You're the Worst star Chris Geere on the twist-filled series finale: 'It felt right'
Well, that was the best.
After five seasons of Sunday Fundays, trash juice, and dysfunctional relationships, You’re the Worst wrapped up on Wednesday with Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) getting their version of a happy ending. Surprisingly, “Pancakes” was set at two weddings, as we learned that the flash-forwards we’d been seeing were actually the lead-up to Lindsay (Kether Donahue) and Paul’s (Allan McLeod) second nuptials. In the present, at Jimmy and Gretchen’s wedding, the couple had a big blowup before the ceremony and left in favor of pancakes. At a diner, they decided that instead of getting married, they’d take their relationship day-by-day. “Every day, we wake up, we look at each other and say, ‘Today, again, I choose you,’ until maybe one day we don’t,” said Jimmy. “Gretchen, every day, I will make the choice to love you.” Well, we saw in the future that they’d chosen to stay together long enough to have a young daughter. And not to forget Edgar (Desmin Borges), he had his own baby: a TV adaptation of a murder podcast.
EW chatted with Geere about his thoughts on the final episode, what he was most happy to see, and more.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You asked my opinion of the finale, but what did you think?
CHRIS GEERE: I think it felt right. Throughout the entire run, we always imagined what the ending would be. I always hoped that there would be a family involved, be it many, many kids or just one very special child. But I always wanted there to be a child, so when I read that, I was like, “Yeahhhh!” Because I think there’s a sense of maturity that has to come when you have a child, which both of them may have been lacking before. So to see that shift in them was incredible progress. But it just felt right. The whole diner scene at the end was quite hard to shoot, because we knew that it would be the last scene. It was lovely.
To me, this felt like the perfect version of a “happy ending” for these characters we’ve watched for five years.
Totally. [Creator] Stephen [Falk] was never insulting the audience by solving everything. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, a bit of everything up in the air. There wasn’t a diagnosis and cure for Gretchen’s illness; there was the indication that she’s still got it and she will always have it and together they will manage it. I think that’s a really cool way of approaching it, rather than thinking the problems that they’ve had for five years together were completely mended by the end — it would be a bit insulting to everyone. So that beautiful disaster will continue. We were all a little bit gutted that it couldn’t continue, because I’d really like to see them as parents and see the mistakes that they would have made. You never know, another channel might pick us up and then they’ll make a movie.
You mention wishing that the story could continue, so have you allowed yourself to think about what Jimmy and Gretchen’s future would look like? Do you think they’d stay together?
I always thought that they would stay together. They’re terrible without each other, they had to be together. But always having one foot out the door was start-to-finish… even from the theme music, “I’m going to leave you anyway.” It was always that way. And I think that is what kind of keeps their relationship alive, knowing that they can walk away at any moment.
The flash-forward structure threw us off the scent throughout the year and set up a twist, but was it tough even for you to keep track of?
It was the first time throughout the whole run that I knew what was going to happen. Because in seasons 1 to 4 we got the blocks that we were about to film in four-episode chunks. So I knew what was going to happen over the next four, but I had no idea what the ending was. But it was different this time because of the flash-forwards, and we had to make decisions on how we may have changed, so Stephen revealed everything to us in the first week. It was really exciting. I was thinking, “Is there anything I need to change?” And the only thing that I wanted to change was that I wanted there to be a bit more maturity about him now that he was a father, and does that come across in your physicality and your mannerisms? Probably, but I just made the decision that he would be more in control, and I thought that was a cool thing to play with.
While it sounds like them having a child was the big thing for you, was there anything else you were excited to see?
They always throw some stuff our way, whether that be driving in a cool car or Kether singing or Desmin being able to do something physical. There are some really cool things that they chucked in. We can request and we have requested stuff before, and it’s either been kind of considered or not, but what was super-fun for me was when Desi and I got to go on the stag bachelor day. Desi and I went out to Valencia, where there was an ice rink, and we had a whole day where we were just with an instructor who was teaching us to curl. I was like, “This is the best job in the world.” It was fantastic. Just me and my mate with this guy teaching us. And we were surprised with how good we were; we actually considered maybe signing up for a team. When you get to do little things like that, it’s wonderful. I feel lucky to have any job, but when you get to do some cool stuff with cool people, it’s been brilliant.
I talked with Aya ahead of the season and she told me a bit about the emotional last day of filming, so what was that like for you?
We all felt the same in that we were mostly in denial for an awful lot of the season. We made the promise to ourselves in the beginning not to get sad until it was over. And then suddenly when it was over, it just felt very peculiar. If I’m being totally honest, I still think I’m making the transition now. Because shaking off that character who has been part of me for five years does take a while. I’m doing auditions at the moment and I find myself falling back in to Jimmy habits; there’s certain kinds of mannerisms and facial expressions and things that became Jimmy and they started writing for me. That’s quite hard to shake off. So all of us toward the end were saying, “Oh, this is the last scene at the house,” and “Oh, this is the last scene at the bar,” and then we got to the wrap party and it was just incredibly emotional. We are all fantastic friends who are all quite realistic and understand that we live in different countries and different areas and we won’t see each other every single day like we did before. That’s hard, but I’d rather go through that sadness than to not have had the amazing experience that it has been.
Will that be what you miss most? These relationships that you’ve built over the last five years.
There’s a friendship and trust in each other that was there from the beginning. The four of us were so incredibly lucky that we all got along so well anyway. Up until right at the end, we used to hang out socially, we’d go for our own Sunday Fundays, we’d go to the cinema together. Stephen was always pretty surprised about how we’d hang out together on our days off. But we did, and we always knew that that was quite a special thing. So not to have that on a regular basis is a bit weird. There’s a famous phrase from Theodor Seuss, who said, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” And there was an awful lot of moments like that. I think the last scene I shot with Aya was very tricky, because she’s hands-down one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with, and we had a trust and simplicity to our work that we crafted over five years, and I’m going to miss that deeply.
Right on the heels of You’re the Worst wrapping, you have Detective Pikachu coming out. What was working on that like?
Probably the polar opposite of working on You’re the Worst! It was phenomenal. It was an incredible experience because of the amount of discipline with the animation side of things. I play a human being, there are human beings all in it, but in every scene there are Pokémon as well. It’s just a really interesting process. I’ve done a couple of CGI movies before, but this was a whole brand-new scale because of the specificities of Pokémon. There were people there from Pokémon going, “This character walks like this,” or “This Pokémon doesn’t do this,” and we had to be so specific. And that’s very time-consuming, but oh my God, it was so much fun. I’m hoping it’s going to be a bit of a hit.
I think it’s going to be. I wouldn’t consider myself a huge Pokémon person, but I saw the trailer and it looked delightful and hilarious.
It is super-fun, and I think it will hit many ages. I’m at the age where I kind of missed it. I was too young when it came out, and then not that interested when I got to the age where kids are interested in it now. And when Pokémon Go became massive, it was around the time that I was getting married, and there’s a photo of my wedding where some guy has his hand with his phone in it and he’s in the wedding photo and looking for a Pokémon. That was just a slight window for me into how massive this franchise is. And then that coupled with Ryan Reynolds, who is just a god, it’s going to be brilliant. The main thing that I was so excited about was that my son can see it. My son is 6 and he’s never seen anything that I’ve done, because I’m not going to show him an episode of You’re the Worst.
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