Don’t let the title of Happy’s Place fool you — it’s not always rainbows and butterflies on the Reba McEntire-led sitcom. For the most part, the characters of Happy’s Place, all employees of the fictional bar of the same name, get along great. The occasional guest star here and there also ups the mood with the sound of a cheering audience now sitting on the edge of their seats.
But there might be trouble up ahead for McEntire’s Bobbie and Rex Linn’s Emmett, who are still exploring what their relationship looks like after working together professionally for presumably years. Emmett still holds a deep secret from Bobbie: he always knew about the affair Bobbie’s father had that resulted in the birth of her half-sister, Isabella (Belissa Escobedo), but never told her. When talking to CBR about Season 2 of Happy’s Place, co-creator Kevin Abbott and director Pamela Fryman assured that despite the drama of the fictional relationship, real-life couple McEntire and Linn enjoy playing it up. Additionally, they talked about their dream guest stars, one of which has an Academy Award to her name.
CBR: What have you guys enjoyed getting to explore and do in this season of Happy’s Place that you really didn’t get to do in the first season?
Kevin Abbott: I think that in the first season, we were trying to tell stories to figure out who the characters are and build them out. You use the premise to get the characters in the same room together, and then you have to figure out how the dynamics work. There’s what you’ve planned and then what actually happens once you get the cast, because the cast then inhabits the role, and they make it their own.
What I’ve loved is that we figured out who they were in Season 1, and now we get to start bumping them up against each other a lot more. We get to start intertwining their lives and seeing how they affect each other, how they bother each other and how they make each other better. And overall, we’ve gotten to know them all a lot better, and the more you get to know them, the more interesting they are.
Pamela Fryman: The only thing I would say is that the other thing that happens over time is everybody gets to know each other and becomes comfortable and friends in that first season. Now you have a second season where they know each other personally. They also know what they’re great at. They are not only generous with each other, but they are a great audience for each other. Working with them and building every episode is so much more fun because everybody is so involved.
It always seems so easy just watching the show, because everybody has such great chemistry, and it’s so funny. Everything flows. What are the challenges of creating the show?
Abbott: Oh, no. It’s perfectly simple. We get together. We shoot on a Tuesday night, and we laugh. We get together on Tuesday morning, and we say, what do you want to do? [Laughs]
Fryman: Nobody works harder than Kevin. That’s the truth.
Abbott: There are challenges. There are challenges in every show, just because you want to make it the best, and you want to make certain that you’re accomplishing your goal of telling compelling stories in a funny way. That’s true for all of these characters and there is enough space for all your characters so that they are all contributing. And then you just have a week to do every episode, and then you’ve got to start all over again. Mid-seasons are a little bit low energy-wise just because you burn through everything you planned to do, and now you’ve got to keep going. You realize, “Oh, I still have a lot more to do.” I’m a little older, a lot older—
Fryman: You’re not.
Abbott: It’s just keeping the energy every week, keeping it fun, keeping it interesting, keeping everybody involved, which hasn’t been a huge problem because we’ve been lucky. We’ve had some great guest cast [members] this year who have really livened things up and changed the pace. We tell different stories with different people so that everybody gets to step up and feel, “Oh, it’s my time this week and to really bring it,” and just try not to do the same thing over and over.
Fryman: If you turn the cameras around, you see all the other people that are helping put this show together that nobody sees week to week. There’s a lot of work that goes into this and everybody’s really good at what they do. We somehow get it done in five days and start all over the next morning.
Abbott: The good news about nobody working in Hollywood is we got a lot of great people working.
Fryman: We sure do.
Kevin, I’m glad you mentioned the guest stars because I don’t know if either of you have ever looked at the Happy’s Place subreddit online, but the majority of posts are just people saying they should bring this guest star on and so forth. The number one person is Dolly Parton. There have been some amazing guest stars already, but who is your dream guest star to have on the show, and who do you imagine them playing?
Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane on Happy’s PlaceImage via NBC
Abbott: I’ll tell you, normally I’m Mr. No Guest Star. We only have so much real estate, and I love our people and I want our people saying the lines. You have a guest star, and you want to give them a memorable role, then that means it’s taking away from our people. But we heard last season — I’m checking up to make certain somebody’s not playing with me — that Octavia Spencer apparently wants to do the show. I would kill to have her on the show. I’d wanna talk to her and say, “What do you want to play first?” Because I want to create a role for her that is worthy of having somebody like that on the show. So that’d be my answer. Octavia Spencer.
Fryman: One of mine is Jane Lynch and we got her. She’s just so hilarious.
Abbott: I have to say, we had Christopher Lloyd on. For my 40th birthday party, I had a “come as your favorite sitcom character” party. And I was Reverend Jim [from Taxi]. And Carol Kane… are you kidding me? This is bucket list stuff.
We’ve seen so many guest stars already, but have you guys ever considered adding more to the regular cast down the line?
Fryman: If we get 10 more minutes [per episode].
Abbott: Yeah, I’m not against that at all, because I think once you discover people… like Jane Lynch slotted in, and she is just so brilliant. I certainly would want her as a recurring character because that role has more to grow. I also feel like if we did add another regular cast member, it’d be like what we do with casting, which is somebody who comes in and just inhabits a character. We’ll come up with a character that we need that fleshes out our universe a little bit more and then come in and cast it. Because I think there are so many brilliant actors out there that deserve a shot and can do it.
I expect Bobbie and Emmett will have a bump in the road in the future because of Emmett’s big secret. How has it been navigating some of their rocky moments while also showing the positivity of a fresh, new relationship?
Emmett (Rex Linn) and Bobbie (Reba McEntire) on Happy’s PlaceImage via NBC
Abbott: Rex and Reba are in a relationship, so I have to be careful about the difficulties I throw in the road. I’m always aware of that. It’s something that’s a little bit more complicated than a normal on-screen romance.
Fryman: But they love playing it. They love the drama of it. They rehearse more than any two people in the world. You can’t imagine.
New episodes of Happy’s Place air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and stream the next day on Peacock.
Release Date
October 18, 2024
Directors
Pamela Fryman, Joanna Kerns, Victor González
Belissa Escobedo
Isabella
