NEED TO KNOW
Steve Carell is headed back to class… in a way.
PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the title, new details and first-look images of HBO’s Rooster, Carell’s new comedy from co-showrunners and executive producers Bill Lawrence (Shrinking, Ted Lasso, Scrubs) and Matt Tarses (Scrubs).
The show stars the beloved actor — who also executive produces the 10-episode series — as Greg Russo, an acclaimed fiction author and father of an adult daughter who heads to an “upper-crust college” for a reading. Eventually, he gets “sucked into the world” of higher education, per the series’ creators.
And it all goes down as he helps his daughter (a professor, played by Charly Clive) with some personal tribulations and even has a chance at his own personal “reinvention” of sorts. Carrell, Tarses says, has “done a lot of roles.” But Rooster offers something special.
“He’s always good and the shows are always good. But I think this is the first time in a minute where he’s been really funny again and doing a straight comedy,” Tarses tells PEOPLE. “I mean, there’s heart in this too, don’t get me wrong, but I’m excited for people to see him be really funny.”
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Greg is a “Carl Hiaasen type guy,” according to Tarses, and was loosely inspired by the Hoot author. The co-showrunners got to know the novelist while working on Bad Monkey (Lawrence calls Hiaasen “a man of the people” and a good father himself).
As for Carell’s character, he’s known in the series for his popular fiction, and the show title is based on the nickname of one of his novel’s characters.
Lawrence explains that the concept was born from the “very specific relationships” that he, Tarses and Carell have with their own respective adult daughters. (Lawrence is dad to musician and actress Charlotte Lawrence, 25. Tarses’ daughter plays a student on the show, and Carell is dad to Elisabeth, 24.)
“The core relationship at the center is a father-daughter,” says Lawrence. “How do you navigate life when your kid doesn’t have to listen to you anymore and they’re dealing with adult problems. You might have experienced those problems before and you might’ve inflicted them on your kid by the example you gave them.”
While Carrell has built a career on both outrageous comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and tapped into dramas like Netflix’s recent hit The Four Seasons, Rooster promises to offer something “different.”
HBO
“We wanted a guy who was super empathetic and you could believe him as a guy who felt like a fish out of water in an academic setting, but also was not a clown. I mean, he could play that kind of stuff, but he just has this real… You feel for him,” Tarses tells PEOPLE. “And it’s a different role for him than the Michael Scott role. He’s just uncomfortable in this world where he doesn’t feel like he belongs and no one plays discomfort better than [Carell].”
Lawrence adds, “Look, I’m a comedy writer, and so there’s none of us, male or female, that weren’t drastically affected by the way that Steve does comedy, and I hadn’t seen him do a big comedy-forward project in a long time.”
He continues, “I haven’t ever gotten to be on something that you just kind of throw jokes at him and watch him go. He’s a great dramatic actor, but most importantly, he’s just such a kind guy. He puts the ensemble first, takes care of the cast and crew, it’s rare that things turn out to be the way that you would hope they would be.”
HBO
Rounding out the cast of the show, produced by Warner Bros. Television Studios, are Danielle Deadwyler (Dylan Shepard), Phil Dunster (Archie Bates), John C. McGinley (Walter Mann), Lauren Tsai (Sunny Salewski) and Clive (Katie Russo), the latter of which Lawrence calls “charming” and who “immediately seemed like father and daughter” with Carell.
“That’s like a magic trick because we’ve all seen versions of that that don’t work when people don’t seem like they’re connected or family,” Lawrence says. “So I think she’s going to have a massive career. I think she’s super talented.”
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As Greg’s daughter Katie faces a personal conflict, Greg takes it upon himself to swoop in. Sure, the show focuses on that “father-daughter relationship,” but Tarses emphasizes that there’s much more to the story.
“It’s about how we can reinvent ourselves in the later parts of our lives, how we get stuck thinking we’re this one person and that doesn’t have to be true,” he says. “So college, for all of us, was this time I think where we invented ourselves, and this guy gets a chance to go back and sort of do that again.”
HBO
Rooster features some familiar faces from Lawrence’s other television worlds like McGinley (Scrubs) and Dunster (Ted Lasso) “It’s a cheat code,” the producer says, of putting together something of a “workplace family” on set. “I always want to do shows with people that I would want to spend time with anyway.”
While Lawrence says he “never like to jinx things,” he thinks the show is “already a success” because “I think it’s funny and touching and great. It really makes me happy.”
Rooster will debut on HBO Max in March 2026.
