SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from the first season of “Reboot,” which is streaming on Hulu.
Steven Levitan’s “Reboot” is a dysfunctional family reunion of sorts. The Hulu meta comedy follows the stars of a fictional 2000s sitcom, “Step Right Up,” returning 20 years later for a revival of the show. Keegan-Michael Key’s pretentious thespian Reed, Judy Greer’s jet-setting duchess Bree and Johnny Knoxville’s dirty comic Clay never thought they’d be back on this set, but some career missteps, a messy divorce and a few stints in jail have landed them all back in the same place.
Throughout the season, Greer’s character Bree actively sabotages a younger co-star who threatens to outshine her, overstays her welcome in the writers’ room and, in the Oct. 25 finale, majorly messes up in a taped interview: After finding out her ex-husband, the duke of a made-up Nordic country, has remarried and is expecting a child, Bree impulsively tells a reporter she and Reed, ex-flame and current co-star, are in love again and are “talking babies.” Reed, who is of course dating another woman, is infuriated, but seems to leave the door open for a relationship with Bree. She shuts it down; Reed proposes to his girlfriend Nora (Eliza Coupe); Bree calls him and confesses she has feelings for him. There might be fairytale endings in “Step Right Up,” but not in “Reboot.”
In a joint sitdown with Variety, Greer and Key broke down the will-they-won’t-they of the “Reboot” Season 1 finale, and shared real-life Hollywood horror stories — from co-star confrontations to their own foot-in-mouth moments.
What does “Reboot” get right about Hollywood and the TV business?
Keegan-Michael Key: Just about everything. Everything is accurate times five. It’s all of that for real, but heightened.
Steve Levitan told me the only note from Hulu was regarding a line about demographic analytics, where they said, “We wouldn’t say it like this, we would say it like this,” and their suggestion ended up being more absurd and funny than what he had on the page.
Judy Greer: Right, it’s like — thank you for the punch up.
Key: There were a couple lines like that. One of the writers says, “Should we blue-sky the next episode?” That’s an extremely specific writers’ room term.
Greer: I had never heard that term before, but I think it’s something that my parents watching the show would be able to understand in context. And I don’t care what you do for a living — lunch is very important.
Key: The part where they are ordering lunch is a documentary. You could argue “Reboot” is a workplace comedy. I don’t work at a paper distribution company, but I enjoy “The Office.” I know what Jim and Michael and Pam want. At the end of the day, that’s what’s important — that we know what these characters are trying to achieve.
Judy, your character actively works against her co-star, Timberly (Alyah Chanelle Scott). Has another actor ever tried to sabotage you on set?
Greer: Early in my career, an actress and I had similar-toned skin. And the makeup artist was having a hard time matching my foundation, so she tried the other actress’ foundation and it matched me perfectly. But the actress was like, “She can’t use my foundation, and I don’t even want her using the same brand of foundation,” because it was very high-end foundation at the time. So the makeup artist had to go home and clean out a pot of MAC foundation and pour the other product in so that the other actress wouldn’t be upset by the fact that I was using it.
So you had to pretend you weren’t using the same foundation?
Greer: Yeah — there was some stuff on that set. But it wasn’t sabotaging so much as just crazy behavior.
Your character also has a foot-in-mouth moment with a reporter. Have you ever said anything in an interview you immediately regretted?
Greer: Yes, 10 minutes ago. Someone asked a question about Keegan and I being workaholics and I said, “Maybe we just don’t like being home.” And then I was like, “That sounds really bad. It sounds like I’m not happy in my marriage.” And I very much love my husband, Dean Johnsen. If I was 15% more famous that would really bite me in the ass. Thankfully, I’m still flying under the radar with that kind of shit. I’m still a little bit bulletproof. You were there!
Key: I was, and you know I adore you. But I did glance [does squiggly eyes]. The readers can’t see my squiggly eyes. But there have been times when I’ve been a bit unanchored, maybe too frenetic or excited during an interview. There were times where I’ve left interviews where I’m like, “Oh God, what did I just say?” because I was going a mile a minute.
Have you ever gone too far in pestering a writers’ room or a director?
Greer: I get really bent out of shape about production design sometimes. I was on a TV show for two seasons. I had three kids, and I didn’t have a job. I was unemployed. And they always had my house so fucking messy, and it drove me fucking crazy. I was like, “Why is her house so messy?” I don’t feel like this person has a messy house. We spend hours on the phone with costume designers, and we spent hours fitting for these characters that we’re playing, yet we never talk to production designers. What my house looks like is the most personal thing to me. What my car looks like inside is very telling about my brain space. What my office looks like is very telling about a character. No one ever consults us about this stuff, and it makes me crazy.
Bringing it back to “Reboot,” I was like, “Steve, where does my character live?” And he’s like, “What?” I’m like, “Is she staying in an Airbnb? Is she in a hotel? How does she get to work? Does production pick her up and drag her to work? Does she drive? Does she walk to work?” He was like, “I don’t fucking know. Does it matter?” I’m like, “Well, it matters to me.” Reed has a rental car. He hits Clay in the first scene. All this is to say I might have annoyed my boss because it matters to me. It matters to me what my house looks like. It matters to me what my office looks like. It matters to me what the inside of my car looks like, or what car she drives at all. And that’s not an easy conversation to have. And these things usually get planned so far ahead of me being cast that it’s always frustrating.
Key: This woman was a duchess for the last 15 years. She’s not gonna stay in an Airbnb and do her own grocery shopping.
Greer: She probably doesn’t even know what Airbnb is!
Judy, you were part of a reboot with “Arrested Development.” What was that like? Did it reflect any of what we see in “Reboot”?
Greer: It was really different. “Arrested” is its own animal. It’s not like anything I’ve ever done before. It’s like spinning plates — Mitch Hurwitz masterminds it somehow in the editing room. On that reboot, that was never any of our primary jobs. During all of that, I was doing a play on Broadway, so I was like, “If you want me, you have fly me out [to L.A.] after my matinee on Sunday and shoot me on Monday.” I’d take the red eye back to New York, sleep for a few hours and be good to go for Tuesday. That was how I had to work on the “Arrested” reboot. And I didn’t do that much on the show. I hate to say it, but it’s about money. In a situation like that, do they want to pay us all to own us for three months, or don’t they? Because if you pay us, we’ll fucking sit in a trailer all day.
Key: Oh, we’ll do it! We will do what you ask.
Greer: Give us a paycheck and I will happily knit and listen to podcasts in my trailer while you and Will Arnett and Jason Bateman do your thing. So it never felt real cohesive. It wasn’t a super-reboot reboot.
Was it fun?
Greer: Yeah, so much fun! Just a little bit of a bummer, because it would be really fun if we were really doing it.
Keegan, besides “Reboot,” this year you starred in Judd Apatow’s film “The Bubble,” which is about people making a movie in a COVID bubble. Why do you think audiences are so interested in the behind-the-scenes of Hollywood?
Key: We have to tip our hats for a moment to “Entourage.” The appeal to “Entourage” was, “Oh, this is the forbidden land we know nothing about.” But as the internet became such a ubiquitous part of our lives — there’s a familiarity with the behind-the-scenes now. People feel less intimidated by the mystique of it. Now, a regular person knows what P&A [prints and advertising, a.k.a. marketing] is. “They spent 50 million on it. The reason it says 70 millon is because they spent 20 million on P&A.” Why do you know what P&A is!? You’re an actuary from Annapolis, Maryland! People feel more comfortable to dip their toes into this subject. They want to be experts. When I was young, everybody played baseball. So of course “Field of Dreams” made a lot of money — we all know baseball. Of course there were stories and subplots weaved into “Entourage,” but that appeal was for a small amount of people who wanted to learn. Now, people know about our business, and they want to take out their checklist and go, “That seems right from the videos I’ve watched.” There’s a familiarity, which is ironic considering the fact that the show is about nostalgia — about something you know. You know “Full House.” Here’s “Fuller House.” That’s the equation.
Also with social media, sometimes the behind-the-scenes generate more buzz than the actual show or movie, as is the case with “Don’t Worry Darling.”
Key: Yeah, because now if you go see “Don’t Worry Darling,” what you’re doing is, “Can I see the flash of hatred or uncomfortability?” This is why Johnny Knoxville’s casting in “Reboot” is brilliant. The public image that we have all seen of Johnny is that he is this knockaround crazy person. So it’s Johnny’s image that we’re seeing in Clay. But when you know Johnny, he’s an absolute gentleman. If that were his image, that would be a different thing. My favorite performance by George Clooney is in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” because he’s the loser. He can’t win. “Ocean’s 11” through “13”? I get it! That’s Clooney. With Johnny, it’s the history he brings to the role. It’s the same thing as “I want to see what the [Harry] Styles and the [Florence] Pugh of it all is.” [With “Reboot,”] there may be an attraction to wanting to see, “Oh, they’re regular people with problems just like me, even though they’re on this television show. I see why they’re on this television show.”
Season 1 of “Reboot” ends with a will-they-won’t-they between your characters. In sitcoms, love interests usually start out apart, then get together, and then – if the show goes on long enough – they split up and get back together again. When would you like Reed and Bree to get together, if at all?
Key: Trust me, I can’t stop doing this in my mind. I can’t tell if Reed and Nora are together for half the second season, or the whole second season. I can’t figure it out yet, and what the machinations between him and Bree will be. There’s clearly something very furtive that’s been planted in regard to her and Clay. I hate to make this so mathematical, but for me, it would be in the middle of Season 3. But then again, Steve might be cooking something up to subvert the trope. There would have to be a scene where we textually wink to the audience like, “You thought we were doing this.”
Greer: I’ve only known the guy for a couple months, but I have no idea how Steve Levitan’s mind works. He surprises me constantly. Even reading the scripts for the first time was a surprise, shooting the scenes was a surprise, watching the final episodes was a surprise. Even as they’ve been airing on Hulu, I am still surprised. I never see anything coming. I’m a really good audience member. You should invite me to all your screenings.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
