Abed: I hate when they finish each other’s –
Troy: Pies.
On the NBC sitcom Community, Donald Glover and Danny Pudi play Troy and Abed, two students at Greendale Community College with a very close friendship.
It turns out they have a few things in common with their fictional counterparts: An ability to finish each other’s sentences. And a habit of dressing alike.
Glover and Pudi both showed up in blue dress shirts with rolled-up sleeves, topped with a skinny black tie.
“Of course we planned this!” Pudi said.
“We flew all the way to Toronto!” Glover adds.
The two, along with Yvette Nicole Brown and Alison Brie, are sitting on the Citytv rooftop patio to promote Community. The first season just ended and the actors are enjoying a bit of a break.
From the show, that is – not from each other. A fairly innocuous first question, “How do you like working on the show?” garners the following response;
Pudi: We’re on hiatus right now and we go back to work in July, so we have a month and a half of playtime, I guess. But once we’re shooting –
Glover: We’re just shooting. Usually 14 hour, 15 hour days. It’s shot single camera, so it’s not like you just come in on Friday and bang it out in front of a live audience. It’s shot like a movie and they’re really into making it feel like a movie. And there’s a lot of us! It’s not like there’s just two people.
Pudi: Early on, when the show started, there was a group scene in the study room. And we realized it took a long time, like a full day or maybe two days to do the study room scene. And we were like, “I wonder if we’re going to be doing this every episode?”
Glover: And we have! We’ve been doing it every episode. But it is this thing where you walk into that room on Monday morning and you’re like, well, I’m going to be here all day.
Pudi: And you also don’t know what the wild card is going to be that day. Like, OK, here comes Chevy (Chase) with a goat.
Glover: Or a baby.
Pudi: You’re feeding a monkey. Don’t make eye contact. And we’re rolling!
Glover: The monkey episode, they literally were just like, “OK, so, this monkey’s going to be on your shoulder.” And I was like, “Is it? Really?” It’s a wild animal, with the sharpest teeth. I was terrified.
Pudi: And whenever anyone ever says to you, “There’s one rule and one rule only: don’t make eye contact.” Somebody has broken that rule!
That’s my first question answered – and approximately half of my total interview time gone. But there are a few things I have to cover, including the online campaign to have Glover cast in the upcoming Spiderman movie. Both Pudi and Glover are active on Twitter, with a combined following of over 60,000 people.
Pudi: We’re actually here, today, because we’re trying to bring the ‘Donald for Spiderman’ campaign to Canada. The power of Twitter!
Glover: Twitter is amazing. I don’t even have a Facebook account anymore. It’s amazing to me how fast – that ‘Donald for Spiderman’ thing happened and I walked out of my house and someone screamed at me, “Donald for Spiderman!”
"It is cool to be able to speak with your fans and talk to them and have them weigh in on stuff. I know for a fact that our creator is on Twitter. The episode ‘Streets Ahead’ is all about this dude that Tweeted him “Modern Family is streets ahead of your show.”
Pudi: That’s the genius of our creator Dan Harmon is that he incorporates bits like that from the public consciousness. Chevy Chase’s character keeps trying to push that phrase “streets ahead” but no one gets it.
Glover: Of all the shows on TV, it’s the most conscious that it’s a TV show. And because of that, we’re allowed to do all these things. To do a Spiderman episode would not be crazy.
Pudi: I think that’s the funny thing about this group of characters is that they all kind of get it. This Greendale place is for us and when something comes in, like, we’re all doing paintball, everyone’s at it in their own specific ways.
Glover: It’s kind of a metaphor for the set.
Community airs Thursdays on Citytv at 8pm.