May 10th.
