The MacGruber TV Series Is an Action-Comedy a Decade in the Making

| Dec 1, 2021 |

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Yous can't have a naked performer use a flamethrower.

This is what MacGruber co-creators Jorma Taccone, John Solomon, and Volition Forte were told past the fun-killing higher-ups, in no uncertain terms, when they set out to adapt their popular Saturday Night Live sketch-turned-feature-moving picture into a Tv set series at Peacock.

"We kept having these meetings where people would be like, 'You know you tin can't do this, correct?'" Taccone says. "Nosotros were merely like, 'Yeah, but… nosotros're going to do it.'"

Existence told to not do something and and then doing information technology anyway is fitting for both petulant activeness hero MacGruber (played by Forte) and the unlikely franchise he sweatily birthed. The parody of problem-solving TV icon MacGyver was first conceived equally a serial of SNL sketches by writers Solomon, Taccone, and bandage fellow member Forte back in 2007.

Each of the 10 sketches stars Forte as MacGruber, the woefully underprepared special agent, who intends to utilize common household objects to defuse a ticking bomb and save his friends. Each and every time, however, he fails–the bomb detonates and everyone is killed. Even so, MacGruber and his partner Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) somehow always return to try to defuse some other bomb, usually accompanied by that respective episode'southward invitee host (some notable players include Betty White, Seth Rogen, Josh Brolin, Jonah Hill, and Charles Barkley).

MacGruber was a popular enough character to be spun off into a series of Pepsi commercials that featured original MacGyver star Richard Dean Anderson. MacGruber then returned for his titular 2010 motion-picture show. Directed by Taccone, MacGruber was a love letter of the alphabet to action movies, comedy, and just general absurdity. Like many other SNL adaptations, it was a massive box office failure, simply became something of a cult hit. None other than Christopher Nolan (aye, every bit in Nighttime Knight Christopher Nolan) counts himself every bit a MacGruber superfan.

More than eleven years have passed since MacGruber last graced the pop civilization landscape. And withal, the mulletted activeness hero'due south creators couldn't quite forget him. Taccone, Solomon, and Forte have been passing around a Google Medico for the better role of a decade sharing funny ideas for the character's next outing.

"We had so many ideas for a sequel that information technology was but exciting to sort of put the pieces around and come across where things fit based on dumb picayune one-off ideas that we had highlighted," Taccone says. "Will (Forte) added triple asterisks to the phrase 'Whoever smelt it, dealt it.' It had to be in at that place somewhere."

Now the concluding upshot of all that brainstorming is set to come to fruition in a sequel: not in the class of a motion picture, just a Goggle box series. After rotting in prison for a decade (for the petty crime of beating his nemesis, Dieter Von Cunth, to near-death, and then firing a rocket launcher at him, throwing him off a cliff, and pissing on his corpse), MacGruber is sprung loose by an American government drastic for his assistance. MacGruber assembles his old team from the motion picture, Vicki St. Elmo (Wiig) and Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe), to have downward a mysterious villain from his past: Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth (Billy Zane).

"'Queeth' was a name that we had from the very beginning considering nosotros only wanted to say, 'It smells similar Queeth in here,'" Taccone says, before adding that their dream was realized by getting the line into episode six.

Similar the film before it, which starred Val Kilmer and Powers Boothe in supporting roles, the Tv set series brings in some major dramatic star power to earnestly read some very silly lines. Zane follows in Kilmer's footsteps by embodying a goofily-named villain with some surprising desolation.

"Billy, at ane signal, was like, 'This is ane of the hardest roles I've e'er had.' And it is that. It's hard to get the tone of having to say the dumbest shit. Even saying his name is stupid," Taccone says. "Billy brought this realness to these things. We would accept these real actor conversations like, 'Why do I experience this empty?' Considering information technology'south the fucking worst mean solar day of your life. And you feel information technology on screen."

Meanwhile, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Elliott contribute with major roles also to aggrandize the MacGruber family. Fishburne plays General Barrett Fasoose, a highly-busy military machine official who now just happens to exist married to MacGruber's ex-wife, Vicki. Elliott is Perry, MacGruber'due south father, who has a fractured relationship with his son.

"It'due south still crazy to me the amount of times I'd ask Laurence why he was doing this," Taccone says. "With all these guys, they're actually reading what it is and understanding what the tone is and assertive in what nosotros're trying to do. Which is a very specific needle we're threading, of a real action motion-picture show, only it's an idiot equally your primary character and trying to get it all real enough and so that it'southward funny."

Having the right actors to buy into MacGruber 'due south tone is crucial, equally the serial walks a fine line between sophomoric joke-telling and almost unspeakable violence. Many villains who come across MacGruber endure a similar fate to Dieter Von Cunth–or worse.

"Nosotros were going to take MacGruber'southward new move exist skinning people alive. And and then nosotros were like, 'That'southward also dark,'" Taccone says.

Taccone might be misremembering things every bit MacGruber does, in fact, pare at least one character alive (or possibly posthumously) offscreen inside the prove'southward get-go three episodes. He also frequently gets very naked so stays naked, sometimes for as long as an unabridged episode'southward runtime.

"(Volition) has no shame as a performer," Taccone says. "Whatever is the funniest version of something, he'll do it. He is simply always giving 150%, and oftentimes that means getting naked and having his testicles exposed, that have to be removed with CG later."

To temper things a flake, MacGruber borrows a folio from seasonal action movies similar Die Hard , setting its story during Christmas. Like the movie, the TV series was filmed in Albuquerque and so there is no snow to speak of, but the holiday cheer is nowadays nevertheless, even as MacGruber crushes a henchman's confront in with a boulder until it's nothing only a pile of bone, blood, and brains.

According to Taccone, he and the show's producers always knew they wanted the series to take place at Christmas, continuing the tradition started by Lethal Weapon . Funnily enough, the show will premiere the day after the penultimate episode of another streaming action serial set during Christmas.

"We're just trying to go up confronting Hawkeye ," Taccone says. "And so you tell (Jeremy Renner), yous tell him, 'We're fucking coming for yous.'"

MacGruber premieres its 8-episode kickoff flavour on NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock on December. 16, 2021.