‘The Other Two’ Creators on YouTube Stars, Red Carpet Mishaps, and the ‘SNL’ Sketch They’re Glad Was Cut

With its scathing satire of celebrity culture and big beating heart, Comedy Central’s The Other Two has become one of the breakout sitcoms of 2019. The series was created by the dynamic comedy duo of Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, who are perhaps best-known for being the Peabody Award-winning co-head writers of Saturday Night Live‘s celebrated 2016 election year season.

The Other Two runs far deeper than an SNL sketch, though. The show follows the trials and triumphs of one family coping with the youngest sibling’s meteoric rise to teen heartthrob status. Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke) find themselves trailing behind their little brother Chase Dreams (Case Walker), all while coping with the grief of recently losing their father. Molly Shannon plays their exuberant matriarch Pat and Ken Marino often steals the show as Chase’s agent Streeter.

Decider caught up with Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider in the middle of Winter 2019 TCA press tour. Later in the day, Viacom made much of The Other Two‘s critical acclaim and announced a Season Two pick up during the panel. We asked Kelly and Schneider to weigh in on the show’s success, the origin of some sublimely hilarious bits, and to reveal one of their favorite SNL missteps.

DECIDER: Congratulations, everyone I’ve talked to loves the show. What’s been your favorite reaction so far? Has there been one that you like the most?

Sarah Schneider: I think anytime there’s been a joke that people attach to and then repost, that is the best for us, we love those little things.

Chris Kelly: Yeah, a little joke that tickled us that was for no one but us and then someone else notices, we love that. We also like when people will comment on the drama. It’s a comedy show, but it’s a little bit of a drama as the season goes on. So it’s refreshing to hear people review the show or talk about the show in terms of some of the deeper, darker stuff that happens. 

I’ve always been a huge Molly Shannon fan so I wanted to ask why you wanted her to be the mom in the show? And how involved does she get with her improv background? Or is she able to just take your words and go with it?

Kelly: I worked with her on a movie a couple years ago, so I knew that a) she was good and b) she was the best person, so I liked working with her as well. We didn’t write the pilot with her in mind, because we didn’t want to presume she’d do it or had the time, but once she was on board it helped us flesh out the character, because once we knew it was going to be her we were like, “Oh, great.” So I think that character became deeper and more complicated because we knew it was going to be Molly.

We wanted to make her do all the things she could do, so we wrote all these scenes because we wanted to see Molly Shannon perform. As far as improv, we always wanna be like, “Yas.” But in reality, every episode was shot in four days, so we were running as far as we could.

Schneider: Molly is also such a disciplined actress that she would come in with her lines memorized, rewritten with notes in the margins — her scripts look like Rain Man, they look psychotic.

Kelly: I think it’s a testament to her that you think she’s improvising, because she feels so loose when she’s making it up on the spot.

I’m still thinking about that moment when she puts the pillow in the concrete chair…

Kelly: Wait, that was improvised!

Schneider: That was improvised!

Kelly: When she says, “That’s good,” that is improvised.

I was at an event the other night, and a number of journalists and I had to walk in behind the red carpet, and we all immediately joked how it was exactly like when Cary and Brooke have to sneak behind Chase’s red carpet. Where did you come up with that?

Kelly: We were with Kate [McKinnon] at the Emmys on the red carpet and then Kate got ushered onto the red carpet and we got ushered behind the right carpet and it was the narrowest thing with bushes and you could still see through and see the shadows of Nicole Kidman and Kate McKinnon. And we were like, “This is perfect, this feels like the poster for the show.”

Schneider: One year we had to walk down and it had a bunch of vomit on it.

You guys said Chase is not based off of Justin Bieber, but the kids who base themselves off of Bieber. Are there any other stories about child stars that you’ve pulled from? I feel like you guys have nailed the weirdness of what I’ve heard about kids from behind the scenes.

Schneider: We talked to Case Walker, the actor who plays Chase, we took him out to a couple lunches and just talked to him about his experience. There were a couple of storylines in the show that have happened to him or his peers. We did a lot of research, we deep-dived — especially for the music videos — we’d dive into these real kids’ YouTubes. We’d look at the first video they posted and the most recent video they posted and you can just see now it’s produced by a team and there’s a stylist and it looks very expensive.

Kelly: And this one’s about an issue, and he’s like, “sexy” now. You can see all the steps. Kid-to-kid they’re all kinda the same, they all kinda follow the same trajectory.

I have to get one SNL-related question in. I’m sure you’re always asked what your favorite sketch is that didn’t make it on the show, but was there ever one that you were thankful that got pulled?

Kelly: It’s so funny, when you’re at your first or second year, you’re like, “I know it didn’t go well at dress, but I know it can get better, you can make the cuts work, you can get the cuts.” Then, your fifth or sixth year, if you know it’s not gonna work, you’re like, “Please cut this.” You have a better sense of the show. You’re not so precious that you’re like, “If I don’t get a sketch on, I’m fired.” It’s better if you don’t get a sketch on if it’s this sketch and it’s not good.

That’s the good thing about SNL, people are like, “What’s your favorite thing that didn’t get on?” And by and large, if something didn’t get on the show, they were right. In the moment, especially when you’re new, you think like “What? Do they all hate me? This is brilliant, what are they talking about?” Then the longer you’re there you realize that no one is thinking about you, no one’s cutting anything for political reasons. It just wasn’t as funny, it wasn’t as good as you thought. It feels so important in the moment, but I can’t even remember — I remember during a season if someone was like “Who hosted last week?” I couldn’t remember, it’s just such a whirlwind.

What’s something that you’re like, “That could’ve gone a little better?”

Kelly: We wrote a sketch with Kate [McKinnon] and Aidy [Bryant] and their names were Madge and Dickie and they were 80-year-old, old show biz ladies who lived in the Carlyle together and they hosted a talk show out of their hotel room in a bed or something. And all their guests were other 80-year-old magicians who they knew. It was just bonkers, absolutely batshit crazy. It was really funny because it went really well at the table, it killed with the table. When I remember when we were blocking it, Kenny was like, “Buckle up, you guys are gonna have to write 100 of these,” as if it was going to be a new, recurring sketch.

It absolutely ate shit at dress, did not go. We tried it again a million times, like on a writing night when we didn’t have anything we’d be like, “Let’s put Madge and Dickie back on the table” and it never went.

Schneider: We were like, “It’s because it’s on the one stage where the audience seats are looking down on the back, they need to play out, that’s the reason.”

Kelly: On the night of you spend so much time being like, “Actually, the real reason it didn’t go is the room is too shallow, everyone knows you can’t have a shallow room.” But with every bitter mood you’re like, “Oh, it just wasn’t good enough.” But it made us laugh writing it.

A new episode of The Other Two premieres on Comedy Central tonight, and you can catch up by streaming past episodes on ComedyCentral.com.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Where to stream The Other Two