Appropriately, the idea forHBO's new comedy "Rooster"hatched from an emptying chicken coop, creatorsBill Lawrence("Scrubs," "Shrinking") and Matt Tarses ("Bad Monkey," "Sports Night") squawk – er, say.
They, along with starSteve Carell"all have daughters that are about the same age, in their early 20s," Tarses says. "And are all faced with the same issue of trying to be involved slash control their lives and them not being interested in that anymore."
Lawrence adds, "because if you held a gun to our head, we'd have to admit we're not really doing it to protect them. We're doing it for ourselves and to try and stay in their lives as they kind of pull away, as they should, because they're adults."
In "Rooster" (Sundays, 10 ET/PT and streaming on HBO Max) Greg Russo (Carell) is a divorced, successful novelist with a series of books starring a character named Rooster, who accepts an offer from Ludlow College's president (John C. McGinley) to be the school's writer in residence, where his daughter Katie (Charly Clive) also teaches. Greg hopes to comfort Katie her amid a separation from her husband Archie (Phil Dunster), who's become involved with a graduate student (Lauren Tsai).
Dunster and Lawrence worked together on "Ted Lasso," in which the actor embodied the self-centered striker Jamie Tartt, who softened over time.
"We say he's an Eddie Haskell" from "Leave It to Beaver," says Lawrence, executive producer of the Apple TV comedyslated to kick off Season 4 this summer. "He can say and do things that are reprehensible and yet part of you, even though you hate yourself for it, the back of your head still goes, 'Ah, that guy.'"
"Archie gets in a real spot of bother," UK-born Dunster teases. "And he uses varying tactics to varying degrees of success to get him outside of that sticky patch, and we'll see whether he learns from that and becomes a better person or not."
Meanwhile Katie's "coming apart at the seams," Clive says. "Her well-meaning but sometimes overbearing father has come into her sort of sacred space to lift her out of a funk. And I think the tip of the iceberg looks bad, and what's under the water is worse."
"When you're lateral with your child… you are being humbled," Danielle Deadwyler, who portrays Professor Dylan Shepherd, says of the comedy at play. "The horribly assumed hierarchies are collapsed," and the relationship is morphing into something new.
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Carell and his wife Nancy exchanged vows in 1995 and share two children: Elisabeth Anne, 24, and John, 21. Carell says he relates to Greg's enormous love for family.
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"There's a line where my character says, 'I would do anything for Katie,'" Carell says, "and on one take, I actually said my daughter's name instead. And she was on set."
"It was very sweet," Clive remembers. "Everyone broke instantly just to say, 'Oh!' It was so cute."
Carell's wife Nancy also visited the set, in a working capacity. She appears in Episode 3 as the wife of the dean of faculty (Alan Ruck), an idea dreamt up by Lawrence and Tarses.
"I knew and Matt knew Nancy is a talented comedienne in her own right," Lawrence says. "And I just loved that kind of intimacy between two people that shouldn't have that level of intimacy right away."
Carell says Nancy, who's also appeared on "The Office," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Bridesmaids," thought the gig sounded fun.
"I love it," he says of their collaboration. "She's the funniest person I know. She's way funnier than I am, honestly."
"That's true," Clive interjects playfully. "I've met her."
"I think we have very similar senses of humor," Carell adds, still obviously smitten after more than 30 years of marriage, "but hers is just better."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Steve Carell's new show 'Rooster' features cameo by wife Nancy