Anna Daniels
Earlier this year, MacGruber fans got the exciting news of America’s greatest hero returning with a TV series over at the NBCUniversal subscription streaming service Peacock. Will Forte will be back as the titular character, a raunchy parody of the resourceful, environmentally conscious 1980s TV character MacGyver, and we recently got a chance to catch up with the former Saturday Night Live cast member to talk about what fans can expect from the MacGruber TV series.
/Film contributor Alex Arabian interviewed Will Forte while the actor made the publicity rounds for the Irish horror comedy Extra Ordinary (watch the trailer). We’ll have the full interview published a bit later, but we thought a brief detour into MacGruber territory warranted special attention. Here’s what Forte had to say about the anticipated series:
The next chapter [of MacGruber] began as a feature sequel, but evolved into a TV series. What went into that decision?
We were originally going to try to do a MacGruber 2. And then, somewhere along the way, we decided that maybe it would be fun to try to do it as a series. For different platforms that would be interested in doing MacGruber, it makes more sense, budget-wise, for what we’re needing to make; it makes more sense to do a limited-run series than a movie. So we just started thinking about it in terms of a series instead and figured out this fun season arc. We’re pretty excited by what we’ve come up with, but we’re just waiting to see if they’ll let us do it.
So it sounds like the MacGruber TV series hasn’t been officially greenlit yet. Maybe they’re still waiting to see how much it will cost to produce before letting them make it. Or maybe Peacock is waiting to see what the initial subscriber numbers look like before they get started on too many original shows.
Are there any basic plot details that you could share, or are you keeping it under wraps?
It takes place about seven or eight years after the end of the movie. So it picks up not right where the movie leaves off, but we explain the seven years [after MacGruber]. I don’t know what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say. The thing I will say is if people liked the movie, I think they will like this series as well. It was nerve-racking because Jorma [Taccone] and John [Solomon] and I really were excited about how the movie turned out, and proud of the movie, and so we didn’t want to do something just to do it. We wanted to do something that we felt people who liked the movie would hopefully like as much as that. We’re pretty happy with how things are going. Right now, it’s at the first draft stages of a lot of the scripts. So there’s a lot of stuff that I can’t wait to get in and tinker with and just pare it down and just make it funnier and tighter.
The official synopsis released back in January said MacGruber has been rotting in prison for over a decade, but for an unknown reason. Maybe details have changed slightly since then, but the synopsis could have just had more information than Forte realized. We also learned the show would focus on MacGruber taking down a mysterious villain from his past—Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth, following in the tradition of the inappropriate sounding villain names that began with our hero’s arch nemesis Dieter Von Cunth.
Will “KFBR392” be making a reappearance?
I don’t think so [laughing]. There certainly are a couple things like that that we touch on. But, for the most part, [we’re] just moving into new territory. But still, the tone of it is the exact same tone. We just didn’t want to make it be like a greatest hits from the movie. But people will be satisfied and grossed out enough [laughing].
MacGruber got his revenge on the person who besmirched his Mazda Miata, so that obsession in his life was wrapped up. It might have been funny if the perpetrator returned for his own revenge, but it’s good to hear Forte say that the series won’t retread the same territory with a “greatest hits” compilation of references to the original movie. That only gets us more excited about the return of this crazy character, so we hope Peacock makes it happen.
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