Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider interview: ‘The Other Two’ creators
Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider are both able to single out their favorite moments from the second season of their show, “The Other Two.” Kelly cites the second episode where Cary (Drew Tarver) thinks he’s encountering a gay teen with his homophobic father, but are actually a twink and a daddy that are looking to scam his mother’s talk show for free gifts. “His own dead father never really came around, so he thought this is a version of his father, I can make think that I’m normal and by extension, I can make my dead dad think I’m normal,” he tells us during our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above). He adds that he loved using the typical hi-jinks of a sitcom for weirder and darker gayer purposes than one is used to seeing. “It’s like ‘Three’s Company’ hi-jinks. I like the moment at the end when he says, I wish my dad thought I was normal and the daddy says, you seem pretty normal to me and then touches and kisses him on the mouth and Cary’s like, ‘What?’”
“The Other Two,” which is currently streaming on HBO Max, centers on two siblings, Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver), who are forced to re-evaluate the direction of their lives when their teenage brother Chase (Case Walker), becomes an internet celebrity. Emmy nominee Molly Shannon also stars as the family matriarch Pat. Prior to creating this show, Kelly and Schneider both served as writers on “Saturday Night Live,” with a year working as head writers. Their work on the legendary NBC sketch show earned Kelly seven Emmy nominations and eight nominations for Schneider. Kelly also wrote and directed the indie film, “Other People,” in 2016 which starred Shannon and Oscar nominee Jesse Plemons.
Schneider’s favorite moment from the second season was the way that they were able to pull off the baptism episode. “I just thought the premise was so hearty and I really liked how it was like our characters really towing with morality to get what they both really want.” In addition to seeing how far the characters would go to achieve their goals, she says that it was also a triumphant episode because of everything that went into to filming it. “It was the worst, hardest episode we’ve ever shot. So, maybe that’s part of it where I’m like, it was hard, so it’s good now and now I think it’s even better than it was because we just made it through without dying.”
The toughest decision to make regarding the second season was where to take the character of Chase, who is found out to not actually be a good singer at the end of the first season. “Now he can’t do that anymore, so what would be next for this pop star kid and wanting to make sure it wasn’t just the obvious thing. We took a while, but then we eventually settled on this idea of he’s a singer who can’t sing,” Schneider says. Kelly adds that it was a scary thing to approach since it would mean a key component of the first season, Chase’s music videos, would no longer be a part of the show. They eventually moved forward with the idea believing it to be the right and smart choice. “We can find the equivalent of music videos in Pat’s world, like what are the weird ridiculous, dumb, heightened things that could exist in her world and let’s just force ourselves to find something as funny or as memorable as the music videos.”
