After six seasons on Comedy Central and a spinoff movie, the cult classic comedy series Reno 911! went off the air. In the ensuing 11 years, its core cast went on to pursue other projects. Then, this past December, the newly launched premium streaming service Quibi announced it was reviving Reno 911! for a surprise seventh season, reuniting the creators and main cast for new adventures with the Reno, Nevada Police Department.
In a press roundtable attended by CBR, series creators and stars Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and Cedric Yarbrough discussed reviving the fan-favorite show after over a decade away, developing the revival for Quibi's mobile, ten minutes or less per episode format and other behind the scenes secrets from the series.
The creators quickly praised the newest addition to the cast Paul Walter Hauser (Jewell). Although he's joining an established ensemble who have been working together for two decades, Garant referred to Hauser as "a stone-cold genius" who fit in seamlessly with the rest of the cast.
"He's brilliant, he's just ready to go," agreed Yarbrough, who worked closely with Hauser on his first day. "The thing about the show now is we kind of have a brand, so that guests stars that come in, they know what to expect, they get the tone of the show. It's not like what we did seventeen years ago when we were all kind of figuring it out."
Garant and Lennon noted that all of the guest stars were a good creative fit this season, with Lennon adding, "When people come to us, like Paul, what we really just want to see is, like, are you as batsh*t, crazy committed as we are? And I think there's kind of a nice thing about us, which is the characters are all the absolutely dumbest people in the world but they're all so very, very sincere. So I thought Paul, as [the new character] Jeffy, just brought a really great -- weirdly, Paul comes in and suddenly he's like the smartest person on the show [laughs]. We have one functional, adjunct member in Paul Walter Hauser. Amongst us, he was the alpha, the most confident [laughs]. Everything he comes into, we just instantly let him take charge."
The big question of how easy and emotional it was for the returning cast to reprise their roles after so much time away came next, with Lennon admitting they had quietly portrayed the characters in the interim for USO Tours and benefit appearances for various law enforcement agencies before adding, "There was really a weirdness when we were all there together for the first time; that felt pretty amazing this season.
"The funny thing is everybody got really good at [doing] Reno 911! and then we took 11 years off where everybody got really good at their own shows. So by the time people came back, it had almost sort of an Avengers vibe of improvisation [comedy]. Everybody's got so sharp! And the first time I saw [costar Niecy Nash] this year at all, because the schedule was so hard, she was dressed up as T.T. She just walked up to me on the street, and she had those big, weird, pendulous boots, and we just hugged and were like 'Alright, let's do one of these.' I will say, we didn't think about it very hard and you can probably tell that in the episodes."
"I was never the night before, the week before, because we didn't have that long a schedule. And I was worried that it would take us a week to warm up like it used to -- it used to take us two or three days to warm up," admitted Garant. "And we would always start with material that we didn't necessarily need. We'd, like, start out with a Big Mike [sketch] where if it didn't work out, it's fine because we're going shoot ten Big Mikes and one of them will be usable.
"But we didn't have that this time and the very first piece we shot was [with] David Holmes and [Wendi McLendon-Covey and Kerri Kenney-Silver], and as soon as they opened their mouth, they were great. As soon as they opened their mouths, I was totally not nervous anymore. They just hit the ground running so hard and every word out of Wendi's mouth was just so fucking hilarious and perfect."
Lennon noted that the very first day of shooting was a concealed-carry fashion show seen early in the season, Meanwhile, Yarbrough joked that he got emotional realizing how much weight he had gained since the end of the original run, before observing, "it really is like these weird Super Friends coming together and we're all bringing our weird superpowers and we've all had really great life experiences and now we're all bringing them to a show we loved. And I was a little scared -- we captured lightning in a bottle again and we still really dig hanging out and being weird together and trying to crack each other up."
When asked if the writers tried to recapture the tone of the old show or lean more into current events, Lennon noted that the writers actively wondered, "How do we stay true to what the show used to be, which was wildly inappropriate a lot of the time. And I think that we weirdly do address a lot of things that are going on but sometimes you may not even notice because they're generally upbeat.
"We have a piece about bodycams on cops, we have pieces about how to arrest kids that are swimming in a pool. There's weirdly a lot of social stuff that we address -- the Cop Watch people are a character; we opened with a Second Amendment gun show. So I feel like we weirdly do address a lot of sort of social topics and things but with the absolute dumbest coating on all of them. I don't think it's a preachy show in any way. My character doesn't change at all, my character is just Viggo Mortensen's outfit from G.I. Jane and Al Gore's voice."
Garant agreed that though the subject matter has a tendency to be dark given the faux true-crime premise, the overall tone is still upbeat. Noting there had been multiple waves of anti-police sentiment since the show first went off the air, Garant observed, "We knew we couldn't just ignore that but we also knew we couldn't be preachy or grim. And so we really went through material about crazy white people calling 911 because they saw a black guy." Lennon added that there are six or eight variations of that premise in the season, while Garant noted that the show exists within its own stupid bubble but also cannot pretend it's still 2005.
Yarbrough added, as one of the African-American cast members, the show has always had a collaborative, open working dynamic, with the main cast discussing subject matter they were comfortable addressing. "The great thing about this show is that everyone gets it, whether we're talking about homosexuality, race, women's issues, everyone gets a chance of being offended if they choose to be; but it's all of us, we're just weird on the show. It's an example of looking at our humanity and being able to laugh at it."
When asked if there was any chance for the renewed interest in Reno 911! to potentially revive Reno 911!: S.O.S., the planned cinematic sequel to the spinoff film Reno 911!: Miami, Lennon immediately lit up. "This is the perfect time to see a movie that stupid. The Rock was in it when he was only the world's strongest man, not the universe's strongest man so it's like an interesting time capsule.
"But, as happened to us at Fox a couple times, the Reno 911! movie was testing through the roof and people were losing their minds that they were like 'Well, we've got to have Part 2.' So we wrote the outline Reno S.O.S., which is basically Lord of the Flies. Basically, we're transferring a prisoner somewhere and we end up on an island; it was exactly like a Lord of the Flies kind of scenario. But what's interesting is that the Reno movie did well but not well enough to merit a sequel, which was a bummer because we were so excited to do that movie.
"We actually have ideas to do two Reno sequels -- I hope that now that we're back, we'll do both -- one was Reno 911!: S.O.S. and then we wanted to do another movie that was very much just Die Hard that was set in the Paris Hotel, Las Vegas. And the reason we wanted to do it was so that the title would be Reno 911!: Miami -- Paris, Las Vegas."
When asked what made them want to bring the series back to Quibi, Garant recalled that Comedy Central had approached them years ago to revive the series on the network but they felt it was too much a "lateral move" given how their careers had progressed in the interim. However, when Quibi executive Doug Herzog, who had worked with the creative team several times before, approached the group with an offer to revive the series on the new streamer, he offered a significant amount of creative control and budget. Lennon agreed that Herzog was instrumental to the series' return, while observing, "The one thing we knew when we heard about the Quibi format is it's the ideal Reno 911! format. We are the Lays potato chips of programming: Just have a couple or you'll feel sick later. We're a sketch show."
After learning Quibi's original programming ran for ten minutes or less per episode, Garant and the creative team had an editor pare down a full-length Reno 911! episode from the original run to six or seven minutes. Impressed by the results, the team decided to move forward with the Quibi revival. Lennon declared that, in his opinion, "These episodes are better because of the length, honestly. They never overstay their welcome. They get in, hit hard and get out."
CBR then asked if the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had impacted production at all on the revival season. Garant noted that they had just finished editing the 16th of the season's 25 episodes the Wednesday before the global health crisis forced the show's production offices to close, with the team cancelling a wrap party just in case. "That Thursday, the next day, was the last day anybody went into work. And so Friday, we sent AVID equipment home with our three editors and did the rest of it via Zoom. But we were f*cking lucky we were wrapped."
"We got very, very lucky," Lennon agreed. "Everything was completely in the can; we were almost halfway done with the episodes. And one of our editors, Christian Hoffman -- it's amazing, when Ben and I started at NYU, the things you would need to edit a TV show were the size of an upright piano -- and we're so lucky with the technology and where we are that people are now just finishing these episodes in their living rooms."
Yarbrough lamented the lack of a congratulatory wrap party to celebrate the cast and crew coming together to produce a new season of the series after so much time away, before praising the experience. "Hopefully audiences will enjoy the show," he declared. "We had a f*cking ball doing this. It was easier somehow, and felt more fun." Both Lennon and Garant concurring that the new season was far easier and more fun than making the show had ever been before.
The creators noted that many of the fan-favorite characters or familiar faces from previous seasons, like the ne'er-do-well Terry, wouldn't be making an appearance in the revival season, largely due to scheduling conflicts because of the quick turnaround and short production window for the new season.
As the creators signed off, they reflected on how lucky they are to have been friends and collaborative partners for decades, forming the improv group The State before relocating to Los Angeles to work in television and film. With Reno 911! finally back for its seventh season, the creators hope audiences will enjoy the show on Quibi.
The Reno 911! revival features the return of creators/stars Robert Ben Garant, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Thomas Lennon, along with Cedric Yarbrough, Carlos Alazraqui, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Niecy Nash. It is available on Quibi.