Jenna Fischer on Her 'Bonkers' New NBC Comedy (And the Co-Stars She'd Call on in an Apocalypse)
“This is definitely not a show you’ve seen before. I can say this with great confidence. It’s totally bonkers.” Take Jenna Fischer’s word for it. Her new comedy You, Me, and the Apocalypse — which co-stars Rob Lowe and Megan Mullally and premieres Jan. 28 on NBC after a well-received run in the UK — begins with a group of mismatched people stuck in an underground bunker just as a comet is about to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction. And then it flashes back 34 days to show how they each ended up there.
Fischer plays Rhonda, a librarian who, as the countdown begins, is in a maximum security prison wrongfully accused of hacking into the NSA’s computer systems (in actuality, she’s protecting a loved one and is in way over her head). There, she meets career criminal Leanne (Megan Mullally). “We develop this very weird reliance on one another,” Fischer says. “When news of the end of the word hits, there’s a prison break and our characters go on the run across America, Thelma-and-Louise style, trying to get home to our families before the end of the world. I’m very reluctantly relying on her because she’s not the best person. She’s quite a character. Megan’s completely unrecognizable on the show.”
In case you haven’t seen a promo, Mullally plays an unhinged white supremacist with a swastika tattooed on her forehead. So yes, she really is transformed. “We were were shooting in a women’s prison for about three days, and it wasn’t until the third day that the [extras playing] other women in the prison realized that she was Megan Mullally,” Fischer says. “Somebody was standing right next to her, and we overheard this woman say, ‘I heard Megan Mullally’s on this show, I wonder who she plays.’ And she was standing right next to her. She didn’t even know it. Megan looked so real.”
While both actresses were sensitive to portraying Leanne’s bigotry — “Being racist or racially insensitive is not comedic,” Fischer says — the character undergoes a change as the season progresses. “I think that’s one of the interesting things about the show,” Fischer says. “While there is some comedy, there’s some hard stuff, too. It gets a little dark, a little serious, emotional.”
Lowe’s character is also… unexpected. He plays Father Jude, a priest who works as the Vatican’s official “devil’s advocate” and is known for boozing, chain-smoking, and cursing. “Because that makes sense, right? That’s not crazy,” Fischer says, laughing. “And then we also have this amazing British actor [Mathew Baynton], who’s the lead of the show, who plays a good twin and an evil twin. So we have everything: It’s funny, but there’s some mystery and intrigue, and you start to realize that all of these supposed strangers who are slowly coming together to be in this bunker… there are some things that are not so coincidental about why they are the ones who will be the survivors.”
It doesn’t look good for Father Jude to be one of the chosen ones. “Rob and I shared no time together on the set,” Fischer says, lamenting her lack of anecdotes about The Grinder star. “We’ve been in several things together and we’ve never worked together: We were in a movie together, we didn’t share a scene. We’re in this show together, we don’t share a scene. We just like to be in the same projects but never actually work together.”
You, Me and the Apocalypse airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on NBC.