Catching Up With Community‘s Yvette Nicole Brown
Thursday’s three-episode final night for cult-favorite Community took us into a video game, through a fascist regime and ended with a poignant montage that included a nod to fans with one final hashtag. We know NBC will bring back the quirky comedy for at least 13 episodes on Fridays next fall, and we chatted with Shirley herself, Yvette Nicole Brown, about the past, present and future of everybody’s favorite study group.
Paste: Congratulations on the amazing three-episode finale on Thursday. We at Paste love the series and can’t wait to see the next season.
Yvette Nicole Brown: Thanks. Paste has been really good to us, so I’m really excited about everything.
Paste: How did you personally find out about the renewal?
Brown: I get all of my revelations about Community through Twitter. I found out about our second season pickup on Twitter, about out hiatus on Twitter, and about the new pickup on Twitter. It’s become my main source. My timeline was going crazy and I realized something good must have happened.
Paste: I’m assuming you found out about the move to Friday night and the reduction to 13 episodes via a Tweet as well?
Brown: Yeah it’s all under that Twitter umbrella.
Paste: You’re pretty involved on Twitter with retweeting fans and everything. How has the fan support been through everything from the announcement of the hiatus up until now?
Brown: The fan support has been amazing. It’s kept us afloat in a lot of ways because when you look at our Nielsen numbers it kind of feels like we’re making this in a vacuum for us and our family members, but the Twitter and fan response reminds us that there are people that really like the show and our invested in the show. It’s meant a lot for us. Through every little bump in the road, especially this season fans have been saying, “We believe in you,” “We love you,” “Here take this win in the TV Guide Fan Favorite Award, in this E! Online thing.” They really are fighting alongside with us.
Paste: And how has the response been since the finale?
Brown: I actually did a live Q & A with Best Buy [on Thursday] and I didn’t get to watch the finale live so I could chat with fans. When I got off the chat I had like two hundred at-mentions on Twitter and most of them were like, “I cried during the finale and thank you so much for making the show.” It was a nice warm hug on finale day.
Paste: I definitely can relate. I’m a crier when it comes to sitcoms, especially when I’m so invested in the characters like on Community.
Brown: Oh, Adam. That’s nice.
Paste: And that montage at the end was so poignant. Throwing in the hashtag #sixseasonsandamovie was amazing.
Brown: Yeah, that was a nice surprise for us, too. I thought it was really genius for Dan Harmon to create an opportunity for us to say goodbye if that was our last episode because we shot that and it was written when we didn’t know what was going to happen with the show. Dan was kind of hesitant at that point with a forward reaching look at all of us in case it was our last episode.
Paste: Speaking of Dan, there have been rumors* regarding the fact that he might step down as a showrunner. Have you caught wind of anything about that? (This interview took place hours before news broke Harmon wouldn’t return as showrunner.)
Brown: I know absolutely nothing. Literally my job is to show up, say my lines and be on time. That’s what I specialize in. Anything that is going on behind the scenes is really none of my business. I love working with Dan and couldn’t imagine the show without him. I’m not sure on what his dreams and aspirations are and I don’t know what the behind the scenes negotiations are. I do know that we’ve all be reassured that even though he isn’t our showrunner he will still be involved with the show on a day to day basis. I doubt the viewers would even be able to see the difference because Dan believes in the show and his heart is in the show. I doubt that would change even if he technically is running the show or not. I really do hope he is around next season.
Paste: Before we look forward, can we look back to when this all started? Did you ever imagine when you signed on as Shirley that there’d be such off the wall episodes that have never been seen before on TV?
Brown: Not at all. I watched the video game episode [Thursday’s “Digital Estate Planning”] after the chat and I thought to myself, “We’re really getting away with this?” There were only probably five minutes of live action in the show and the rest were 8-bit video game graphics circa 1982. Like, what? It was such a magical moment to realize how NBC trusts us and how much they allow us to play.
There are always episodes like that. I was really excited to do the Law & Order episode [“Basic Lupine Urology”]. I don’t think anyone was as excited as me when I saw that first ‘dong dong’ in the script. I get exited often when I see those types of episodes.