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Last Night at PaleyFest2010: 'Community'
'Community' Night at PaleyFest2010 from Thomas Attila Lewis on Vimeo.
Sometimes it's not until one sees a group of creators, producers, and talent onstage together that the reasons why a TV show is so good becomes so incredibly apparent. At PaleyFest2010's "Community" night at the Saban Theatre the truth was revealed. If you had wondered how Chevy Chase became involved in NBC's series and what it would be to work with him, you were treated to the better part of two hours of the experience as Chase upstaged, mocked, and thoroughly cracked up his collaborators and the audience.
Cast members Joel McHale (Jeff Winger), Gillian Jacobs (Britta), Ken Jeong (Senor Chang), and Donald Glover (Troy) all had anecdotes about working with the comedy legend who consistently brought more funny to the table to challenge them over the production of this season's 25 episodes. While Ken Jeong talked specifically about how the ensemble challenged each other as well as how his own performance improved through active collaboration and discussion, something important to him as his background is in stand-up and improv, the rest of the cast mostly related about running into Chase on set to be unexpectedly upbraided with non-sequiturs.
Series creator and executive producer Dan Harmon revealed that the concept of the show originated with his actual community college experience at 32 years old and he, along with input from co-producers Garrett Donovan and Neil Goldman explained how they cast the show despite challenges in figuring out how to recruit Chevy Chase as well as the long search for the actress to play Britta, resulting in a "perfect" casting of Gillian Jacobs.
In our brief interview with Donald Glover (in the above video) he gave us a teaser about tonight's episode that involves the Muppets and on stage, Joel McHale described how he had to prepare for his nearly-nude scene with some hair shaving and spray-on tan.
If you are a fan of a TV show, you will never have the opportunities available to you at PaleyFest and many of the other events that the Paley Center for Media hold regularly throughout the year. For more on PaleyFest2010 check out the website as the festival runs through March 14th.
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Ken Jeong and Chevy Chase were hilarious at PaleyFest2010's "Community" night at the Saban Theatre
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