The night before production began on The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, Tracy Morgan had a house party. Well, as co-star Daniel Radcliffe puts it in the above video interview, “Tracy had us all over to his house the night before we started filming the pilot… all the actors and all the writers and producers and directors and stuff. That was a really lovely way of breaking the ice and getting to know everyone.”
“I don’t consider us an ensemble or team. We became family that night,” Morgan tells Consequence. “We all loosened up, we all let our hair down and I said, ‘Let’s live. Let’s live.'”
It’s a vibe Bobby Moynihan credits directly to Morgan. “Tracy is very good at bringing people together, and he’s got a lot of heart, and he makes everything a party. We’re very lucky to have him at the forefront of this show. You know Tracy’s coming because he’s got a boombox. You hear the party coming and it’s a blast. It definitely sets the tone for the day.”
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins reunites executive producer Tina Fey with Morgan as well as past collaborators Radcliffe and Moynihan, with Morgan playing the titular Reggie. Once upon a time, Reggie was a major football star, until a gambling scandal left his career in ruins. Can a documentary about his life, filmed by once-renowned documentary filmmaker Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe), turn things around for Reggie? That’s what his whole family, including best friend Rusty (Moynihan), ex-wife Monica (Erika Alexander), fiancee Brina (Precious Way), and teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall), are hoping will happen.
The cast chemistry was pretty immediate, according to Radcliffe. “Obviously everything gets better and better and grows as the series goes on, but we are all people that really like working. We always like being on set and doing the job. And I feel like we got on pretty quickly.”
“And Tracy wanted us to be a family,” Alexander adds. “He was like, ‘We’re gonna be a family for over 8, 9, 12, 14 years.'”
“He’s very optimistic,” Radcliffe says.
“I said, ‘Is that a threat or a promise?'” Alexander laughs. “But yeah, the chemistry was immediate and I think there was a huge amount of respect coming in for everybody. Obviously people were coming in with different levels of experience, but verybody came to play and everybody was on their A game and also to learn and grow. And that’s really a really precious thing.”
And it all began at Morgan’s party. Precious Way says that going to Morgan’s house was a memorable experience: “I’ve never been nowhere like that in my life. My eyes were so big the whole time. It was absolutely beautiful. I mean, he’s just a beautiful person inside and out, and for him to invite us into his home and then show us all these crazy things in his home…. You’re like, ‘What, is this a museum?’ I’m grateful that he invited me to experience that. I will never forget it. Never.”
“His shark tank, it rivals even the Georgia Aquarium,” Jalyn Hall adds. “It was truly amazing.”
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (NBC)
The series is filmed as a mockumentary captured by Arthur’s team of cameramen (with the occasional burst of found footage). Getting to play in the realm of mockumentary was “a blast,” according to Moynihan, who says that “it adds a new character to the show, which is kind of the audience.”
Radcliffe loves shooting mockumentary-style for a technical reason: Instead of production needing to take long breaks so that the cameras can film a scene from a different angle, the cameras capture three sides to each take. “It means that you get a lot more time to do the scene that you are on, and you can really hone in on it for those takes. But it also means that you can move very, very quickly.”
“You can feel it, the camera working with us,” Erika Alexander observes. “They’re moving and switching and finding you and pulling in and out. After a while it’s a dance, and you gotta respect the dance.”
Co-creator Sam Means says that he and the other writers had had a little past experience working in mockumentary, between the Queen of Jordan segments on 30 Rock and a fake documentary episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. “It gives you so many different tools, both for storytelling and for the kinds of jokes you can tell. We’ve been wanting to get back to it ever since.”
It also made sense to pursue as a format because of the number of sports documentaries that have come out in recent years, from The Last Dance to Beckham to Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose — the latter having a particular relevance, given Reggie Dinkins’ gambling scandals. “It just seemed like the perfect confluence of format and cast and theme,” Means says.
That said, co-creator Robert Carlock notes that there were times when the mockumentary approach was a challenge, because the writers had to solve “the puzzle of, ‘Oh, how are we seeing that?'” As an example, one episode featured a character not being followed by Arthur’s cameras, which led to using (fictional, of course) ATM surveillance and police body-cam footage.
“I know everything’s a mockumentary now,” Radcliffe says. “In the TV comedy space, so many things have this kind of style. But I like to think that we are actually, at least for this first season, really trying to use the constraints of it being a documentary in the show. So you see me trying to make the film, as well as it just being a very handy way of having characters express their inner monologues to camera.”
Jalyn Hall has found that not only has mockumentary elevated his comedic instincts on the show, it’s trickled into his personal life — when he’s hanging out with friends, his reactions to them “when something crazy happens” get laughs, “and it definitely comes from throwing looks and glances to the camera. I’m like, thank you, Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.”
Moynihan’s only problem with the mockumentary format is that it’s interfering with his other job. “I’m on another TV show, NCIS: Origins, and I can’t stop looking in the camera. I keep looking directly into the camera and I have to stop, because I keep forgetting I’m not on this show.”
As for the show’s star, Morgan feels that mockumentary “gives us space to play. I think we took to it naturally. We just had to know when to look down the barrel and when not to. They just said, ‘Be yourself.'”
Moynihan then asks Morgan, “I think the real question is, ‘Have you, Tracy Morgan, ever not been yourself?'”
Says Morgan, his deadpan perfect, “I don’t even know what that’s about. I live my life and I let live, baby.”
The second episode of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins premieres Monday, February 23rd on NBC, streaming on Peacock.
You must be logged in to post a comment.