Parents will bulldoze through a wall for their kids. In Rooster, Steve Carell turns that impulse into a full-on campus siege. HBO just dropped the trailer, and it is absolutely a steamroll.
What the trailer shows
Carell plays a famous novelist who descends on the small college where his daughter, played by Charly Clive, teaches. She is in pieces after her husband, Phil Dunster, bailed in the most academic way possible.
He left me for a grad student.
That line gets repeated by seemingly everyone on campus, which tells you exactly how small and gossipy this place is. The college head, played by John C. McGinley, lets Carell’s character stick around, though what his actual job is there remains… flexible. He starts roaming the quad trying to fix things, collecting odd allies and poking at campus problems while trying to pull his daughter out of the spiral.
Students nickname him Rooster, which happens to be the hero from his own book series. The pitch, basically: if he wants to shake up the status quo, he needs to channel his own fictional tough guy. The meta of a writer getting pressured to become his creation is a nice twist.
Premiere date
Rooster premieres March 8 on HBO.
Cast and creative roster
- Leads: Steve Carell, Charly Clive, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley
- Also starring: Danielle Deadwyler, Lauren Tsai, Connie Britton, Robby Hoffman, Annie Mumolo, Alan Ruck, Rory Scovel
- Creators/showrunners: Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses
- Executive producers: Bill Lawrence, Matt Tarses, Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer (for Doozer Productions), Jonathan Krisel, Barbie Adler, Annie Mebane, David Stassen, Anthony King, David Hyman, and Steve Carell
A quick Carell detour: Mountainhead
If you want more Carell before March, his latest film Mountainhead hit HBO Max in May. The setup is summed up like this:
A group of billionaire friends get together against the backdrop of a rolling international crisis.
The group includes tech bigwigs Randall (Carell), Hugo Van Yalk, a.k.a. Souper (Jason Schwartzman), Venis (Cory Michael Smith), and Jeff (Ramy Youssef). Rounding out the cast: Hadley Robinson, Andy Daly, Ali Kinkade, Daniel Oreskes, David Thompson, Amie MacKenzie, and Ava Kostia.
Bottom line
Campus settings are a cheat code for comedy, and Carell as a meddling literary legend who might actually become his own character sounds like fun. If Rooster sticks the landing, he is going to be a glorious troublemaker.