You might say Dan Goor is on cloud nine-nine.
The co-creator and show runner of Fox’s modest-performing Brooklyn Nine-Nine has garnered some bragging rights with the freshman cop comedy: It recently took home two Golden Globes — best actor in a comedy for Andy Samberg and best comedy — and was part of the comedy tag-team, along with New Girl, that received the plum post-Super Bowl slot. (It drew nearly 15 million viewers.) The show was also renewed for a second season on Friday.
Read on to learn how his anxiety has given way to decorating, first-season lessons and giving Capt Holt some canine love.
The Golden Globes has given love early on to new shows in the past. That said, the win did take people by surprise. How did you feel about the prospects for the show, prior to the win?
Everything I’m about to say is going to sound incredibly cliche, but it’s 100 per cent true: I felt like it was a victory for us just to be nominated. As a new show, to cut through and be nominated was such a huge thing. And so to actually win was fantastic and surprising and incredibly gratifying and cathartic and amazing. I was really overjoyed because I really was just shocked to be nominated at all. I know it sounds cliche, I know. But it is really true.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the season. There was some uproar over Dads ahead of launch — had that chatter made you nervous at all about what that would mean for Brooklyn — or given how people watch TV, did it not faze you?
No, I mean, I feel like in today’s television landscape, every show is, to some extent, on a bit of an island. People watch by selecting things on their DVR. It’s not like the old days where you had to take a TV Guide out or something. So I feel like every show is an island. I’ve been so busy trying to make our show work that I feel like I don’t have any worry left over for anything else besides that — much to my family’s chagrin.
With a first season show, things need to figure themselves out. Characters and dynamics — both on the screen and behind the screen — need to settle into a groove. What was that process was like, discovering what was working for the show and maybe what wasn’t.
Some of it we’re still figuring it out, honestly, and some of which we don’t have enough distance yet to figure out. I think in some ways we really lucked out. I feel like the cast gelled very quickly and really found their characters very quickly. And, so, I think the entire ensemble seemed to take off. We didn’t feel like we had to make any major adjustments for any of the characters.
Let’s play a game of ‘pick a kid’: Is the Boyle character the one the writers have the most fun writing for? He is a kooky guy.
We love writing for all of them.
Pick one!
Often it depends on the situation that the character is in. Boyle is definitely a fun one to write for, yes. But so is Terry and so is Holt, so is Amy and blahblahblah. It really is hard to choose. But I think everybody enjoys writing for all of them. I know that is such a non-answer. And we can’t forget Scully (Dirk Blocker) and Hitchcock (Joel McKinnon Miller), they’re also so much fun to write for.
I’ve been on set and there is some fun improvising that happens.
The actors are really fantastic, and there are a lot of incredible lines that are improvised, especially Andy. Andy is great at improvising, both for himself and for others. Having him on set is like having another writer, and he’ll pitch really funny lines for everyone.
Let’s talk about the Santiago and Peralta relationship. In the beginning of the season, you were kind of surprised that I saw something brewing between Amy and Jake — I don’t know if you had yet envisioned couple potential between them.
Yes, I think that at the start of the season, we didn’t want to play that because we didn’t want to force anything. The other thing is, we wanted to show that Jake is a character who can be sort of an underdog, because we’ve portrayed him as a great cop and everybody likes him. And so with this situation with Santiago, he’s a little bit of an underdog. She’s got her life together and he’s a little bit immature and it’s a reason for him to mature. It’s something that we’ve moved toward a bit, partly because we think the characters are funny together and partly because we felt like it helped dimensionalise Jake. I think we’re very mindful of getting too caught up in a will they/won’t they between them.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine premieres in the UAE on OSN First Comedy HD on Thursday at 8.30pm.
