Paul Reiser And Richard Kind Talk Amazon’s ‘Red Oaks’ And Reuniting Years After ‘Mad About You’

Debuting next Friday, October 9, on Prime Video is the streaming platform’s latest original series, Red Oaks. From creators Gregory Jacobs and Joe Gangemi and executive producers Steven Soderbergh and David Gordon Green, the throwback ’80s comedy centers on NYU student David (Craig Roberts) and his turbulent summer working as a tennis coach at the titular country club. Stuck in a relationship that has run its course and terrified of ending up a miserable accountant like his father (Richard Kind), David puts off real-life responsibilities for the entire summer of 1985 and starts to find himself while seeking attention from the mysterious Skye (Alexandra Socha), whose intimidating father, Getty (Paul Reiser), runs Red Oaks with an iron fist.

Before the New York premiere of Red Oaks, I had the opportunity to sit down with co-stars Kind and Reiser, whose friendship goes all the way back to the days of Mad About You. Tasked with playing two men trapped by the fears instilled with middle age, Kind and Reiser bring both comic relief and agonizing heartbreak to the roles of Sam and Getty, reminding us that our 20-year-old protagonist isn’t the only one coming of age. I talked with the duo about reuniting, binge-watching, and indulging in a bit of ’80s nostalgia.

Decider: I know you don’t share many scenes, but what has it been like working together again so many years after Mad About You?

Paul Reiser: This, right now, is the most we’ve been together [laughs]. We didn’t get to play but we got to bump into each other on set.

Richard Kind: I’m going to sing Paul’s praises because it was a very gracious thing. I got to see a scene between Paul and Freddie Roman in a sauna that was not as well-written as it might have been. So Paul made a suggestion to the writers — I had nothing to do with this scene, I just happened to be there the day that it was shot — and graciously rewrote his scene where he is Bud Abbott and Freddie Roman is Lou Costello, and it was just superior writing and superior acting.

PR: That’s so sweet [laughs]. It’s so funny because Freddie is an old friend of mine, and I was really tickled that he was in it because it’s really a nice collection of great people working on this. But if you notice in the trailer, which is only two minutes, Freddie [has] four of the big laughs, and I was like, “Okay that really speaks well to the show.” He’s just one of those guys who you give a line and he’s going to hit it out of the park. He’s just a funny guy. And we had this scene together, so I thought, “Let’s try to write some comedy.” So they graciously let me tweak it and I laid it up and — boom! — Freddie hit it out of the park.

 

Paul, you had the opportunity to do something similar with Andrew Gurland on Married, right?

PR: Yes, that’s another example. Andrew Gurland is a really good writer — they have great writers — but they’re very open to suggestions. It was a similar thing where there were a couple of scenes where it was like, let’s see if we can go a little deeper and make this richer and we’d go back and forth. When it’s really collaborative, that’s always the most fun.

RK: The thing is I loved most of the scenes on Red Oaks and felt you really couldn’t improve upon them, but that was a great example of a scene that became an absolute treasure.

PR: But it’s in my contract that even if he’s not in the scene, I want Richard floating near the coffee and doughnuts because that makes my day better.

RK: It’s the pom-poms.

How has it been awaiting release being that it’s been over a year since the pilot debuted on Amazon?

RK: I hated it. A year went by before we started shooting. That killed me. I did another show, Luck, which made us wait ten months before we went for the second season. That just kills me, because you’re on a roll and you’re excited and then you’ve just got to push things to the side and look for other work in the meantime. When you’ve built yourself up you’ve got high hopes, so I have to admit it was difficult. But on the flip side, the writers were able to do a read through of every script we were going to be filming, which is simply never done. On Spin City, my joke was you could pick up the script and warm your face with it because it had just come out of the printer. Whereas these have been completed, so we could have a read through on May 9 and started shooting on June 1. So that’s pretty incredible.

PR: There is something nice about this schedule. When you do traditional half-hour TV, you’re chasing your tail the whole time. You’re constantly running and hoping you get the next script. Here, when you do these — and this is the way TV should be done — you write them all and then you go shoot them all. The great advantage is when they write them all, they do the pilot and know what works and who to write for. Then you get to look at the whole thing together, which is a nice luxury. I will say this: binge-watching is much better than binge-reading [laughs]. To read ten scripts in a row is a lot.

 

So you do use streaming outlets like Amazon?

PR: Yeah, but I’ve never actually binged a whole season. I don’t have the kind of time, and I can’t stay awake that long. But sometimes I’ll watch two or three hours in a row, and it’s great because you go through and you get that instant gratification. The downside of that, of course, is by the end of the week you’re done and, as a viewer, you have to wait another year. But it’s interesting because now you have some streaming outlets [who are] like, “We’re going to do something novel and only release one episode per week.” Oh, you mean like TV has been doing since the 1950s? There’s a million ways to watch, which is great for viewers, and it’s great for us because you have that many more people watching really quality work.

RK: I binge-watch on the bike or on the elliptical because I have never fallen asleep on one of those. And I know it makes a difference because usually an episode is 47 minutes long but sometimes you get one — like Fargo, which I loved — where the last episode is an hour and ten minutes. I can’t wait to watch, but I try to watch it that night and I’m just nodding off. I really like binge-watching a lot, but I find what I really like to do is, if I start a show — and I often thank TV for helping me live longer — I watch at the gym.

Does it ever make you nervous as actors and creators to have a show you’ve starred in be binge-watched so quickly you’re afraid audiences won’t necessarily take enough away from it?

PR: We haven’t been doing it long enough in this world to know.

RK: I don’t think we really care that much what people think anymore [laughs]. You know, Edgar Allen Poe said he wrote short stories so you could read them in one sitting. I don’t think I mind that these shows run for a chunk of time like this.

Red Oaks definitely feels more like a five-hour indie film rather than a segmented series. Did it feel that way for you both?

PR: I’ve only seen one episode [of Red Oaks] actually but I watched Transparent, which is like watching pieces of a movie.

RK: I watched Transparent in one afternoon.

Can we talk about the episode “Body Swap?” It kind of stands apart from the rest of the season. It took me out of the series a bit, but I really enjoyed it and I was so surprised to see Amy Heckerling directed it. Richard, how was it working with Craig Roberts to get into that character?

RK: I can see where it takes you out of the series because it’s just not a part of the linear story that we’re telling. The catalyst for this is Soderbergh’s knowledge of film, and he said, “You know the ’80s when there were all these body-swap movies? Let’s do one of those.” So we took it and ran with it, and when we had the table read I remember it getting no laughs but everybody loving it. It was just treated differently and memorably, but it does take you out. Working with Craig, we talked only that afternoon how we were going to do it. I’m easier to mimic.

PR: One of the great joys was to watch Craig, who’s very soft-spoken — and by the way, he’s doing an accent to begin with, because he’s Welsh — to watch him hunched over and shrugging with his shoulders, it was really hysterical.

RK: If you look how small his mouth is — whereas I’m known for my big mouth — we had to focus on that a bit.

It seemed like it would be a fun series to shoot, given the Caddyshack vibe. Did anything happen on set that stood out as really memorable?

PR: It was like going to camp.

RK: It was very relaxed. First of all, we filmed at a golf course, and I love golf so I would show up early, play golf, shower in the men’s room, and then go do my scenes. But you have young kids who — I don’t think any of them have had a series before — are phenomenal actors and people and gung ho to do this and fun. 

PR: I don’t remember anything crazy or outrageous, but there was a great sense of fun that came from the people involved who are very laid back. David Gordon Green has a very can-do, let’s-try-anything attitude and is always looking for another way to do something funny or make it fresher.

RK: In fact, David Gordon Green gave me direction and had me do something where I said, “Nobody would ever do this,” but it became natural. I’m usually resistant to stuff like that, but I go with it and I go, “You were right.” It was when my character wanted to talk to his son in the last episode on the tennis court and we sit down. Nobody sits on a tennis court. You don’t. But he said, “What if you sit down?” So we sat back to back so the net was symbolic of the divide between father and son and we talked. It was gorgeous, and it somewhat ends the series.

Watch the Red Oaks pilot exclusively on Prime Video and stream the complete first season beginning Friday, October 9.

 

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