Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Summer Press Tour
Beverly Hills, Calif. — Chris Geere, who stars as Jimmy Shive-Overly on FXX’s You’re the Worst, has a stable, normal adult life in the UK with a house and a wife and a child. “Then I come here and get to put on boxer shorts and act like a 10-year-old,” he said Friday during the show’s TCA summer press tour panel. “(Creator) Stephen (Falk) has given me some wonderful, flowing monologues, (with) some words that I’ve had to google.”
You’re the Worst was a sleeper hit when it premiered last summer, a critically-acclaimed romantic comedy about two self-absorbed people who start "dating." Falk said he and his staff tried to challenge themselves to do something different with the 13-episode second season, which debuts Sept. 9 on FXX.
“We made season 1 in a vacuum, with no fanfare and no idea how it was going to be received,” Falk said. “In season 2, you don’t want to get complacent and play it safe.”
Aya Cash, who plays Gretchen, Jimmy's girlfriend, said that the characters get “much more fleshed out” in the second season and will have taken a step forward by its end. But they are still, like the show’s title, the worst.
“I feel like delayed adolescence has become quite a thing in our culture,” Cash said. “Our idea of what a grownup is has changed.”
Asked how he stays young enough to write a show about millennials, Falk joked that he goes to the Venice Boardwalk and says to people, “Hey dude, what’s cracking today?” Falk said he doesn’t want the show — like so many others — to be about him, the writer, living vicariously through his “cool” character.
In fact, Geere said at the beginning of the first season, he would absolutely have not wanted to be friends with his character. Now, he would not want to hear him rant and complain professionally, but, “yea, I’d like to hang out with him and watch NCIS and eat snacks,” Geere said. “I’ve really learned to embrace and like this guy now.”
“I would like to be friends with Gretchen,” added Cash. “Gretchen would have no interest in being in a friendship with me.”
Other highlights from the panel included:
— With Gretchen now living with Jimmy and Desmin Borges’ Edgar, and Kether Donohue’s Lindsay having been “unceremoniously dumped” by her husband, the second season will feature the ensemble more. Falk said that although the series is a romantic comedy, “it’s always been my sneaky desire to do more of an ensemble show.” He said he is “allergic” to rom-com sidekicks who only exist to ask their friends about their relationship. “I really wanted to make them full human beings,” Falk said, adding that the Sunday Funday last season with the foursome front and center “validated my desire to have more ensemble elements.”
