He Thinks He’s The Best

Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for Rooster episode 1, “Release the Brown Fat”!Phil Dunster is back with an antagonistic new character for Rooster, and the creative team behind the show are breaking down what’s to come from him.

Co-created by Ted Lasso‘s Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, the HBO comedy series stars Dunster as Archie, a professor of Russian history at the fictional Ludlow College who becomes the center of attention when he leaves his wife, fellow professor Katie, for a grad student. As he tries to figure out his next steps with Lauren Tsai’s Sunny, Archie finds his life even more complicated when Katie’s father, bestselling novelist Greg, comes to the campus to support her.

Ahead of the show’s premiere, ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley interviewed Phil Dunster, Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses to discuss Rooster. In looking at Archie’s role in the series, Dunster described his character as being “the best, the smartest and the prettiest“ of the bunch, explaining that he “really does think that he’s the best” compared to everyone around him:

Phil Dunster: I think that he is incredibly talented and he really, really knows that. And all the good things that have happened to him in his life, he kind of feels like he deserves, which, from an audience perspective, I think probably concocts a pretty obnoxious recipe. And what we’re seeing here is his first real comeuppance with reality and having to deal with those consequences.

Dunster further pointed out that “the confinement of being stuck on a campus,” with him and Rooster‘s other characters living in on-campus housing, makes for “a really delicious” recipe for the HBO comedy’s storytelling. When asked about comparisons between Archie and Jamie Tartt, both Dunster and his co-star, Danielle Deadwyler, agreed that his new villain is “the complete opposite” of his Ted Lasso character, even though he will have “some qualities of redemption.”

For Lawrence, the co-creator began by humorously acknowledging “I’ve often been accused of using the same people over and over” in his shows, alluding to his and Dunster’s Ted Lasso history, as well as Scrubs‘ John C. McGinley having a key part in Rooster. However, the two-time Emmy winner went on to defend that when working with an actor or actress that “you like hanging out with,” there’s no reason not to “keep them” around:

Bill Lawrence: Phil’s the first one I’ve done that with, who kind of tricked me because I’m still simple-minded and get tricked by the accent. So when he showed up, I thought he actually sounded like Jamie Tartt, but he showed up speaking completely differently. I’m like, “Whoa, what’s going on? ” He’s like, “Bill, Jamie Tartt was like a blue-collar, Manchester thing. This is the guy who’s kind of posh, do you know what I mean? And a bit of a pompous a—.”

Lawrence went on to praise Dunster for embracing an entirely different kind of villain for Rooster, as the Emmy nominee is “so good at being a cad,” and for having a gift that even as “I dislike him more and more,” the creator “can’t ever completely hate him.” Tarses went on to share that, with it being his first experience working with Dunster, he “didn’t know what he was capable of” as a performer going into playing “the bad guy.”

For him, Tarses’ goal in casting Dunster and working with the star was that Rooster “needed someone you could still love when he was doing really dastardly things.” The co-creator concurred with Lawrence that it’s “hard not to like” Dunster as Archie, praising the performer as being “so funny” and “so nimble” on any given production day.

While he had a fairly extensive career even prior to the Apple TV comedy, it’s undeniable that Dunster quickly became an international sensation as a villain thanks to his turn as the egotistical Jamie in Ted Lasso. However, as with many of the characters in Lawrence’s previous series, Jamie was celebrated for having a layered evolution across its first three seasons, eventually breaking free of his antagonist label by the end.

Much to the trio’s points above, Archie is not going to have the same kind of redemption arc through the rest of Rooster. After a lot of encouragement to both from Steve Carell’s protagonist, the season premiere sees Dunster’s villain and Charly Clive’s Katie come back together for a conversation about potentially working things out, only for him to reveal that Sunny is pregnant and, out of anger, she burns his rare first edition of War & Peace, which also burns his house down.

While some could argue the arson, intentional or not, is a bigger issue for the pair to overcome, it’s yet unclear how Archie will look to proceed with Sunny’s pregnancy, and potential reconciliation with Katie. Should he decide to continue his relationship with the grad student he left Katie for, this would make it more challenging for audiences to overlook his infidelity, and give him a trickier road to redemption than Ted Lasso‘s Jamie.

One of the other key differences between Dunster’s villain portrayals is that the HBO comedy doesn’t give him the same kind of role model as Jason Sudeikis’ futbol coach. Carell’s protagonist looks to be as messy of a presence to have on the Ludlow campus as Archie and Katie, and may not be able to bring the same level of advice and wholesome life lessons that made Jamie’s evolution into a more complicated character an easier accepted one.

That being said, based on Lawrence, Tarses and Dunster’s comments above, there is still a chance that Rooster could see Archie go in a completely different direction by turning against both Sunny and Katie in the wake of the pregnancy news. This would further test the Emmy nominee’s abilities to keep his character just as lovable as “dastardly,” and provide the team the chance to prove him more than just another Jamie Tartt.

New episodes of Rooster air Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on HBO and HBO Max.