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Rashida Jones and Chris Pratt Talk Parks and Recreation

BuzzSugar — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:38:35 -0700

Since the beginning of the Fall season, Parks and Recreation has gone from shaky midseason replacement to a solid half-hour of comedy, thanks in part to a talented and hilarious cast. Two of my favorite actors from the show, Rashida Jones and Chris Pratt, who play Leslie's best friend Ann and Ann's ex-boyfriend Andy, respectively, chatted with some reporters this week about Parks and what's in store for their characters.

Rashida on the possibility of Ann and Andy getting back together: You know, I don't think it's an impossibility. I think there's still love in Ann's heart for Andy. I think so much would have to change for him to be OK with her. But I don't think it's an impossibility.
Chris on whether Andy will get a job or home: Yeah, the writers have found a nice way for Andy to get out of the pit and get a job and start sort of working his way up into independence.

To read more on why Chris and Rashida think the second season has been better, Ann and Andy's ex relationship, and those nude scenes, just read more.

Rashida on whether she likes Ann and Andy better together or apart: I think there's a lot of comedy both ways. I mean, I like this particular paradigm; I think it's really funny, because I just think Chris gets to shine a lot here and do something with something that could potentially seem really kind of cartoony and big which is like him, you know - showing up places and pretending to be casual about seeing me and all that. But he manages to make it kind of realistic and really sweet. So I like this dynamic for now.
Chris on whether Andy will start dating: I think that Andy's undying devotion toward Ann is one of the only things that sort of redeems him, so I hope not. I hope that he just keeps pining after Ann for 10 seasons to come. That would be the best for me.
Rashida on what Chris wears when he's naked on the show: They have those really unappealing little dance belts that were uncomfortable for Chris Pratt.
Chris on the nude scenes: Yeah, let's just say there was a dance belt included and it was uncomfortable. They kind of just are these little things that cover up your junk, but it was almost as if I was wearing nothing at all. Yeah.
Rashida on the show clicking more in the second season: It just takes time. I think for the actors, for the writers, for the audience, you just need some time to settle into what the characters actually are, and what's funny about their dynamics. And I'm super grateful that people gave us a shot to get there but I definitely think it takes about 10 episodes to even know what anything is, you know? I mean, you watch some early Seinfeld, you watch some early Sex and the City, it's nothing like the show turned out to be; the things that people loved about that show did not exist at the beginning of that show, you know.
Chris on the same: I've noticed that, as a fan of the show, I've seen it get better and better, and working on it I've noticed the scripts coming down the pipes have gotten better, but it kind of goes back to what Rashida said: it takes time for everybody. And I think it's just a matter of finding the sensibilities to all the characters and starting with Amy, you know; I think a lot of people compared Steve Carell to Ricky Gervais from The Office when they first started the American version of The Office. But he has a different style of comedy, and maybe they were writing for Steve the way they did for Ricky Gervais. And maybe in the beginning, they were writing for Amy the way that they wrote for Steve Carell, but her comedic sensibility is a little different. Maybe it's not that funny to watch her be uncomfortable the way it is with Steve Carell, but it's so goddamned endearing when she smiles. And you see her and when she's enjoying herself, so is the audience. And you see her doing that a lot more now; kind of just becoming comfortable in who she is, and like the episode with the beauty pageant, she's standing up for women's rights. You're seeing more dimensions of her. And maybe it's always been who they've envisioned her to be, or maybe they're figuring it out, but I sure like Leslie a lot more in the second season. I just enjoy watching her more and I think that's starting to happen with all the characters.

Don't forget to tune in to watch Ann and Andy on tonight's special Halloween episode; something tells me that some of what Rashida and Chris talked about will start developing sooner rather than later!

Link Time!

BuzzSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

ABC adds Benjamin Bratt to its Modern Family - TV Squad

Like Roxie's bedroom on Eastwick? Here's how to get the look - CasaSugar

Jordin Sparks covers Katy Perry's Hot 'N' Cold - HitFix

Tommy Lee Jones joins Matthew McConaughey for Lincoln Lawyer - MTV Movies Blog

The new Bachelor is announced! [drumroll] He's last season's reject, Jake - PopWatch

SNL dish: Tracy Morgan has fighting words for his former costars - Defamer

Amy Poehler talks about Parks and Recreation and her knife-fight with New Kids on the Block - TV.com

Exclusive photo of Gavin Rossdale on Criminal Minds - Watch With Kristin

Rashida Jones's graphic novel is being made into a film! - Cinema Blend

Shannen Doherty's new Hallmark movie = awesome -The Futon Critic

TV Tonight: Parks and Recreation

BuzzSugar — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:30:19 -0700

The majority of you were into last week's premiere of Parks and Recreation - but will you be tuning back in tonight? I liked the pilot well enough, but now I'm curious to see what the Parks and Rec team does with the characters we met last week.

Tonight, they're canvassing. Leslie wants to present her pit-into-park idea to the public, so she decides to take a door-to-door approach. Naturally, that doesn't quite go according to plan, as Leslie has a knack for saying just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. (I hope to stop comparing this show to The Office soon, but does that sound like anyone else we know?) I have a feeling this episode could have some funny moments for Aziz Ansari as Tom, as he wanders away from the rest of the group and uses his own questionable recruiting tactics. I wonder if they'll be like the ones he attempted to use on Ann in the pilot?

Parks and Rec got decent ratings for the premiere, and I'd love to see the show keep up its momentum tonight. To check out a preview clip, just read more.

Photo courtesy of NBC

Five Minutes With Rashida Jones

BuzzSugar — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:30:06 -0700

Between I Love You, Man and Parks and Recreation - which premieres tonight on NBC - it's shaping up to be a pretty good Spring for Rashida Jones. I caught up with the actress back at NBC's press tour party, where we talked about her new role as nurse and community activist Ann Perkins, her thoughts on the Jim and Pam relationship on The Office, and even a little about Top Chef. Here are some highlights:

On working with Amy Poehler: "We're actually really good friends. So it's a crazy present to be able to work with a friend that you love so much. It's so rare. People always ask what drew you to a part and usually I'm like, 'Drew me? They cast me!' Like, we don’t get that much choice. You have to be super famous to have choice. This was just like a lucky, lucky, lucky situation."
On being cast in a new show, instead of an established series like The Office: "I think it’s nice to be on the starting team and to have a new voice and be part of the development process."
On playing the much-maligned Karen Filippelli: "I was terrified [to join The Office]. I stupidly, at the beginning, looked at what people online said, and they were so mean. I will never do it again. . . . But I stupidly did that, and I was right to be scared, but ultimately, I think and I hope that they did such a good job of carving out a real character that you could hate me as much as you want because you want the other two to be together but you saw and understood logically the possibility."

To find out whether Jones would, like her character, ever get wrapped up in politics and whether she thinks Jim and Pam got together too soon, just read more.

On the critique that Jim and Pam got together too early: "Well, it's been four years! I mean, I don't know about your relationships, but if a guy's not with me after four years - hit the road."
On her own attitudes toward politics: "You know, I definitely always thought that was maybe a career path for me in my life . . . and it may still be down the road. But yeah, I'm fascinated by it. I’m fascinated and disturbed at the same time."
On how she fills her non-work time: "I'm starting to experiment with cooking for myself, which is new because I lived in New York and had a tiny kitchen and always ate out. So now I just, you know, make food for myself. It’s going great. I love Top Chef, so that helps. It makes me really hungry."

Photo courtesy of NBC

Fox Atomic Picks Up Rashida Jones's Divorce Comedy Script

BuzzSugar — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:30:44 -0700

Rashida Jones can currently be found on big screens across the country, being completely adorable alongside Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man, and she'll soon be on our small screens on Amy Poehler's show, Parks and Recreation. Turns out Jones is a lady of many talents, as she recently sold a screenplay - co-written by actor Will McCormack - titled Celeste and Jesse Forever to Fox Atomic. The comedy "revolves around a young divorcing couple who try to maintain their longstanding friendship while pursuing other relationships." Jones is also attached to star as half of the young couple.

I can't wait to see Rashida Jones in a lead role like this. She always comes off as mature, funny, and smart on screen, and I think it's a relief to mix in some new blood to the world of romantic comedy leads. I wonder who will play her husband . . . got suggestions?

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I Love You, Man: Bromance at Its Cutest

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:45:52 -0700

I Love You, Man is a sweet, low-key comedy about two guys who find true friendship. As I left the screening a friend said it struck her as a kind of poor man's Judd Apatow movie (meant as a positive thing, BTW) - in the literal sense, it seems lower-budget but it's also just quieter, tamer, and less yucky. There's tons of super awkwardness, similar to the kind we see each week in The Office, and little gross-out humor. It's also simply more genuine than something Apatow might do, and it's a nice change.

The movie focuses on the platonic relationship between two guys, and the fact that they're guys is central to the humor of their awkward blossoming friendship. It all starts when Peter (Paul Rudd) proposes to his girlfriend Zooey (Rashida Jones) and realizes that he has nobody to be his best man in the wedding. So, on the advice of his gay brother Robbie (Andy Samberg), he goes on a series of "man dates" to try and find a friend to be his best man. Finally, Peter meets Sydney (Jason Segel), the carefree and fun-loving antidote to Peter's buttoned-up steadiness. Peter discovers what it's like to talk frankly with another guy and how to loosen up a little bit and not always play by the rules. Sydney's relaxed attitude starts to rub off on Peter, which is refreshing until it gets to the point that Peter (and Zooey, for that matter) feels like he's not totally himself anymore. He then has to figure out if he can balance both romance and bromance in his life. For more of my thoughts on it all, read more.

There are a lot of perfect fits in this movie. Rudd and Segel are natural together, and they strike a comfortable balance of sincere affection and dudeliness. Rudd fits well with his character, Peter, who's just a nice, stable guy with a calm and respectful temperament. It's easy to like Peter for who he is, though we recognize that he lacks some confidence and might be more successful if he believed in himself. Rudd easily takes on this role, without judging Peter, and it's satisfying to see that he's quite capable of carrying a movie as the lead character.

The emphasis is on the "bromance" between these two guys - their totally straight man-love - and a lot of the humor stems from Peter trying to navigate a male friendship. How to get close but not really intimate? How much of himself should he show? It's an exploration of friendship in general, really (finding the people who bring out the best in us, etc.). It's just a new and funny story because of the ever-changing societal norms that dictate how men should acceptably express emotion and love.

There are funnier movies out there, but I Love You, Man is certainly one of the easiest and most digestible comedies I've seen in a long time. The boys are cute and funny without being over-the-top, and the girls are relatable and funny without being naggy psychos. There's no poop or menstrual blood, but there are lots of silly lines that people will be quoting for a long, long time ("Sleppin' da bayse, mon"). It's like this year's Anchorman or Superbad in that sense - but it's a helluva lot cuter than both of those.

Photos courtesy of Paramount

Chris Pratt Books Parks Job Alongside Rashida Jones - And Paul Schneider and Nick Offerman are Joining Him

BuzzSugar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:34:07 -0800

NBC's oft-renamed Parks and Recreation finally has another cast member! Everwood alum Chris Pratt has joined the show, playing the boyfriend of Rashida Jones's nurse character, Ann.

Update: The final two major characters have also now been cast! Paul Schneider and Nick Offerman have been cast in the final two major roles for the pilot, with Schneider playing a parks and recreation committee member alongside Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope and Offerman playing their supervisor.

In some ways, Pratt's character is the one who sets the whole show in motion: It's his accident in the big, empty pit in Pawnee, Indiana (you know, the one Poehler's cleaning up in this promo) that brings Ann to the parks committee meeting in the first place. The pilot script didn't have a ton of other details about him - other than that he's a struggling musician, which effectively means he's unemployed.

To hear about Schneider and Offerman's characters, just read more.

Schneider (that's him on the right) plays Mark, one of my favorite characters from the pilot: He once had a one-night stand with Poehler's character, but let's just say Leslie has assigned a bit more significance to the event than Mark has. Meanwhile, Offerman (on the left) will play Ron, the head of the parks and recreation department who ultimately wields a lot of power over the rest of the characters.

With those roles cast, the pilot should be ready to go. I'll be curious to see how it turns out when it hits our screens April 9!

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Amy Poehler's Show Has a Lot of Funny People (But No Title)

BuzzSugar — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:35:23 -0800

Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Rashida Jones, and writers Greg Daniels and Michael Schur just got the room laughing here at the TCA press tour in their first session for their new show. (Seriously, go here to hear about Poehler's Jason Bourne connection.)The show's still untitled, but we now know a little bit about the plot: Poehler plays Leslie, a mid-level local government operative who partners with Jones's character to help get a park built. Ansari plays a schmoozing networker who's most interested in his own rise. Here's some of what we learned:

Despite Poehler's role as a woman in local politics who believes she could one day rise to the top, we shouldn't look at the show as a satire of any recent political events. "It really doesn't specifically deal in any way with tapping into any of those women," Poehler said. "But [Leslie] certainly looks at a lot of the women in media and politics right now as her heroes. They're sort of her Cal Ripkins."
More about Leslie: "Leslie is an optimist, and she's really ambitious," Poehler said. "She's really kind of hoping that the place she is now is not the place she's going to stay. So she really is struggling to find her way in a man's world, to kind of make her mark. Along the way, she's deluded." She's nice, but not too nice: "it's going to be very easy to humiliate and be mean to me in the show."
About that title: Daniels said they just haven't found the right words to sum up the show yet - but they kind of spoof their own difficulties in the pilot with a section about finding the perfect name for their public works project.
The realm of local politics isn't new to Poehler: "My parents watch town council metings on their TV," she said. "They sit and wtch them and care, obviously, about what is next to them - what is being built, or are they going to put a prison where the muffin shop used to be."

To find out why Poehler took the job and whether there will ever be a proper Office spinoff, read more.

Poehler took the job because she wanted to work with Schur and Daniels, and she also "was excited at the idea of being able to turn the volume down a little bit and sit with a character for a while."
The project started out being described as an Office spinoff mostly because at the time, "we didn't have any ideas," Daniels said. They considered ideas both spinning directly off Dunder Mifflin and ones outside, but "as we thought of different ideas, the ideas that were set in the paper industry or something like that, it felt hard to get far enough away from The Office that you would consider it justified for a whole different show," he said.
That said, there is now another idea for a true spinoff involving some Office characters that could materialize someday. No details on that, though.
No plans at this time for any actual politicians to show up on this show - but "anybody who's the hot comptroller could come on," Poehler cracked.

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Movie Preview: I Love You, Man

BuzzSugar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:32:21 -0800

In theory, I think the premise for I Love You, Man is funny and cute: A guy (Paul Rudd) gets engaged to his lady (Rashida Jones - yay for her having more movie roles!) but he doesn't have a best guy friend so he basically goes on a manfriend-hunt to lock down a best man for the wedding.

The trailer features some funny folks (Jason Segel, Andy Samberg, Thomas Lennon) and people I just love seeing pretty much anytime (JK Simmons), and yet, it doesn't really make me laugh. Also (and I'm assuming this is explained in the movie), why doesn't he just ask his brother (Samberg) to be his best man, instead of asking his brother for tips on going on man dates to find some guy he barely knows to be his best man? Time will tell, I suppose. I do appreciate the use of the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" in the trailer, anyway.

I Love You, Man opens March 20. To check out the trailer, read more.

Rashida Jones Checks Into the Not-Office Office

BuzzSugar — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:33:40 -0800

Seriously, they're going to have to give the Office non-spinoff spinoff a name really soon, because this is just getting confusing. But here's the deal: Rashida Jones has booked a role on the Amy Poehler-led new NBC comedy, which will reunite her with The Office writers Greg Daniels and Michael Schur.

Rumors of Jones joining the spinoff first surfaced months ago, but that was way back when we thought the show would be a direct spinoff of The Office (oh, how silly we were!). Today, Office Tally confirmed Jones's casting straight from Schur himself, who told the blog that Jones "will be playing a nurse named Ann (not Karen Fillipelli)."

So . . . a nurse, huh? Is that a hint about the show's setting? Is it a tidbit meant to throw us off-course that won't be relevant to the story at all? Am I thinking way too much about this show, which so far has three cast members (Poehler, Jones, and Aziz Ansari) but no title or publicly known plotline to speak of?

The answer to the last one, at least, is yes. But hey, how can I not be excited? This seems like a good move for Jones, who certainly deserves better than her last sitcom job. What do you think?

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