It was a busy day on the Super Troopers 2 set back in 2016, as a whole host of extras prepared to fill out a party scene that was set to begin shooting. But amongst all the frenzy, it was nearly impossible not to notice one thing: Rob Lowe's hair. Voluminous and layered, it was the kind of style that might only have worked circa the late '90s, a flagrantly dated choice that told me almost everything I needed to know about Lowe's curious new character Guy LeFranc, a Canadian mountie who, through a series of requisite hijinks, is thrown into the mix with former Vermont highway patrol officers Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar), Mac (Steve Lemme), Farva (Kevin Hefernan), Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske), and Foster (Paul Soter) when the border between Vermont and Canada is disputed.

Alas, it was Lowe's last day on set (despite having only been around for a scant ten days), but he was freely honest about not being quite ready to go. "I could shoot this movie every day for the rest of my life and I would be happy," he confided. Luckily, before he had to return to set for more Canadian mountie chicanery, Lowe had a chance to sit down with Collider to give us the skinny on Broken Lizard's little project that could. During the interview, he spoke about how he found his way to the film, how much the cast improvised on set, the distinct experience of working on a crowd-funded movie and revealed just how different the sequel is from the beloved cult original.

Check out the full interview below. Super Troopers 2 is now in theaters.

How did you get connected to this project?

LOWE: Jay directed four episode of The Grinder last year and that’s how we met. And I loved that show and I loved him. And when it was over, we were both so bummed, we loved working with each other so much. And he said, I’m writing something in Super Troopers 2 for you. And I said, “I don’t care what it is, I’m doing it.” So that’s how we ended up doing that.

Tell me about this new character, I’ve got to know if he’s got a French accent.

LOWE: He’s like a mid-Canada guy who sort of ended up – he’s not a Quebecois, a French Canadian. He’s not. He played in Halifax, and his nickname was the Halifax Explosion.

Do we get to see your on-ice skills at all?

LOWE: I don’t think you do in this one, maybe if we do Super Troopers 3.

This hair is certainly a look, talk to me about arriving at this bitchin’ ‘90s look.

LOWE: I wanted a very dated hairstyle that might have been cool ten or fifteen years ago. And I’m also in the middle of shooting my new show Code Black and I have buzzed blonde hair. It’s perfect for that character, but would have been totally inappropriate for this one. So it sort of forced me into a wig, and then the question was what wig. So a little bit of Barry Melrose, it just felt very perfect for a small-town Canadian former hockey player.

I hope I’m not just projecting, but this is a bit of a bad boy kind of look. Is your character our antagonist?

LOWE: One of the things I liked about the character is he’s so harmless and sort of lovable, so he’s definitely not, in the archetype that I’ve done in Tommy Boy and Wayne’s World, it’s not the bad guy per se. It’s very original. What I like is it’s hard to describe, that’s the good news.

How much are you guys improvising on set? 

LOWE: A lot. Any of the good comedies whether it was Austin Powers or Wayne’s World or Tommy Boy and now Super Troopers, the one thing they all have in common is the script is hilarious to begin with and that’s sort of the baseline that you know that if it all goes to hell, at least you have a hilarious script. And then you try every day to make it funnier and try to do things, we do that a lot here.

I know you’ve worked on projects with a wide array of budgets, from super low to huge, but how has the experience of working on a crowd-funded movie been different?

LOWE: It’s just inspiring to see when the crowd-funded groups come. It’s inspiring because they’re so passionate about it, they’ve literally put their money where their mouth is. To see their sense of pride and ownership in the movie is really, really inspiring. Because it’s a nice break from just how corporate the rest of movies and TV have become. I’ve been really inspired by it.

What has it been like to enter this world that’s already so established, with a cast that’s already so tight-knit? 

LOWE: I mean that’s always part of the challenge of doing ensemble work, and I love that, same with Code Black, they did a whole season, I’m the new kid in town. And I would say it’s like having to jump onto a freight train that’s moving at 60 miles per hour. You have sort of one way to do it right, and if you don’t do it right, you’re going to be obliterated. And this was easy, because like I said, I know Jay. I feel very comfortable, from Parks and Recreation, improvisational, comedic, group acting. The UCB people that Amy [Poehler] brought in are very sort of similar to the Broken Lizard guys. So it was a really easy transition for me.

What was your relationship to the original film, had you seen it when Jay offered you the role?

LOWE: I hadn’t seen it prior, I was aware of it because I knew people were so obsessed with it. And that’s what’s so fun about this. This feels a lot like Wayne’s World did. Which is that people who knew Wayne’s World loved it and then there was a whole group of people who had no idea what was going on. And then the movie came out and it just skyrocketed. And I kind of feel like this has that potential.

Obviously the pressure with this sort of long-delayed sequel is high. How would you say the team has been approaching that?

LOWE: I think they’ve done it exactly right. Because to me, sequels are – the danger is, and we could point to a thousand sequels, were horrendous. And then you can also point to a lot of sequels that are even better. To me, Austin Powers 2 comes to mind. Austin Powers 2 is a way bigger movie, way more successful. Austin Powers was perfectly fine, it was a great movie, but Austin Powers 2 was nuts. And I think it’s finding the right balance of being true to the original, knowing what was valuable about the original and taking it to the next level in a way that doesn’t overpower what you liked about it in the first place. And these guys have done that.

If you had to come up with an analogy to compare the original film with this one, what would you say?

LOWE: I feel like Super Troopers was sort of like the camera test version for this movie. I really do. I don’t feel like this is a sequel to that movie. That movie is a great movie, but that’s like the student film that got the studio to let them go make the real movie.

For more on Super Troopers 2, click here for our previous coverage.