A man roams the countryside in a RV, searching for signs of life. Day after day, he travels from state to state, crossing off territories on a map with a Sharpie. Some sort of supervirus has decimated the population; the guy with the hobo beard and the filthy hoodie, however, has miraculously managed to survive the plague. Weve seen this kind of hero before: the postapocalyptic lone wolf who wanders the wastelands, taking on the mantle of humanitys last hope. Then the man returns home from his fruitless journey and proceeds to spend his days throwing bowling balls at stacks of fish tanks, lounging in a margarita-filled kiddie pool and apologizing to God for all the recent masturbation. Somewhere out there, Mad Max is standing near a Thunderdome and sadly shaking his head.
It takes less than 10 minutes to establish that Phil Miller, the protagonist of Foxs new hit sitcom The Last Man on Earth, is not the sort of guy whod battle mohawk-sporting marauders even if they did show up. As played by co-creator Will Forte, Miller goes from optimistic to opportunistic (he decorates the abandoned mansion he moves into with recently acquired possessions like Michael Jordans jersey, Van Goghs self portrait and the Oval Offices rug) to drunkenly indulging in every destructive whim, because hey, whos going to stop him? As MacGruber, the incompetent special-operations agent he played onSaturday Night Live and the 2010 movie of the same name, the comedian had a knack for inadvertently causing chaos. Here, hes gleefully destroying things on purpose breaking store windows, crashing cars into other, the athletic destruction of household aquariums, etc.
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One of the best parts of writing the show, Forte says, is that I get to think of these stupid little things that Id do if nobody else was around and then I get to go do them. I get to run over things with a steamroller. I get to use a flamethrower. Basically, I just wrote a character whos pretty much a version of what I would be like in that situation. If everyone on Earth was wiped out by a virus, I wouldnt have a clue about things like electricity or plumbing. I wouldnt know what the fuck to do!
The concept of crafting a TV comedy about a man trying to negotiate being the last man standing came about when the SNL veteran and his longtime friends Phil Lord and Chris Miller the filmmaking duo responsible for the off-the-wall21 Jump Street reboot andThe Lego Movie were looking for a small-screen project to collaborate on. We didnt even care if he acted in it, Lord says. The idea was to write something together, because Will has this great comic voice and we just wanted to get that on TV somehow. During a three-day powwow, the trio brainstormed ideas back and forth; when one of them suggested something about a man left alone after the apocalypse, everyone quickly rejected it in favor of a scenario culled from real life.
If everyone on Earth was wiped out by a virus, I wouldnt have a clue about things like electricity or plumbing. I wouldnt know what the fuck to do!
Originallywell, for a while Val Kilmer was sleeping on my couch, Forte says, chuckling. Wed become friends after MacGruber, he was looking for a house in Malibu, and he asked, Hey, can I just stay at your place? I figured itd be for a few days; it turned in to two months. So wed settled on developing a project loosely based on that, and just as Chris was putting his jacket on to leave, he suddenly said, Hey, can we take a look at the end-of-the-world thing one more time? Then things just clicked. (For their part, Miller and Lord havent let go of the Kilmer idea: If there was some way we could get a time machine and go back to make that as a reality show, wed do it in a heartbeat, Miller jokes.)
As anyone whos seen The Last Man on Earths first few episodes and given the huge numbers the shows pilot did, were talking a large number of folks Fortes character isnt exactly the last person on earth: The Daily Shows Kristen Schaal shows up at the pilots halfway point to play a fellow survivor named Carol, who decides they need to start repopulating ASAP (but first they have to get married, because shes old-fashioned). And Mad Mens January Jones mysteriously pops up at the climax of episode three, suggesting a potential love triangle on the horizon. Weve been adamant about keeping the various twists and turns a secret, Miller says, but we can say that theres a revelation at the end of each of the 13 episodes, and that its genuine serial storytelling, which were excited about sharing with people. And just because Phil has company, Lord adds, doesnt mean that he wont continue to do dumb shit like throw bowling balls at fish tanks. Thats always going to be a constant.
Indeed, while the shows creators emphasize that the introduction of romcom elements doesnt preclude more wish-fulfillment vandalism or mean the instant disappearance of Fortes homegrown beard a tonsorial monstrosity whose look Miller describes as a cross between 1890s prospector and homeless-man-yells-at-trashcan theyre all quick to point out that the goal was never just Forte going gonzo. From the very beginning, the trio wanted to inject equal parts hilarity and pathos into whats admittedly an unlikely premise for a sitcom; the fact that theyve managed to pull it off and prove that theres an actual audience for something different has, in their eyes, already made The Last Man on Earth a huge success.
I like that it ends up being different that what most people think its going to be, Forte says. I would compare it to MacGruber, in that Im sure a lot of folks were like Wait, is it just going to be some guy getting blown up every two minutes? Then you realize its a little more than that. Its the same thing with this: Oh, its just a dude dicking around all by himself for a half-hour every week? Viewers figure out pretty quickly that theres a lot more going on. We wanted to see if we could take this outrageous idea and do something that was funny and emotional. He pauses for a second. Actually, hardly anybody saw MacGruber, so maybe thats the wrong thing to compare this to. Forget I said that.