NBC is delivering a comedy first tonight. Undateable is coming out strong with a live, 1-hour episode that they will perform twice – once for each coast. OHSOGRAY went to the set to talk to the cast about how they feel going live.
Undateable airs Tuesday at 9/8c on NBC and will be available after On Demand.
Is there more fear or anticipation in going into the live show?
Ron Funches: The latter. I feel that’s a better way to live your life. Why would I be so afraid of a good thing? I spent my whole life doing shows in a lot of horrible places trying to get to here. So now to do a show live with my friends on NBC…it’s going to be great! I’m excited!
Chris D’Elia: Yeah, excitement.
Brent Morin: It was excitement until I was on a plane coming back from a gig and I actually had too much time to…I couldn’t sleep and I just sat there and actually thought about doing it, as opposed to being like, “Cool!” I thought about me coming out and having to do it with all those cameras and it scared the shit out of me, to be honest with you.
Chris D’Elia: For me, we’ve bombed a lot before on stage because we’re comedians, so I’m not scared of it going wrong. I don’t really care, I just don’t want to disappoint the creators of the show, NBC…I don’t care personally, I don’t have nerves like, “Oh I’m going to look stupid if I mess up.” I don’t care about that. Also, they literally have me doing the stupidest shit on the show. Every episode really, but this one it’s all in a row.
Is there time built in for improvising?
Rick Glassman: There’s some places where there’s literally spaces to improvise depending on where we are on time. “Do this. Play around here. Don’t.” We’re going to end up doing it. Everyone on this show, me in particular, has such good instincts that we know…if it’s funny enough, we do it. At the end, they’re doing it accordion style where if we’re a little short we do the end scene a little longer, if we’re long we do it a little shorter. So there’s going to be room for that. Rick Glassman has the best instincts on the show.
How many times have you rehearsed already?
Ron Funches: A lot. We rehearsed probably double the amount we normally do. Usually it’s a little bit looser, little bit more of us blocking and playing around and just…then we kind of find it more on the day. This time, of course, there’s no time for that. We’re all going full speed now, which I think has been helpful with us finding some of the jokes that maybe we would have found on the day—we’re finding them now and then adding them to the script.
Is there something you worry will go wrong?
Chris D’Elia: Somebody forgetting their lines, I guess. I’m just going to call “line.” What are they going to do? What else would you do if you don’t know it.
Brent Morin: I would make it up and the story would drastically change for the rest of the live episode. “Burski’s dead.”
David Fynn: I don’t think anyone is going to swear it’s the laughing.
Who is most likely to laugh?
Bianca Kajlich: Me or Brent, for sure.
David Fynn: And when Bianca goes…Brent will have a laugh and it will be over in 10 seconds. Bianca if she loses it…
Bianca Kajlich: It goes. Because I start crying and have a whole panic attack kind of thing.
David Fynn: Make up running down the face.
Bianca Kajlich: That’s the other thing, no can come in and fix my makeup, so I’ll probably just have mascara streaked everywhere. Definitely waterproof episode for this one.