If over the last year, you've found yourself co-habitating with loved ones that may or may not occasionally drive you insane, the Fox comedy The Moodys might be both relatable and cathartic viewing. Based on the Australian comedy of the same name, the series features an impressive cast including François Arnaud, Chelsea Frei, and Jay Baruchel, with Denis Leary and Elizabeth Perkins starring as the parents of a dysfunctional Chicago brood. Its second season, premiering this week, reintroduces the chaotic lives of the Moody family in the lead-up to a wedding that promises to end in hilarious disaster.
A seasoned TV veteran who hasn't just starred in but created multiple series, Leary can be refreshingly blunt and engaging when it comes to talking about the ups and downs of making television. So, after some extended discussion of our relative vaccination statuses (at the time we spoke, he'd just gotten his first shot, after returning home from shooting The Moodys in Montreal), I was happy to speak with Leary about why the show is set in a nebulous "post-pandemic" time period, what it was like shooting it while the pandemic was still happening, what made him crack up on set, and where he sees the third season of the show going.
Also he also gave the Oscar-nominated film The Father a high recommendation, though he did say to "be prepared because it's unbelievably emotional and it's a tough ending. But man, Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, it's just... I can't even describe the acting level." Eventually, we did get to talking about his TV show, and the affection he has for the comedy and his costars is a real, palpable thing. But first...
Collider: You know, it's funny. Of all the movies that I've been thinking about over the last year or so, for some reason one of them keeps being Demolition Man.
DENIS LEARY: Really?
I think it's the haves-and-have-nots element, and then also the emphasis on cleanliness, not touching anyone.
LEARY: Yeah, and also it's the science fiction. I think it's the cancel culture thing and the science fiction aspect that you're talking about combined. It's like so many people... I haven't seen it, but so many people, including family, have said, "Oh, have you watched Contagion?" I'm like, "No, I never saw Contagion. Why would I want to watch that now?" You know what I mean?
Yeah, it was the weirdest thing — Contagion was number one on Netflix for several weeks a year ago. But also speaking of science fiction, one of the things about that movie is in the second half, they do have a vaccine and the rollout of it seems really efficient. They have a whole system.
LEARY: Yeah. Welcome to America, right? Where we find out exactly how organized we were and how prone to conspiracy theories... It's insanity. I don't even know what to say about it anymore.
So The Moodys got greenlit last July, correct?
LEARY: I think even before that. I think it was before the pandemic. We didn't announce it till afterward, but it was like January a year ago. And then we just thought we would never... It's self-contained cycles, right? There's a family event within each cycle, so we didn't worry about it. We just thought we were going to go to 2022.
Then Canada was really hardcore about protocols on their sets, so when people started shooting up there they were having very few problems and they weren't shutting down at all. So I think the two of the three creators went up before Thanksgiving, and then we went up the day after Christmas. So yeah, they had a lockdown and a curfew the entire time we were there, so nobody was on the streets at night. There was nobody except police and people who were delivering food or drugs, probably illegal and legal, but we didn't go anywhere except hotel rooms and the set.
Did you end up spending a lot of time with the cast, or were you more isolated?
LEARY: We were isolated on our own. Like in the hotel, you were allowed to go to each other's rooms and stuff, but there's no time. I mean, we would do that I think more in the beginning, but it takes longer to shoot because of the COVID protocols. So we did spend a lot more time on set, which I think within that cast, the main cast especially, everybody's pretty much capable of improvising, so we've always sort of played around with what the creators gave us with their blessing. So that was good because it takes so long to get to the point where you're shooting that when you actually shoot, you have 15 minute chunks before you have to decontaminate the set again. It's just protocol. So it led to more... I think everybody, we just got tighter. We knew each other from last year, so there was more improvisation. It was just looser, which I think is good. And we were sitting around either rehearsing or coming up with new ideas or... It's a lot of sitting around time.
How does it change the experience of making a TV show, when your name's not on it as a creator?
LEARY: It changes it... Listen, when you're just acting, the great thing is you don't have to get involved in the behind-the-scenes process. You can basically just show up and do that one job. As an executive producer on this, I feel more responsibility but I also know the guys. I've worked with Bob Fisher, who's one of the creators, several times. We did a couple of series together. So yeah, I really don't have that much responsibility.
I still have some responsibility in terms of who we're going to hire as directors because this year they couldn't direct. Rob Greenberg had to stay home because he's recovering from breast cancer, which is sort of part of what my character is based on. So he had had a recent checkup and they didn't want him flying during COVID — he and Bob direct everything and Bob said, "I'm not directing without my partner."
But basically, no, I don't really have to get involved behind the scenes. They ask my opinion on scripts and everything else, but it's a pleasure to just not have to write while I'm working as an actor.
Not to mention especially the less fun stuff, like budget meetings and so forth.
LEARY: Don't have to do any of them. I mean, they talked to me about them and I have to be on Zoom sometimes, but for the most part, I was able to keep out of that. I love doing that stuff but it's two jobs full-time, you know what I mean? So it's a pleasure.
Also, in this particular circumstance, I'm working with Elizabeth Perkins, I've never worked with her before but I'm a huge fan of hers and I knew from her reputation and also having seen her work that she's got comedy chops. It's great to come into work every day and go with Jay Baruchel, or Chelsea or François or Elizabeth, and just go, "Okay, so listen, what do you guys think about the scene today?", and start talking about ideas and coming up with new lines. All I have to do is focus on that, which is great.
So I've seen the first few episodes of Season 2, and it really doesn't feel like any other family show on TV right now, which I think is a real testament to how well everyone works together.
LEARY: Right. Yeah, there's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of people yelling at each other. More so this year because of the pandemic, I think everybody who's had to have family moved back in or gather with their family for part of it. There's a lot of us. I think that probably makes everybody appreciate that energy a little bit more where you're like, yeah, you love them but they just won't leave. And when they leave, they have to come back and stay again, so it's like that scene where... I can't even remember what episode it is, but there's a scene where my character comes down and starts calmly threatening everybody about the cream. But it's true. I had my grown adult kids here for a bit and my daughter's boyfriend for a big chunk of the lockdown, and of course, you love everybody, but you're not used to having that many adults in one space, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and it's weird when you're home with your parents, trying to remember how to be both an adult and also their child.
LEARY: Exactly. There you go. That sums it right up. And in this case, it's like you're dealing with two adults, two of them who don't really want to be there, and then Jay Baruchel's character who keeps talking about leaving and he's just never going to leave. He's clearly never going to leave. So I love that energy. I think you could tell that they love each other, but underneath it, everybody's really getting on each other's nerves.
In general, where do you land on the question that I think a lot of shows are facing right now, about whether or not to include the pandemic in their storytelling?
LEARY: In Bob, Rob, and Tad [Quill]'s case, they decided to sort of vaguely paint it as just post-pandemic. I don't know where it is, but I think it's Episode 4, if I can remember correctly, is where the hockey episode happens, where they try to move me to the senior team because they think I'm too old for the team that my son and my brother Roger are playing on. But we make references to the pandemic being over and one of the guys on the other team who had COVID still has some breathing problems and we're going to take advantage of that while we're playing against them. So there's stuff like that... There's enough TV shows now dealing with it directly with people wearing masks and things like that. We just felt like let's go post-pandemic. Like the lockdown happened, the pandemic is basically over, and make reference to it as in the recent past — just to get away from it a little bit, because we wanted to focus on everybody arguing.
Of course. So kind of to wrap things up, where do you see the show going for a third season?
LEARY: Well, the only thing we ever talk about is in terms of the future while we were on set because you're sitting around a lot, myself and Rob and Tad, and Bob and Tad because Rob was back in California, which by the way ended up being a great thing because especially with all the improv stuff, he was in California and he was seeing the rushes, but he wasn't on set so he was a fresh eye to tell us whether the improvs were working or not and whether the stuff we were throwing away was necessary or not. But the three of us, me, Bob and Tad, you start talking about next season, like what are you going to do if... And it's always a family event, so this one was built on a wedding that ends up not happening supposedly, a wedding gone bad.
And in the past, we talked about Thanksgiving or the 4th of July, try to build it around a holiday or a family event. So we're not going to go back to a wedding because we've done that. But the idea of doing something that's built around a family gathering, like let's say a July 4th thing, depending on when they pick us up and if we're able to go back and shoot and what the weather would be like, I think we would probably have to look at it then and go, "All right, so we'll be debuting..." Like this year, it's kind of like an Easter wedding, I guess, for the audience because that's the time of year they'll be dealing with.
Just as a follow-up on that, would you want to find a time of year to do this where it wasn't snowing?
LEARY: You know, it doesn't matter to me as long as it works for the show, but it was just classic. We realized, okay, if we're going to go, we're going to have to go either in the fall when it's going to be cold or we're going to have to probably go right after Christmas. And this is just me, how I think, I'm like, "Perfect. After Christmas, the pandemic will be over." And Montreal, when we were up there the last time, it was in late summer, early fall, I played ball hockey — which is street hockey in America — with a bunch of guys up there I know on Saturdays and I was able to skate on Sunday, so every weekend I was playing hockey. So this time I was like I'm going to be playing ball hockey and skating outdoors, which of course never happened because we weren't allowed to. So meanwhile, all the rinks and everything were closed.
I love shooting in Montreal. It looks great, and it's great crews, but one of the main reasons I love it is it's a hockey town so I can play hockey. So I don't really care selfishly when we go, but it would be something nice to shoot it actually one time in the late spring and early summer when we can not have to deal with snow. I'm not kidding you, it snowed basically every day and if it didn't snow for a day, the next day it snowed like three feet all the way through this year. The first year we were using fake snow. This year it was like "we can't get rid of the snow."
Well, it's tough either way, I imagine.
LEARY: It is, but I got to tell you, I love working with Bob and the creators, but I really love working with Elizabeth and those three young actors. I mean the entire cast, they're all great, but the three kids are just ridiculous. Chelsea Frei to me is just... Jay Baruchel's already known as sort of a comedy genius, but she is unbelievable. I mean, she is a force of comedy nature. So I spend most of my time on that set, and not even when we're shooting, just when we're getting ready to shoot, I'm laughing my ass off. I'm usually sitting someplace in the kitchen or the house watching these kids.
I watched François and Jay, we did a read-through of the scripts as they came in, and there was a scene between them at the wedding, which is Episode 8 — when they did the read-through, they had me laughing so hard. I said, "You know what I'm going to do? The day that we shoot the wedding, I don't care when we shoot their scene, I want to be there to watch the scene getting shot." I watched the rehearsal of that scene and laughed my ass off. And then they made me leave the set because I was laughing while they were shooting it. That kind of stuff, when you're working on a show like that where you can enjoy the other people that much, it really... I've been around a long time. I've worked with some great people, some really funny people. These people are just like... You never know what they're going to say to you. I never know what Jay's going to say at the beginning of a scene. So it's really exciting, and I have a blast doing it.
The Moodys airs Thursdays on Fox. You can catch up with Season 1 now on Hulu.