How Adam Scott Mastered the Art of Playing the Straight Man
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When the time came for the cast and crew of Party Down to reassemble for an improbable sequel season, the first order of business was to find out when Adam Scott would be available to do it. “The truth is,” explains Party Down co-creator Rob Thomas, “that we found a window for Adam, started with that window, and said, ‘Who all can make it in here?’”
Part of this is simply that Scott is perhaps the busiest of all the many successful alums of the once and future Starz comedy about a team of bumbling cater-waiters. Most recently, he earned an Emmy nomination for his work on Severance. But creatively, it’s hard to imagine the show without its leading man. As Henry Pollard, a former actor who had a brief whiff of fame as the star of a series of beer commercials, Scott was and is the audience’s entry point into this strange and ridiculous world. He is at once the straight man who sets up Ken Marino and the rest to be funny, but also someone capable of being dryly hilarious in his own right.
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On the set of the new season, Scott talked with Rolling Stone about the surreal feeling of such an obscure show getting to return to life 13 years later, taking over the role of Henry after it was written for (and by) his good friend Paul Rudd, what really went down when he chose to join Parks and Recreation when it seemed like the fate of Party Down was still up in the air, what makes a great straight man, and a whole lot more.
How does it feel to be here doing this?
It’s weird. It’s such a cliché now because there are so many reboots and everyone saying, “Oh my God. It’s like not a day has passed.” But I guess those clichés are true, because that’s what happened. We just clicked right back in, but it felt so nice because we all miss each other and it has been a significant amount of time. It’s 12 years since we got canceled. But also I think something that may set it apart from most of the reboots out there is that there’s legitimate unfinished business here, because we got canceled after two seasons. It didn’t gain any popularity or attention until long after it was dead. It’s been really, really nice and I feel like there’s a lot of room for the show to grow and explore a lot of territory it didn’t cover, because it didn’t have a lot of chances.
The most commonly-repeated version of the story at the time of the cancellation was that the show was perhaps still in limbo, you took the Parks and Rec job, and Starz used that as the final excuse to pull the plug. What actually happened?
Well, it was an agonizing time. We had finished Season Two in early 2010, and as soon as we finished, a lot of big decisions were suddenly in front of me, and I had never had people approaching me for acting work before. I think Party Down did contribute to that. People were starting to find out it was a show and some people, like [Parks co-creator] Mike Schur was a big fan of it, for instance. So people in town were starting to hear about it, but there was no press about it or anything.
We were waiting to hear if we got picked up, because there was a new president at Starz and we weren’t sure what he wanted to do with it. And then suddenly there’s this Larry Charles thing that came up, and then Parks came up, and I suddenly had these choices in front of me, all while Party Down is in limbo. It was a really hard decision, and the Parks thing was obviously something I would want to do, but I also had this decision to make. So I made a backchannel call to someone high up at Starz and asked him as a favor, “Will you let me know if I take another job, am I killing Party Down or is Party Down already dead?” And he said, “I can’t really officially tell you anything, but if I were a friend of yours, I would tell you to take that job.” And I had to make a decision or the Parks job was going to go away, and they weren’t going to announce Party Down till a month later. This person did me a huge favor and told me, “If you want to be employed, you should take that job.”
[Then-Starz president] Chris Albrecht did not seem like a fan of the show.
I don’t know if he was or not, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it, because he canceled it. So the timing was unfortunate, because it did look like I killed the show. But I went through it with the cast and with Dan and Rob and John and Paul, and made sure they all knew that I wanted everyone to know how much I didn’t want to kill the show, and wouldn’t.
What was it like filming the Season Two finale, when the show’s future was so precarious?
There was a pall over the last couple of days. The leadership was actively shifting as we were making the final episode. I remember when Jane’s car is going off and she’s waving goodbye right before her husband passes, I don’t remember what the line was, “She’s going to be all right” or “We’re going to be all right,” or something. And I couldn’t hold it in. I just started crying. Because I felt like that was it. I felt like we were going to get fucking canceled, and it was hard. And it was kind of a wistful episode anyway. So yeah, we all felt like there was a real possibility that that was it.
Do you get, “Are we having fun yet” when you’re out in the world?
I do. Yeah, I do. That or “Catalina Wine Mixer!” or some such nonsense about calzones. Which I have to thank Mike for.
You were friends with Paul and Rob and the guys for a long time. How aware were you of the show back when it was in early development and Paul was going to play Henry?
I remember Paul telling me about the idea of this catering company show and he would play Henry, and Steve Carell would be the bumbling boss, which would end up being Ron Donald. They had loosely gamed it all out, and I think they were thinking originally of me for Roman. This was years before we even made the homemade pilot in Rob’s backyard.
Once Paul wasn’t available, how did you feel stepping into the role at that point?
I felt great about it, but again, when we made the original thing in Rob’s backyard, it was really low stakes. It was essentially saying, “Hey, would you come do my short?” It was not a favor, because I was not in a position to do favors, because I was just leaping job to job. We were making something for the fun of it, essentially, and then they were going to take it and try and sell it. I liked it and had fun, but didn’t really think this was going to be anything, because I never put any hopes on anything. I’ve learned not to do that.
Were you surprised when it actually became a show?
Yeah, because also it was maybe a year and a half later when they called and said, “Hey, have you heard of Starz?”
What was it like to make those two seasons?
It was a singular experience. No one knew who we were, what we were doing, what the show was. And even when we were onto Season Two, it’s not like in between those seasons, the awareness expanded. It felt like we were making a sequel to a movie no one saw. But we had no less enthusiasm about it. It was this gang mentality of what we’re doing is rad, and we’re going to keep doing it until someone turns their head and actually watches it. But also, because no one was watching or caring, we were just doing it for ourselves, for each other, and were just having a great time and knew how good it was while we were doing it. It really felt like we were making something special, and at some point someone will notice, but maybe not. We really didn’t know.
So when it started to finally get discovered on streaming, how did that feel?
It was cool. It was very weird. It was like someone watching your home movies or something. It was really great.
How much of your own career, prior to this, were you drawing on in playing Henry?
I think we all did. In 2008 when we started shooting it, I’d been in this town for a while and had hit a few walls, and had some brief runs of almost happening but then not. So I had had my fair share of disappointments and humiliations. Not that they stopped in 2008 when we started shooting Party Down certainly, but yeah, it was a direct line right into that vein.
Before this new season, how close did it ever feel to you like a revival was going to happen?
It was pretty close a couple times and pretty soon after we stopped making the show, it seemed like the movie was maybe going to happen. And then once that had a couple speed bumps and we all had time to just really think about it, I think we all landed on maybe a movie isn’t the best format for Party Down. A movie would do three or four parties and they had a great idea for the story. But one of the great things about Party Down is the initial idea of one episode per party. And that would have to at least somewhat go out the window for a movie, because you’d have to have an arc and all that stuff and it’s tricky. So I think that the way it ended up shaking out is the way it should have been. I think we’re all happy that it ended up being another season rather than a movie.
You’re working all the time, and Lizzy Caplan ultimately couldn’t do it. How hard was it to figure out a window where almost all of you could come and do this?
It was impossible and it’s part of the reason we decided to continue, even though it was heartbreaking, both for us and for Lizzy, that schedules ended up not working out. The stars aligned, everyone else was available, which was a minor miracle in itself, and it’s just a six-week period that we needed, but that is really tough. It was a feat of schedule engineering to make it happen.
Henry has a lot of funny moments, but often you are the straight man to these people, as you’ve been in other roles like Ben Wyatt. What is the secret to being a good straight man?
The very first day we shot the very first episode [of the series], we shot the scene with Lizzie, where we’re outside smoking and I tell her my name’s Scrotum Phillips. After a couple takes, [director] Fred Savage took me aside and he was like, “Hey, so look, you can let go and just listen to her and don’t worry about it. You’re the person we’re going to take the ride with. The audience is going to look at all these crazy people through your eyes.” I think what I had been doing the first couple takes is what I was used to doing, which is really leaning in and trying to make an impression and play the scene, rather than when you’re in the straight man/audience surrogate, whatever you want to call it, there is a bit of neutrality that you have to figure out.
I think it’s something that you often hear when people dismiss performances saying that someone’s just playing themself. I think that is dismissing something that is incredibly difficult. Not that I’m saying I am playing myself, but I’m saying that just trying to remain a neutral player, and trying to juggle everything that’s going on in front of you, is really hard. Fred gave me this advice, and it ended up being maybe the most valuable advice I’ve ever gotten. It guided me through the rest of Party Down, and then through Parks.
It’s been so strange and yet exciting to see the response to this as opposed to the complete indifference to the show when it was on the first time.
I know. When it got announced last spring or something, the response was shocking. I knew that people knew what it was now, but I had no idea. I think the awareness of the show and the sort of fandom that’s grown around is beyond what we even understood it to be when we decided to do this.
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