‘American Auto’ Star Ana Gasteyer Teases How the ‘Dark Side of Success’ Can Empower Katherine in Season 3

For a few minutes during the Season 2 finale of NBC’s workplace comedy “American Auto,” it looked as if Ana Gasteyer’s character, Katherine Hastings, had evolved from the narcissistic CEO of a car manufacturer to a cheerleading team player, attempting to comfort her employees in the face of probable firing. But, in true comedic form, that moment was fleeting and by the episode’s end, it was obvious that Katherine is ready to dance on the “dark side of success,” as Gasteyer put it.

The set up for the finale, which aired Tuesday night, was simple: the board of Payne Motors was going to take down Katherine – saying she is not liked is putting it mildly — and her entire team, but she struck a deal with them – if she could get the stock up to a certain point everybody would keep their job; if not, she would resign. And the fate of Payne Motor and all of it senior staff was hinged up on the success of one vehicle, the Pika, which Gasteyer describes as a “s—t car…a $10,000 car that drives like a $10,000 car looks and feels and has literally no shock absorbers.”

Yeah, she can be a bit, shall we say, self-absorbed and conceited, and, if fact, she’s not the nicest person to have above you on the corporate food chain. But when she realizes that Payne Motors stocks are going up because of rumors she’s on her way out as CEO, she actually says out loud, “I get it, I’m terrible.” But does she really think she’s “terrible”? That would take self-awareness that we’re pretty sure she doesn’t have.

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“I don’t think she really thinks she’s terrible,” Gasteyer admits. “Look, a good CEO is at least a demi-narcissist, you know? I think that there has to be a blind confidence and lack of concern about the well-being of others to care that much about the bottom line of a company and about your reputation within it. So, day to day, I don’t think Katherine thinks she’s terrible at all, but I think she acknowledges that in that one little line, sure.”

By the end of the Season 2 finale, what looked to be the end of her career at Payne Motors turns out to be just the beginning of a whole new breath of life for her when Pika gets a huge boom in sales and turns out to be big success. Yeah, corners were cut to make it affordable, but that wasn’t a bad business strategy after all. “This could be everybody’s first car, and you always remember your first car actually,” Gasteyer pointed out. “It’s sort of a brilliant idea. I think that’s really what is essentially so human about Katherine — she’s not a complete idiot.”

And with that realization that she made a boatload of money for the company comes her relishing in the joy at the top of her lungs, screaming into the rafters at corporate headquarters, “I’m a good CEO. Yes, I am a good CEO. YES, I AM A GOOD CEO!”

“And you know what this means, right? We are done scrambling. We have power now and money,” she asked and answered with great confidence. “And you know what you can do when you have power and money? Anything. You. Want. All I know is I am done. We are done playing defense. It is our turn to make some moves!”

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Those sound like fightin’ words! What do you suppose that means for Season 3? Although Gasteyer doesn’t know exactly what “American Auto” creator and executive producer Justin Spitzer has up his sleeve or how he intends to metabolize that idea for next season, she can’t wait to find out what it is.

“What I will say is that I do believe that arrogance is the dark side of success, right? And I think it will be very fun to play with hubris and to play with overreach. I mean, without naming names, certainly there are automotive company leaders who have gone to run social media platforms and think that it’s the same thing,” she says, avoiding calling Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter out by name. “So I think sky is the limit for how this will empower her and I think they’ll be able to have fun with that as a result.”

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