‘The Other Two’: Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke on Season 4 Hopes, Cary’s Nude Scenes and That Emotional Finale
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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of “The Other Two,” titled “Brooke & Cary & Curtis & Lance,” now streaming on Max.
Farewell, “The Other Two.”
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The day before it aired its Season 3 finale, co-creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider announced there will not be a fourth season of the beloved comedy series, adding that they “always knew” this was “where we wanted to end” the stories of Brooke and Cary Dubek.
In the series finale, the siblings, after nine episodes of selfishness and depravity, finally show up for the ones they love. On a desperate mission to win an Academy Award for playing gay Albert Einstein, Drew Tarver’s Cary chooses to take a break from acting — despite the movie landing Harry Styles as a love interest — in order to heal himself and repair his friendship with Curtis (Brandon Scott Jones). Meanwhile, as her famous family members’ talent manager, Heléne Yorke’s Brooke publicly takes the fall for Pat (Molly Shannon) and Chase (Case Walker), at once achieving her goal to “do good.” In the series’ final moments, Brooke reconciles with longtime love Lance (Josh Segarra) with a good old-fashioned make-out in the rain, and Cary meets new friends and finds happiness outside of chasing career achievements.
It’s a sweet ending for an otherwise largely cynical Hollywood satire. But a mid-credits scene in which Brooke is offered to manage the biggest names in entertainment — because “a good manager is someone willing to be the bad guy” — serves as a now-cruel tease for the premise of a fourth season.
Speaking with Variety before Max sprung the sad news that the series has ended, Yorke and Tarver indicated they would have loved to do more of “The Other Two.” When asked whether there were discussions about a fourth season, Tarver said, “We don’t know. We hope and we trust [Chris and Sarah], and we’re excited to — if they want to — read the scripts when they send them, and text them jokes that we love.”
“The craziest thing about being an actor is not knowing, and just enjoying the ride,” added Yorke.
Though it appeared the co-stars didn’t know whether the show would go on, Tarver said “either way is so exciting for us.”
“Getting to be a part of this show and have each season be its own thing, but also all three of them together having a really great arc — it was an amazing run,” he continued. “And I loved every second of it, and getting to know everybody and work with everybody. And if we got to do more, we’d get to continue that fun friendship!”
In a joint conversation with Variety, Yorke and Tarver broke down the series finale of “The Other Two,” their favorite jokes from the show and the preparation behind Cary’s nude scenes.
Last time we spoke, we talked about Brooke and Cary being flat-out unlikable in much of Season 3. How do you straddle the line of keeping audiences with you while your characters are becoming monstrous? Were there moments where you felt like you needed to dial your performances back?
Heléne Yorke: I think we were actually encouraged to dial it up as we went. I think, just speaking for myself, the deeper somebody gets themself into trouble, the more empathy I naturally have for them. To get to a point where you’re in the depths of patheticness to show up at the Hamptons and yell at your agent or light an entire building on fire, something ain’t right. What helps is that it’s deeply funny, and empathy is built by going on the journey with them and cringing from your couch, thinking certainly they can’t get any worse.
Drew Tarver: The writing guides you there. The hope is also that we’ve set up these characters over the first two seasons to get a little leeway with taking them further. Hopefully audiences see how they got there. With the performance, you’re constantly gauging the tone of the character. I have a sketch background, so there were moments where I would dip into a sketch delivery or go full cartoon. And Chris and Sarah have a great handle on dialing us down or up based on where the character is.
You both have very emotional confrontation scenes in the finale — Cary with his agent and Curtis, and Brooke with Lance. Within a comedy setting, is it tough to nail those dramatic beats?
Yorke: What they’ve done so well is create a show with such hard-hitting physical comedy and situational comedy. They take you to insane places, so you earn those moments to drop in. It’s not hard because the writing is so good. And Josh and Brandon are amazing actors, so to have spent the season building these storylines was truly a gift.
Tarver: Having less experience doing dramatic work like that, a lot of things come together to make those scenes: the writing, Chris and Sarah guiding us there, our co-stars meeting us there in those moments. Also, you’re not having to do drama for 30 straight minutes. You know it’s sandwiched in between funny, crazy stuff. So you don’t have to hold this dramatic stage for an hour, I only need to —
Yorke: What are you talking about!? You hold it for several hours because that’s how long it takes to shoot the scene! I argued with Josh Segarra for, like, 12 hours. They had to pretend it wasn’t night!
Tarver: But if I’m biffing it, like I didn’t catch the dramatic train or whatever that magical thing is — it’s OK! We’ll do another one. We’ll find it together.
Yorke: If “The Other Two” was a ride at Six Flags for actors, I want to do it over and over and over again. It’s so rare to get a job that’s like, “Climb in and out of this window in old lady makeup 400 times and light yourself on fire, but then also cry in a breakup scene.” It’s been a blessing.
How do you two read the ending? Have Brooke and Cary struck the perfect work-life balance, or are they stuck in a sadistic cycle, unable to escape the entertainment industry?
Yorke: We get asked a lot, “What do you want to happen to these characters?” They’ve always managed to drop us from some new height — are you ever out of the hamster wheel? Can you escape your own anxieties and worst instincts? Sometimes, no.
Tarver: Over the course of the season, Cary has people say things directly to his face that he needs to hear and learn from, and he doesn’t learn and doesn’t hear it. He doubles down. So it was a nice moment in the finale for him to finally slow down and make a decision that wasn’t operating on his — [intense coughing].
Yorke: And then he died during an interview with Variety!
Tarver: The only way I can step away from this industry is literal death.
Yorke: I’m just going to say something while Drew perishes off the Earth, which is that what people have responded to since Season 1 is that you’d think Brooke and Cary would be at odds with their siblings and their mom, clawing at each other to get to the top. But family has always been No. 1. They’ve always come back to Earth and figured it out, in a way that’s unexpected and refreshing. To have the season resolve in that way was very apropos and lovely.
Tarver: They’re constantly engaging with fame and the industry, and letting it get the best of them. It felt very real for them to learn a boundary the hard way, and then fully step back. Maybe they will learn how to exist in the industry and also take care of themselves as they move forward.
I found it heartwarming that the person who welcomes Cary into his beach gathering is an actor he worked with on “Emily Overruled.” On that show, Cary teaches the cast that acting can be so much more than what they imagined, and now the actor is teaching Cary that life can be so much more than just work.
Tarver: Yes, I love that scene. I think my sister’s [Katelyn Tarver] song is playing?
Yorke: It is!? Did they do that on purpose?
Tarver: Yeah! I haven’t seen the finale, and I’m waiting until she gets back in town to watch it with her. It’s called “What Makes a Life Good?” She was sending me all this new music after we finished filming, and I was like, “Whoa, a lot of the themes of it play into the show, and into Cary’s journey.” So I sent a bunch of them to Chris and Sarah, and they were like, “We want to try ‘What Makes a Life Good?’ in the finale and see if it works.” It was a really special moment for our family. Cary’s learning what makes a life good — I don’t need to keep promoting my sister’s music. World tour coming soon! Brother sick with a cough!
Yorke: Died in an interview with Variety. 1986 to 2023.
Tarver: Whoa, you knew my birthday?
Yorke: Of course I know your birthday. Is it May 5th, did I get that right?
Tarver: May 6th. Close.
Yorke: You don’t know mine.
Tarver: [awkward laughing]
Yorke: What’s mine, Drew?
Tarver: It’s in August.
Yorke: No, it’s not! That’s literally the farthest you can get from my birthday.
Tarver: Really? December?
Yorke: No, February, which is six months after August. Whatever, doesn’t matter. Sorry, Ethan.
Tarver: Anyway, it was such a nice moment for Cary to finally be like, “I need some friends. I need a life outside of the industry.” It took him nine-and-a-half episodes.
Brooke unravels in the last few episodes of the season. Heléne, what was it like playing a character who has gone completely off the rails?
Yorke: Those were crazed days at work, to be insane for extended periods of time. We block shoot, so to be reminded of intensity before shooting a scene that comes out of order was really fun. The first scene I shot from Episode 8 was when we’re putting chloroform in napkins and getting ready to almost kill Ben Platt. Chris and Sarah kept coming in to remind me and Alison Rich, who is wonderful in that episode, of where we’re at and how far gone we’ve become.
We shot Episode 9 in this really lovely co-op building on 25th Street that had — I swear to God — only gay residents who all wanted to come out and take pictures of us while we were shirtless and in old lady makeup. I climbed in and out of a window like 400,000 times, and it was physically demanding. We didn’t have a lot of time in the building. I’ll never forget waving a tea towel at flames, and a fire marshal waving smoke at me. I was a fan of big, big comedy when I was growing up, like “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” was my favorite movie. Episodes 8 and 9 were, for me, like living out a childhood dream of being Jim Carrey.
In the past two weeks, there has been an influx of Globby memes on Twitter because of a nonbinary water-blob character in Pixar’s “Elemental.”
Yorke: Yes! Because there are real things happening. It mirrors real life.
Do either of you have a favorite joke from the show, or something that you find particularly prescient in terms of real-life parallels?
Yorke: I go back to the pilot, when Cary works for The Ride and is dancing in Columbus Circle. That was so fucking funny. I also liked “in this climate” from Season 1, when Brooke accidentally goes home with an 11-year-old.
Tarver: I laughed recently at Shuli [Wanda Sykes] being like, “My client is struggling with mental health!” The tear, and how that was monetized. I was losing it at that storyline. It felt very of-the-moment.
Have either of you been to your high school reunions, and as famous actors yourselves, is it anything like Cary’s?
Yorke: I have. I had just done a Broadway show, and it felt good.
Tarver: The dream! Did people know? Did you talk about it like Cary?
Yorke: Mmyeah! I felt disgustingly seen by that episode, to go and win a reunion. I literally had someone tell me they skipped a reunion recently because there’s a writers strike and they don’t have anything going on. But like, everyone is kind of a piece of shit in high school. Go win your reunion! I love how I’m endorsing it, like, “Go do this shitty thing that this shitty character did.”
Tarver: I actually think we need to normalize being a loser at your reunions. You shouldn’t have to have a full portfolio to smoke cigarettes and drink punch around some old friends. But I haven’t been to any of my reunions.
I loved the reveal of Pat being just as jaded and cynical as her kids at the end of her Ohio visit. It really humanized her — and perhaps let Brooke and Cary off the hook a little bit?
Yorke: Maybe this reveals me as a monster, but I think if anything, we grow and we change in our lives, and what was once comfortable and great for us isn’t anymore. We grow out of friends and we grow out of situations, and we grow up. And Pat is being polite, but I think if you look at these characters and think, “What a nightmare,” I’m kind of like, “Well, are you perfect?” — it’s a reminder that these bad feelings you have, about ways in which you’re not the best, are universally understood.
Tarver: I remember reading that moment and feeling emotional. Just hearing a mom speak like that, about her life that has changed, and she doesn’t respond to the old things that she used to love — it was a really sweet, sad, funny moment. She kind of joins Brooke and Cary’s party. So it does let them off the hook in a way because it’s like: Everybody is a little unhappy.
Yorke: But I also wonder if it does the opposite of letting them off the hook, because she’s able to be honest with herself and process what she’s going through, where Brooke and Cary are not. If anything, Pat is able to see things with clarity — she’s pure. Brooke and Cary can’t get there.
Tarver: It only takes Pat one episode to have a nice, full-circle moment, and it takes us a whole season.
Drew, how did you feel about being so naked this season? I imagine there’s some mental — and physical — preparation for that.
Yorke: Has anyone noticed how hot Drew is this season? He’s on Men’s Health this year for press.
Tarver: I did a few pushups during the pandemic, yes.
Yorke: A few pushups? He would go home from work and work out at like 11 p.m. And you can tell based on that Episode 8 butt, baby!
Tarver: When the butt was gonna get shown, I didn’t not ask makeup to come in and give it a little zhuzh. They spent hours back there. They put me under. They did surgery on it for a while. But I think there’s an element of Cary, in earlier seasons, not being as comfortable with himself and his sexuality. And this season starts off with him in the midst of a hookup, and he’s just more in his body, sexually. The choice to put him in less clothes this season was indicative of that, I guess, growth.
Yorke: It’s a gay celebration!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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