On KCRW's "The Business":
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/the-business/how-will-forte-became-the-last-man-on-earth (about 21 min.)
He covers a lot of familiar territory (how the show was developed, casting Carol and Melissa, etc.), but I was particularly interested in his observations about language restrictions and broadcast-network standards during the first half.
"I know I'm not normal -- but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
Must-See Fall TV Shows with Local Stars
Get the scoop from East Bay native Will Forte on The Last Man on Earth’s third season, coming this fall.
http://www.diablomag.com/September-2016/Will-Forte-Andy-Samberg-Local-Stars-TV/
Q: In what ways will we see Phil Miller grow and change in season three?
A: I think it will be the next step in his evolution. In season two, Phil was trying to make strides to be a better person. Sometimes he was on the mark, and sometimes he wasn’t. It will be similar this year as he comes closer and closer to fatherhood, and figures out how to be a better person in order to pass that along to his child.
Q: What other projects are you currently working on?
A: Mostly writing season three of The Last Man. And I’ve got this cartoon book I drew years ago that got me a job writing on The Jenny McCarthy Show and the Late Show With David Letterman, and now we’ve found a publisher. It’s called 101 Things to Definitely Not Do if You Want to Get a Chick, and it’s pretty much the worst advice book of all time.
"The Kristen Schaal Show":
Pt. 1 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1RxKG3Asmc (1:50)
Pt. 2 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGHPWBzuoF4 (1:44)
"I know I'm not normal -- but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
Pt. 3 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8NZ8zrHCPs
"I know I'm not normal -- but I'm trying to change!" ~ Muriel's Wedding
http://www.thewrap.com/last-man-on-earth-will-forte-sports-balls-phil-miller/
On the series, [Phil/Tandy] Miller leaves the character’s collection of sports-balls-with-faces buddies with Mike (Jason Sudeikis), an effort to keep his apparently dying brother company. But where is Gary, Diego, Bryce, Anton and the gang in real life?
“They’re just in some bucket,” Forte told us. “In fact, it’s funny, because when they come back out I just feel so bad for them.” ...
“There’s something about these balls that I understand now, truly, like Phil does in the pilot,” he continued. “I understand how you could get sucked into getting close to these inanimate objects. They’ve really become a part of the show … and part of our lives.”
Forte told us that leaving the beloved volleyball, shuttlecock, soccer ball and golf ball — among others — behind was “a very emotional moment.” And so will be their reunion, something he promised will happen this season.
“I got emotional in a way that I don’t get emotional at funerals. It was this really weird thing,” Forte said.
Will discusses the s.3 premiere (including a certain cameo):
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/25/last-man-earth-jon-hamm-season-premiere-will-forte-interview
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congrats. You got us again. How did you come up with the idea for the Hazmat Hammeo? Was the Mad Men connection too good to pass up? And did January help make it happen?
WILL FORTE: It honestly had nothing to do with the Mad Men connection. [Laughs] He hosted SNL a couple times while [former SNL writer and current Last Man co-executive producer] John Solomon and I were there, and we were lucky enough to get some [sketches on the air] so we got to know him a little bit. Just over the years we’ve kept in touch. He’s always up for little things like this. I had my beard tested for bacteria last season [on The Tonight Show] so I asked him and Rachel Dratch to come out and be my friends who helped me through the results. So I called him up just to see if he had any interest. Hadn’t really even thought about the Mad Men connection, oddly enough. He said it sounded like fun, and I told our writers and they said, “It’s so crazy that Betty’s going to shoot Don!” and I was like, “Oh! That’s right! Oh s—!” [Laughs] We were just so busy working on stuff, my brain is always at about half-mast.
What was his reaction when you pitched him the idea of killing him immediately?
Oh, I think if we hadn’t killed him immediately, he probably wouldn’t have done it. For something like that, when it’s a very small thing, we always try to get somebody real fun because it’s such a relatively small time commitment... I was so happy that he agreed to do it.
Did we have any requests about how he wanted to die? And how did the shoot go, literally?
He’s wonderful in that he just wants you to be happy with whatever you want… He’s just a really cool guy and bums around the set. There’s a number of people that he knows in our cast and crew, so it was just really fun having him around for the afternoon.
What did January say when you pitched her the idea? What was her first reaction?
Oh, she was excited. She saw the Mad Men connection right away.
So, moving forward, is the idea that we will see more of the biggest stars in Hollywood for a few seconds — and then they’ll die?
I mean, I think we’ll always want to kill big stars if we can. My goal is to keep stars living. That was a really fun thing about having [Jason] Sudeikis stick around. This is an amazingly talented, big star that we got to actually have for more than 20 seconds. But god, if you get an opportunity to have Will Ferrell or Jon Hamm on your show, you figure out whatever it takes to get them. But it was not, “Oh, let’s get Will Ferrell on the show.” We had this idea for the joke and that is I think why they agreed to do it. They appreciated the joke. We’ll never work something in just to try to get an actor in.
Speaking of Jason Sudeikis and Mike, what odds would you give that we will see him at one point or another this season?
Very, very low odds. But we love making low-odds choices from time to time.
You also reunited two actors from Sons of Anarchy. Sheer coincidence? And how did you choose Kenneth [Choi] for this role [of Lewis]?
That was a total coincidence, at least on my part. I’ve heard that is an amazing show. That’s one that I haven’t been able to watch yet, just because I’ve been super busy, but now that I’ve worked with these two people that I love, and they’re friggin’ super talented and interesting actors, I really want to watch it. It’s like, “What’s in the water on that Sons of Anarchy set?” … We were just looking to try to see who this other hazmat person was, and along the way we ran into [Choi]. And I didn’t realize how many places I had already seen him. He was Judge Ito in People v. O.J. Simpson, and did such an amazing job there. He was in The Wolf of Wolf Street, and he was great in that too, so I was like, “Oh! Geez! I’ve seen this guy in a million things!” It helped us to have another wonderful actor. I think we were interested in having a more diverse cast. There were a ton of things that went into it. But we were just really excited because he’s a great actor.
So, is he sticking around for awhile?
He might stick around a little bit. We have just a big group of knuckleheads, and I am for sure the lead knucklehead, but because the rest of the other people just kind of go with it, they’re knuckleheads by proxy. [Laughs] He seems the most clearheaded about what’s going on. With me being the leader of the group, he kind of fills that role that the other Phil Miller [Boris Kodjoe] did for a time, just questioning why everybody is listening to a word that I say. So he helps with that, but also delivers it in a completely unique different way. He’s a really good actor. It’s fun to watch him go.
Were the rights to “Falling Slowly” easy to get through Fox since Searchlight released the movie Once?
I don’t remember having a hard time with getting those rights, which I’m very excited about because Jason and I sing that song at karaoke all the time. So that would’ve been a tough pill to swallow if we couldn’t get the rights.
So that was based on your real life relationship with Jason?
Oh yeah, we do a lot of karaoke together and that’s one of our big go tos.
When he shaved your head on screen, was that nerve wracking to make sure you get it right?
No, because there were so many cameras and we had it planned out pretty well. John Solomon directed that episode and he knows what he’s doing. He’s great so he had us perfectly set up.
Melissa became sort of a badass towards the end of season two. Was it your idea to toughen her up?
That was definitely an idea that came from the writers’ room. It’ll be interesting to see her in season three because there’s a lot of transformation that happens for her that we’re excited for people to see.
Is Carol pregnant throughout the season?
Yes, both Kristen Schaal’s character and Cleopatra Coleman’s character are pregnant throughout the season.
Exclusive: Will Forte on the "Stupid Little" Cartoons That Changed His Life
http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/will-forte-on-how-his-cartoons-changed-his-life.html
A couple good quotes from his new/old cartoon book, 101 Things to Definitely Not Do If You Want to Get a Chick (originally written and drawn when he was 24, but finally published and released this week):
I quickly came up with the title 101 Things to Definitely Not Do if You Wanna Get a Chick and started furiously doodling away. For the next week, cartoons poured out of me. And then the well dried up. But I only had, like, seventy cartoons. And that was a major problem—I mean, the title of this thing was 101 Things to Definitely Not Do if You Want to Get a Chick. I couldn’t change the title. I mean, who changes a title? The only realistic solution was to break my brain coming up with thirty-one more. Sure, the new batch of cartoons might seem too similar to the first batch. Sure, the new batch might be really bad. But there would be 101 of them. And that was important to me. Because who changes a title? Certainly not Will Forte.
The illustrations might look familiar to some of you. From the KFBR392 notebook in “MacGruber” to my sports ball friends in The Last Man on Earth, my drawing style hasn’t changed very much.
'Last Man on Earth' Star Will Forte Breaks Down Season 3's "Emotional Bomb" and "Darker" Tone
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/will-forte-last-man-earth-midseason-finale-954999
This season has dealt with slightly darker subject matter, with all of the characters starting to deal with the end of the world in their own ways. What is it about this season that is affecting the group?
I think that we’ve shown a bit more of the world breaking down a little bit, that’s been our intention at least, so it’s just a different world now. It’s been a lot of wish fulfillment so far. Most of it has been dealing with lack of people, and now we’re throwing in a little bit more of the destruction of the infrastructure and how they deal with that...
We just try to figure it out in situations that would potentially happen, things that would be really tough to deal with in this type of world. If somebody’s having some issues with mental instability, in the present world there are all kinds of doctors that tell you what to do and even if it’s something that can’t be fixed you sort of know what you’re dealing with, and maybe there’s medication that can help. But in this group its just a bunch of dimwits who have no idea what they’re doing and have no idea how to make these decisions. We’re also just getting to know the characters a bit better, and we are filling out their back stories and some of the things are just things we’ve have in our minds about them all along just pieces of information that we’ve never had a chance to bring out.
What about Gail’s backstory? We learn a lot about her in a very short scene this season. What made you want to handle it that way?
It just kind of naturally came out. That’s what I really love that part of that story is that we drop a very major emotional bomb like that and don’t really hit it again, and you just are informed a little bit as to why she is the way she is. And I don’t know, that was one of my favorite moments in our entire series... I teared up every time I watched that in the editing room. I watched that 50 times or something and it got me every single time.
What made you want to bring Gail to this point – where she seeks isolation to get away from everyone, and then it backfires on her?
We had an elevator in the new building and we were always thinking about, ‘Oh, we should play it as a joke that somebody gets caught in the elevator' ... and then I thought ‘Oh my God, what a scary situation that would be.’ In the real world, you get caught in the elevator, you call the little box and you may wait a bit but you’re most likely getting out soon. But here, it’s a totally different situation. In our scenario, nobody would suspect it, and because of the way the story has gone, she was threatening to leave, then Carol was starting to bug her, and we just thought that it would be interesting if she would leave and everybody isn’t looking for her because they justify why she left. It would be interesting to see how dark we could go… and it’s pretty dark.
How about Melissa – when did you get the idea to take her down this dark path?
It seemed like as we were batting around ideas for this, we knew that the people were going to come in hazmat suits and pretty early on we wanted to stunt-cast one of the people. So we thought it would be fun to get somebody pretty cool if we say ‘Hey, you show up for an hour, take off this helmet then you can take off.’ So we knew that we wanted one of these people to die right away and then the other person to stick around, and then before we knew it was going to be Jon Hamm, we had decided it should be Melissa involved, and it just somehow turned into this fun Mad Men reunion. But then we just kind of started thinking how would that affect Melissa? And it just grew into the story we have for her now, and it’s been fun watching her week after week.
It’s interesting, these people who have no history or information or experience with dealing with anything like that being forced into that situation. Even this pregnancy stuff, what a scary thought – there have been so many conversations we’ve had about things like, ‘Would people even have babies in this new world? What happens if you get a a small problem like a toothache? That’s the worst pain in the world, think about a baby! It’s a freakin’ baby!’
Overall, what is the future for Last Man on Earth? Do you have a vision for how the series ends or how each character ends up?
I have no idea. I didn’t think we’d ever go past one season. (Laughs.) It’s kind of a mix of organic absurdity. We try to make everything as plausible as possible but we don’t let plausibility get in the way if we have something we like enough. A lot of times we will have ideas that we think are fruitful areas in the beginning of the season and just kind of see how they go. With Jason Sudeikis, we had an idea of how we wanted to end the season so we just connected the dots in between. We always have rough ideas of things we could do, but I would have no idea how the show would end.
Going into the second half of this season, then, how much have you planned out, and how much do you fill in along the way?
We never really plan too far in the future. I wish we did — I wish we had more plans, but in a way I kind of like not having a plan. It lets us meander to weirder places so there’s definitely a positive side and a negative side. There are some characters where we know in advance what we want to do with them, but not too far in advance. We certainly have built-in stuff going forward with Carol and Erica both being pregnant. We work toward them giving birth, but sometimes we go week by week and sometimes things come up so then we work backwards and figure out how to get the character there and that’s hopefully when we can figure things out like that. It’s nice to make it seem like there’s a point to the stuff that we’re doing.