‘Party Down’ Team on Returning 13 Years Later and Carrying on Without Lizzy Caplan

Thirteen years after the end of its second season, Party Down has returned for its third.

The comeback was a long time coming, following several revival plans that fell through (including a movie), until stars Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Martin Starr, Jane Lynch, Megan Mullally and Ryan Hansen reunited for the workplace cater waiter comedy.

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“I gave up hope about five years ago — before that I was saying it’s definitely going to happen, definitely going to happen and then I gave up,” Marino told The Hollywood Reporter at the L.A. premiere on Wednesday night. “And then about three years later I got an email saying, ‘Oh we’re going to do this.’ So the moral of the story is give up hope on things, and then maybe they’ll circle back to you.”

Executive producer Rob Thomas explained the show was canceled the first time when a new president took over at Starz, which was then just starting to branch into original programming, and “he just looked at the numbers we were doing which were not great — not great is actually being kind, they were terrible. And they suddenly had their first hit with Spartacus, and so they decided to take the network in that direction: a lot of blood and breasts. We tried to give them a few breasts, but we did not bring enough blood, we had zero blood.”

In the years since, Party Down has gained a cult following from being available on streaming, and when Jeffrey Hirsch took over as president and CEO of Starz, he expressed regret that the network had canceled the show; Thomas said he called the executive the next day.

The only original cast member not returning is Lizzy Caplan, who Thomas said “is heartbroken that she could not be in this show, as are we, but once they greenlit it it was like, ‘Here is the window we think we can do it, who all is in?’ And we felt really fortunate to get as many of the cast members as we did; sadly Lizzy was not one of them,” due to scheduling conflicts (with Fleishman Is In Trouble).

EP John Enbom said they discussed whether they could even do the show without Caplan, but knew they couldn’t move the shooting timetable as Scott was going off to shoot Severance and Lynch was about to do Funny Girl. “It feels like Severance is going to be around for a while, so we felt very fortunate to get as many people in it at this point as we did,” Thomas added (Scott was in fact not in attendance at the premiere as season two of Severance is currently filming).

Party Down season three also welcomes new faces, with the addition of Jennifer Garner, James Marsden, Zoë Chao and Tyrel Jackson Williams.

“Can you imagine anything more fun?” Garner said of joining the show. “I watched an episode of season one, then I watched them all, then I watched season two, then I went back and watched them all again. I just wanted to be with these guys.” Marsden added that he had also been a fan of first two seasons and after being asked to play Garner’s significant other was a quick yes: “Certain people you just want to be around and this is that group.”

As for why the series didn’t get its due when it started in 2009, Lynch mused, “It was around the time of The Office and Parks and Rec, even though that was later than us, and it was a workplace comedy with really good actors. It might have been because Starz was so new, maybe Starz didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t think we got bad reviews, I think we just didn’t get reviews at all; I think 74 people watched it or something like that.”

“People weren’t ready. Now, she ready,” joked Hansen, as Starr noted of coming back all these years later, “It’s a difficult feat to bring a show back that has now built this following in its death, that it didn’t really have when we were on the air, that we have to live up to. After 13 years, I was sort of skeptical that we would be able to do it, but having seen five out of the six [episodes] I’m very happy.”

Party Down season three premieres Friday on Starz.

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