Andy Daly on 'Review' Season 2: 'Things Get So Much Worse for Him'

Comedy Central’s Review was one of TV’s most pleasant surprises last year: It took what seemed like a limited premise — stuffy “life critic” Forrest MacNeil (Andy Daly) reviews life experiences like racism and drug addiction on a five-star scale — and turned it into a hilariously dark and absurd examination of a man pathologically dedicated to his job, at the expense of everything else in his life.

Daly, a familiar face to comedy fans from Eastbound & Down and Reno 911!, seems to have found the role of a lifetime in the cheerfully gung-ho Forrest. With Season 2 premiering this week, Yahoo TV reached out to Daly (also a co-creator of Review) to get the real story behind last season’s infamous episode “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes,” and find out what’s in store for Forrest this season. (Hint: Nothing good.)

So Review is actually based on an Australian series, which surprised me, because the role seems so perfectly suited to you.
Yeah, the Australian version is really great, and the first time I saw it, I knew this would be a good part for me. Their main character, who’s named Myles Barlow, is very similar to Forrest in many ways. But we were free to adapt it in any way at all we wanted to. It was just, “Here’s their show. Take what you want from it, and leave all the rest aside.” So we were able to sort of build our main character from scratch, essentially. So I think it makes sense that it feels like something that was made for me, because it was. [Laughs.]

You’ve played a lot of stick-in-the-mud authority figures in the past, and Forrest MacNeil is like that, taken to the nth degree.
Yeah, he’s not totally unlike Principal Terrence from Eastbound & Down. He is sort of authoritative within his world, and sort of passive-agressive, and sometimes sort of hostile, in a chipper way. [Laughs.] But in command of a certain kind of swagger and smiling confidence, and that’s something a lot of my characters have.

At first glance, Review might be difficult to envision as a weekly series. But the great part about it is how Forrest’s reviews have this cumulative negative effect on his life.
[Laughs.] Absolutely. I think a lot of people thought when it premiered that it was just going to be a collection of segments that reset after each one. But we definitely made the decision that if this is a show about a guy reviewing life experiences, and so bringing extreme experiences into his pre-existing life, a lot of the fun of it is going to be seeing how this new thing he’s taken on interacts with the life he was already leading. So it’s going to have an impact. And it just became — obviously, for us — much more fun for that impact to be negative. [Laughs.]

Related: Why ‘Review’ Needs to Be on Your Radar

It’s also weirdly admirable how dedicated Forrest is to his job, at the expense of everything else in his life.
Yes, Forrest has this incredible sense of mission, which is admirable. Or, I should say, would be admirable if the enterprise wasn’t so dumb. [Laughs.]

Yeah, do we ever get a sense of how many people are actually watching Forrest’s show? Of how important his show is to our culture?
[Laughs.] Well, we definitely get a sense that Forrest believes that it’s monumentally important to our culture. I’m not sure to what extent we can verify that. [Laughs.] But he believes it, and his belief is infectious, I think.

You’re one of the creators of the show. How does the writing process work? Do you have a staff, or do you write all the episodes yourself?
No, we do have a staff. I run the writers’ room, along with Jeff Blitz, who also directs every one of the episodes. And Andy Blitz, who is Jeff’s brother, is also in on that. And we’ve got a staff of great writers from Conan O'Brien, and Key & Peele, and all sorts of places. We do a whole bunch of brainstorming as a room. And then once an episode feels pretty well fleshed out, we’ll assign it to someone in the room to go and write it.

And then, of course, because our show has all these voiceover narrations, it continues to be a rewriting job all the way through post-production. The editors say, “Boy, if we could condense these two scenes into one with a little bit of voiceover glue, that would help us get this episode to time,” or whatever. A lot of things change in voiceover post-production — which is a blessing and a curse. [Laughs.] It’s a blessing that we get to do that, but it’s a curse because I have a writing job for like a year. [Laughs.] It never seems to end!

And I imagine there’s a good bit of improvising on set. Or do you try to stick to the script?
No, there’s a huge amount of improvising, to the point where it’s almost comical how hard we work on the scripts. [Laughs.] We get to the set and open up the script and go, “Eh, I don’t want to do that!” Or just, “This no longer makes sense with what we just shot,” or “It doesn’t make sense in this room.” So we’re constantly rethinking things on the set.

And then somebody will have an idea; Jeff Blitz and Andy Blitz are both on the set through production, and they’ll throw things in, new ideas. We’ll shoot the script two or three times, and then we’ll do a pass where we’ll open it up and just say whatever we want. And the editors, I have noticed, have a real preference for those moments. Those truly improvised, spontaneous moments find their way into the edit more often than anything else. And I think it’s just because they feel more natural, which helps our whole vérité style.

The “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” episode last season was one of the most acclaimed episodes of TV last year. Did you see that episode as being pivotal, like it was the moment Forrest’s life really started to crumble?
Yeah, for sure, “pivotal” is the word. His commitment to the show is clear in episode 1 and 2, but it’s really in episode 3 where we understand he will do anything he’s asked to do, no matter what it is. And we get a sense of what is propelling him to do this in the pancakes scene, when [his producer] Grant steps in to remind him of his fungus-on-a-stick principles. We get some idea of what’s driving him, and how far it will drive him.

So yeah, I always thought that episode would be pivotal. However, I wasn’t necessarily sure that it was going to be so well-received. Because it’s kind of like a little Cassavetes scene there in the kitchen. It’s pretty heavy. [Laughs.] I really didn’t know if Comedy Central’s audience would follow us for that. So I had fears as much as I had hopes.

Do you know exactly how many pancakes you consumed while filming, or did you lose count?
People really want to know about this! [Laughs.] It’s funny. The truth is as boring and disgusting as it could possibly be, which is: There was a bucket on the seat right to my left, and every time “cut” was called, I emptied my mouth into it. I did a lot of chewing, but I did very little swallowing. Probably, if you watch it with that in mind, you’ll notice that. I’m not pounding down the pancakes. I put a piece in my mouth, I chew it; I put another piece in my mouth, I chew it. Watch my throat! There’s no swallowing.

I think I probably ate the equivalent of one pancake over the course of that day of shooting, so I did sometimes swallow. But I really did not want to jam myself full of pancakes. Jon Favreau, I’ve heard him say something like, “You can always tell the amateur actor in a scene, because that’s the person who’s actually eating the wedding cake.” [Laughs.] Everyone else is just sort of poking at it. You do not want to eat the prop food, man. They’re gonna call “lunch,” and you’re gonna be lying in your trailer with a stomachache.

At the end of Season 1, Forrest went AWOL and ditched his job. What happened to him out there in the wilderness, and how does he end up back doing his show again?
Well, this is obviously the thing we discussed the most when we reconvened the writers’ room for Season 2, from a place of, “Wow, that was a surprise: We got a second season!” [Laughs.] We had our main character quit the show, for heaven’s sake, and go back to his wife, who would never be with him while he’s doing this insane show. So we had to kind of say that she rejected him, and he spent some time in the wilderness, but came to a point where his wife doesn’t want him back, and he has nothing, really, but the show. And the show does want him back.

So he comes back to the show with a renewed sense of purpose, and feels badly that he left his post. Because it was never gonna be easy; he knew that. So it’s really quite shameful that his resolve failed him. [Laughs.] Now he might have a different attitude if his wife had taken him back after he ran out of that Irish pub. The only port in a storm is Review for him, so he’s back.

And at least he has a Veto Booth this time, right? He can reject a viewer suggestion if it’s too ridiculous.
That’s exactly right. I think possibly a desperate and scared Forrest was talking about how, “Wow, if I really do anything anyone ever asks me to do, I could die. Horrible things could happen to me.” So a mutually beneficial solution was arrived at, with Forrest and his producers, that this season, he may veto two reviews.

And it’s not something to be taken lightly by Forrest. Don’t expect him to do this at the drop of a hat. He’s got two reviews over the course of ten episodes, and probably he would really prefer if he never had to do this. Because it is the coward’s way out to veto something. So those vetoes don’t get used lightly, we’ll just say that.

What else can you tell us about Season 2? Any other guest stars or plot developments for Forrest?
Yeah, in our first episode, we find Forrest moving on and trying to find new love, and he does that with Allison Tolman from Fargo, and she’s great. But that doesn’t go so smoothly. [Laughs.] But it gives us the opportunity to see Forrest moving on and trying to find love with other people.

And we have incredible guest appearances from Mary Birdsong, who people will remember from Reno 911!, and Lennon Parham, who is Jessica St. Clair’s partner there on Playing House. Max Gail plays Forrest’s dad; you might remember him from Barney Miller. He is so wonderful in that as a young man, and now has sort of aged into this wonderfully sweet, hilarious comedy actor with incredible dramatic timing as well. He’s around for the whole season, and he has some incredible moments.

One thing about this season that jumps out to people who’ve seen the whole thing is that crazier things happen to Forrest. Once he comes back to the show, which he now knows is destructive to him, it’s almost like the universe just says, “OK, if you want it, here it is!” [Laughs.] And things get so much worse for him.

Season 2 of Review premieres Thursday, July 30 at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central.