From the beginning, Adam Pally realized that he and Steph Curry were… look Fun together.
“Dan Aykroyd says you always look for the number 10 in a comedy duo,” says Pally. “Literally, one tall and one short and round.”
Like Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy, could Pally and Curry be the next comedy odd couple? They hope so with their new series, “Mr. Throwback.” The six episodes were released Thursday on Peacock, auspiciously timed with a weekend in which Curry dominated in France and led Team USA to a gold medal in men’s basketball.
Pally, the roving comedian of many comedies including “The Mindy Project” and the world of “Sonic the Hedgehog,” is speaking from a hotel room in Paris, where he was crazed watching his new friend beat Serbia at the Olympics the night before. He was so caught up in the basketball drama that his wife joked he was having a heart attack, and he says he “nearly broke Don Lemon’s hand” and “yelled at Willie Geist to stand up in the fourth quarter.”
Becoming friends with Curry has made watching him play throughout this year that much more intense, so “I’m in that state of heart tension lately,” Pally says, “because I care even more. I want him to win even more.”
The 42-year-old comedian still can’t believe he’s friends with one of the NBA’s top players today. They hooked up a few years ago when Curry was hosting the couples game show “About Last Night” with his wife, Ayesha. Pally and his wife, Daniella, were contestants, as were David Caspe (creator of the ABC sitcom starring Pally “Happy Endings”) and his wife, Casey Wilson.
Adam Pally, left, met Stephen Curry during a taping of Max's game show “About Last Night.”
(Peacock/David Moir/Peacock)
Curry has a way of disarming people who are intimidated by him with an easygoing ease and humor, and Caspe and Pally learned that the four-time NBA champion was, in fact, funny. They also learned that Curry, through his production company, Unanimous Media, wanted to develop a new comedy series. He gave the duo a blank slate, and they came back with a mockumentary-style show based on a heightened version of Curry, with Pally playing his childhood basketball teammate whose life hasn’t turned out so well.
The format, with its moving cameras and constantly cutaway interviews, seemed like a natural choice for an athlete in the era of “30 for 30” and “The Last Dance” (Curry already has his own documentary on Apple TV+, “Underrated”). In practice, interviews also allow for a lot of secondhand stories to be told without actually portraying them. That’s because Pally loves Christopher Guest’s mockumentary comedies (his favorite is “Waiting for Guffman”).
Of course, there's a long history of famous basketball players trying their hand at the big screen, from Michael Jordan and LeBron James in the “Space Jam” films to Shaquille O'Neal in “Kazaam” to Kevin Garnett in “Uncut Gems,” and plenty of examples where the result wasn't a sure-fire dunk.
“I’ll be forgiving to older generations and say they haven’t had cameras in front of them like we have,” Pally says. Curry is comfortable in front of a camera, thanks to his father, Dell Curry, a former NBA player, and says he’s been exposed to it since he was young. “So I think that’s an advantage for Stephen, is that he doesn’t get caught up like some people do when they see a camera, they look right at it and their whole spirit and demeanor changes.”
“Mr. Throwback” was built around the hilarious image of Curry, a smiling, domineering superstar, who worships Pally’s character, a scruffy, divorced, sad-sack guy, Danny Grossman, who was once the star of his high school basketball team but now runs a vintage sports memorabilia shop in Chicago (where most of the series was filmed). Danny is pathetic, lonely and deeply in debt to the Polish mob, so he re-enters Curry’s life to steal a priceless game jersey to pay off the debt, and when he gets caught, he concocts an unbelievable story about his teenage daughter, Charlie (Layla Scalisi), being terminally ill.
Samantha (Ayden Mayeri), Charlie (Layla Scalisi) and Danny (Adam Pally) dressed as characters from “Stranger Things.” Danny uses Charlie’s photo as a ruse to prove that she is sick.
(George Burns Jr./Peacock)
Being the super nice guy that he is, Curry's friendship becomes luxurious and Danny's lie grows into absurdity.
But like Guest’s films, “Mr. Throwback” is really a team sport, and Caspe cast two up-and-coming comedians, Ego Nwodim and Ayden Mayeri, in roles opposite Pally and Curry.
For the past six seasons, Nwodim has been making her mark on “Saturday Night Live” (her character “Lisa from Temecula” broke the record of her castmates and guest host Pedro Pascal). A gifted improviser on spots like the “Comedy Bang! Bang! ” podcast, Nwodim often plays wild, unhinged characters, but as Kimberly, the CEO of Curry’s fictional company, Curry Up and Wait, she’s the serious person amid the nonsense, stern and intolerant of bullshit.
“There’s a misconception that being straight can’t be fun and funny,” says Nwodim, 36, from her home in Brooklyn. “I think that’s a skill in itself, and a lot of times, in some ways, a harder skill to have and demonstrate is being funny as a straight person. Sometimes people don’t consider that in the same way they would consider an unusual person or a mess.”
Nwodim can’t help but be funny no matter what role she’s in; during our Zoom call, she rambles on about word etymologies and colloquialisms and confesses to having a browser tab problem — her iPhone currently has 498 tabs open. She was also recently in Paris, where highlights of her Olympic whirlwind were partying with athletes at the Team USA house and meeting Snoop Dogg.
She's never acted in a mockumentary before, but says that in her daily life with friends she's always pretended she was in a documentary series, using an invisible camera and giving a confession that contradicts something she just told someone.
Adam Pally and Ego Nwodim in a scene from “Mr. Throwback.”
(Chuck Hodes/Peacock)
“There’s something wrong with me,” she says when I ask her why she does this. “I think it’s because I watched a lot of ‘Real World’ when I was a kid.”
Nwodim is excited about the upcoming 50th season of “SNL,” which she believes will have an electric energy. “There will be a lot of people wandering the halls at 8 a.m. and that will be exciting,” she says. “It looks like it’s going to be a great season party.”
Another big draw on “Mr. Throwback” is Mayeri, who plays Danny’s ex-wife, Sam, who finds herself in cahoots with his big lie and enjoys having Curry bankroll her fantasies. One of Mayeri’s most recent roles was on “I Love That For You,” the Showtime series that ended too soon with Vanessa Bayer, which ironically also revolves around a character who lies about a terminal illness.
“I immediately thought: is it weird that this is my lane now?” Mayeri laughs.
When the Oakland native first heard about the role, she thought, “Oh, an ex-wife on a TV sitcom — am I going to be nagging my husband all the time?” she admits. “And then I read the script, and my character is so mischievous and funny, and gets into all the silliness, that I thought, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever read. ’”
Despite the show’s freewheeling, spontaneous feel, there was very little improvisation. The reference-filled scripts were polished in a writers’ room run by “Happy Endings” alumni (and brothers) Daniel and Matthew Libman, though Pally says he and Caspe like to create a playful atmosphere on set where everything is play.
Joining Adam Pally is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, right, as Danny's father, Mitch.
(Peacock/George Burns Jr./Peacock)
Plus, most of the cast has improv experience — Curry even participated in an improv show in Chicago several years ago, something his coach Steve Kerr put together when the Golden State Warriors were in a slump. The same goes for Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, who plays Danny’s estranged father in “Mr. Throwback.” Letts has been up there with legendary Chicago improvisers TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi (the latter of whom appears on the series), and has some of the show’s funniest lines — particularly one about needing to go to the bathroom dramatically.
Pally still can't believe her new friendship with Letts and how, “whenever a review comes out that I really don't agree with, I get a vile text message written by the guy who wrote 'August: Osage County.'”
Letts also gives the series a real dramatic gravity, part of a tactic Pally and the writers created organically by combining the absurd and ridiculous with a serious arc about generational addiction, heartbreak and forgiveness. Pally attributes that streak of seriousness to the fact that he and his cohort are all older now, all with growing families and life’s battle scars.
After finishing a new season of the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy series “FUBAR” this summer, he hopes to begin making a second episode of “Mr. Throwback” with his gold medalist friend.
“I don’t know what reality I’m in,” Pally says, “but I sure like it.”
