All 10 episodes of Rooster Season 1 are now streaming on HBO Max.
The first season of Rooster just wrapped, but the team behind the breakout HBO comedy is already deep into planning Season 2. I spoke to showrunners BIll Lawrence, who also created Shrinking, Scrubs and Ted Lasso, and Matt Tarses (Sports Night, The Goldbergs) ahead of the Season 1 finale to break down what we can expect from a new batch of episodes – which is coming sooner rather than later.
Season 2 of HBO’s Rooster will consist of 10 episodes and air within a year.
“We’ve broken the first four episodes,” Lawrence says. “We’re doing 10, and HBO wants it on within a year or less. They’ve got us grinding, so we’ve been at it for a while.”
“Bill’s looking to his right and seeing the board,” Tarses added, referring to a wall of notecards breaking down episode and story beats for Season 2. Lawrence pointed the camera at the cards but slyly whipped it away before I got the chance to read any details.
The Rooster Season 1 finale saw tons of major decisions and milestones from the staff and students at the fictional Ludlow College. Bestselling-author-turned-college-instructor Greg (Steve Carell) decided to stay at Ludlow after finding both professional personal fulfillment. Meanwhile both Greg’s daughter Katie (Charly Clive) and grad student Sunny (Lauren Tsai) both dumped pompous professor Archie (Phil Dunster) and started new chapters. According to Lawrence, the finale’s trajectory remained largely unchanged because the writers were anticipating a renewal.
“We were feeling pretty confident because the show premiered really well,” Lawrence says. “[There were three] things that we kept [in the finale] that we knew we wanted to do at the beginning. One was we wanted to do a big parallel from Greg at the beginning as a lonely guy who had to invent people that were giving him a going away party [who then] at the end gets to realize his self-worth a little bit [and be] super important to a bunch of people.
“We [also] wanted to make sure that Connie Britton [took] Greg’s world and made it her own at the end with a little cliffhanger. And then the last thing we wanted to do – we knew we wanted to end the year with both Sunny and Katie as women that [were] free of the burden of a toxic guy. That’s a story generator for next year.”
Rooster showrunners reveal which characters will have expanded roles in Season 2.
Key to feeding Season 2’s “story generator” is the array of characters that inhabit the show’s universe.
“I’ve been doing this forever on [shows like] Scrubs,” Lawrence says. “We would be remiss if we didn’t open up Annie Mumolo’s life as [as Walt’s] assistant [Cristle] or Maximo [Salas] who played [Cristle’s son] Tommy. The same for Robby Hoffman who plays Mo. [They should be] bigger characters in the show because I found myself going like, ‘Wow, they’re doing amazing work.’”
“It was an embarrassment of riches,” Tarses says. “Rory Scoville [who plays campus police officer Mullins] is just, the minute he opens his mouth, I can’t stop laughing. I love Scott MacArthur, [who plays] the hockey coach. He’s going to be back in a significant way if we can steal him away from [Netflix’s] Running Point for enough time. I think we saw a side of Sunny at the end in the last episode that kind of gave her depth that we hadn’t seen as much of, and I think we’re going to explore that.”
Will John C. McGinley’s Walter Mann return in Rooster Season 2?
When I spoke to John C. McGinley about his role as Ludlow College president Walter Mann, he teased that “everyone at Ludlow College [was] expendable.” In the Season 1 finale, Walt finds himself out of a job and replaced by Greg’s ex-wife Beth (Connie Britton). But don’t fret, McGinley is confirmed to return in Season 2.
“He’s a regular,” Tarses says. “Next semester is a transition semester and then [Beth] is not coming until the semester after that. So [Walt] talks about his swan song with Greg. He’s going to be dealing with this new situation and Greg’s going to help him through it as we go forward. It would be meant for us to just send him away.”
Will Greg and Dylan get together in Rooster Season 2?
One of the biggest threads in Season 1 of Rooster was the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic between Greg and his colleague Dylan (Danielle Deadwyler). Lawrence and Tarses say that question will persist into Season 2.
“Matt and I always bicker about it because I’m a big believer in male-female friendship,” Lawrence says. “Matt says he’s a basic bitch all the time.”
“I’m against male-female friendship!” Tarses jokes. “I like romance!”
“We did a lot of [Dylan]’s professional life and didn’t see her personal life,” Lawrence says. “[Danielle] is such a ridiculously talented actress. That’s part of the storybreaking we’re doing now. we have [a Season 1] easter eggs [where she] Said ‘I love you’ to a professor once. We had planned to meet that guy last year and turned it into this year. [We’re] rounding out who she is and where she’s at in her life because you can’t give her more material.”
“I think there’s more stakes to every friendship when you know there’s a subtext that might go deeper than that. I would just say a good spoiler is that I think no matter what we do, we owe it to ourselves to explore [Dylan’s] personal life in deeper one way. And we’re definitely doing that early in the year.”
Rooster showrunners reveal how big the world of the show really is.
It seems like there will be plenty of main character drama to dive into when Season 2 of Rooster arrives, but both Tarses and Lawrence say they’re only scratching the surface on how expansive the show might become.
“It was an embarrassment of riches,” Tarses says. “With all these [college] kids [and everyone else]. “So I want all those people [back for Season 2]. The regular characters too.”
“I think now there’s somewhere close to 600 characters we have to service,” Lawrence adds. “It is a college after all.”
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton