Note: This story contains spoilers from “Rooster” Season 1, Episode 2.
Steve Carell’s Greg Russo played out every father’s dream in “Rooster” Episode 2 when he enacts his revenge on Phil Dunster’s Archie for mistreating his daughter via whacking him with a ladle, which the “Ted Lasso” star admitted he enjoyed “professionally.”
The fight sequence, which takes place with Dunster in his underwear as he participates in a virtual live interview with the BBC, comes just after Carell’s Greg learns that his son-in-law, Archie, has knocked up the grad student he was sleeping with, nixing any possibility of a path to forgiveness. Armed with the news that his daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), let slip, Greg marches over to the hotel where Archie is staying and uses the ladle attached to the key to whack Dunster and attack him.
“What a weird job it is sometimes — what a peculiar thing to do,” Dunster joked, revealing that what they filmed was “quite a lot longer” than what made it into the final cut at the end of Episode 2.
“It was like a two and a half minute sequence, and there was lots of jiggery-pokery and a lot of hijinks,” Dunster told TheWrap. “I was absolutely knackered at the end of it, because [we were] really, going for it … It was just him whacking me on the bottom with a ladle, which I enjoyed — professionally.”
“Rooster” reunites Dunster with “Ted Lasso” creator Bill Lawrence, whom Dunster applauds for both wanting to hire him, as well as crafting such a compelling premiere episode.
“I know that Steve has spoken about the pilot before … no one can read that pilot and not be very clear about who those characters are, what they want, what the scenario is, and why it’s funny,” Dunster said. “Maybe a bit trite, but it was like watching a really good episode of television, reading that script. And that doesn’t always happen.”
Like in “Ted Lasso,” Dunster holds down the fort of the British antagonist in “Rooster” as he plays Archie, a professor who has an affair with a grad student that soon becomes the talk of the campus, humiliating his wife, Katie.
Beyond the British aspect, Dunster sees both Archie and Jamie Tartt as having a “sense of grandiosity,” likening Jamie to a gladiator and football as a “weird modern day gladiator,” whereas Archie finds his audience in his students and others that learn from him.
“He probably sees it, rather, less like teaching and more like inspiring the next generation, is probably how he put it, I imagine,” Dunster said, adding the characters are “incredibly different.” “[Archie] tries to actively use charm a lot more, whereas I think Jamie didn’t ever really need to bother that much because he was so good at what he did. He didn’t really care whether people like to or not. I think that it’s a lot more important to Archie that people do like him.”
“Rooster” premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
The post Phil Dunster Says He ‘Professionally’ Enjoyed Steve Carell Whacking Him With a Ladle in ‘Rooster’ appeared first on TheWrap.
