Steve Carell returns to TV comedy in Rooster on HBO, playing a well-meaning dad
The series, created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, is Carell’s first outright television comedy since leaving The Office in 2011
Recently, Steve Carell had a misunderstanding with his adult daughter over whether to give her a ride home. While both preferred she take an Uber, they agreed Carell could go hours out of his way to drive her instead – thinking it was what the other really wanted to do.
His wife, Nancy, eventually stepped in, telling them to stop “acting like idiots” and to just be honest. That is when Carell realised he was “trying too hard” to do what he thought was a good dad deed.
“She would really have preferred to take the Uber and I would really have preferred to just go home without dropping her off,” Carell says.
That type of push and pull between a father and his adult daughter is at the centre of Carell’s new series Rooster, now streaming on HBO.
Carell plays Greg Russo, a successful author of “beach reads” whose protagonist is named Rooster. When Greg’s daughter Katie (Charly Clive), a professor at Ludlow College, finds herself in the middle of a humiliating break-up, he takes a job at the small liberal arts school to stay close to her.