Check out Alison and Danny’s interview with Monsters and Critics to talk about Community:

Monsters and Critics: There’s nothing like Community on TV where you can expect an epic 30 minute movie and vaudeville show.

Alison Brie – Cool! Yay! It’s something we take extreme pride in; the gift that Dan Harmon gave us in creating the show and setting the precedent for pushing the borders of what can exist on network television.

Danny Pudi – What can you do in 22 minutes? That for us has been a consistent and exciting challenge every week. Early on I used to think coming back from the fourth fifth or sixth table read thinking “Wow, that’s still funny”. It’s getting weirder. I can’t believe I’m getting to do that! What? We’re gonna do that? The writers text me “How’s your Christian Bale impression?” “What Christian Bale impression?”

Alison Brie- And then a year later they ask me “How’s your Christian Bale impersonation?” Uh oh! Here we go. So for an actor it can’t be any more exciting to work on a show like this.

Monsters and Critics: And on Community, you can wear so many personas, your characters and the ones you winkingly assume.

Alison Brie – Yes. It’s always a really cool challenge when we do extreme genre episodes because on the one hand, it’s exciting. We’re never bored, we get to play so many kids of characters within the constraints of our charcaters and that’s where it’s interesting. You do a Law & Order episode and you’re focusing so hard to get it right and we’re watching it and studying them and we’re all big fans and fans of research. We watch and bring that element. But at the same time you have to keep in kind where your character is coming from and keep it true to that character that exists on this other show so it’s a treat, a fun acting exercise.

Danny Pudi – It’s a fun workshop.

Monsters and Critics: I’ll admit to you I get confused sometimes. All of a sudden it’s Abed’s TV show and there’s a laugh track. What?

Danny Pudi – Well I’m confused all the time. People need to know it’s not just the viewer, it’s us too. That’s the joy of our show. Personally, I enjoy messiness and uncertainty in real life and you don’t have all the answers. It’s nice to be part of a show which allows those moments to breathe a little bit.
Even though it is extreme and bizarre, it’s lifelike. That’s a crazy thing to say, isn’t it?

Alison Brie – It’s true because we always work hard, however far we take these episodes, to keep them grounded them in the character. There is always character development and it’s always happening in a plausible fashion within the realm of this school we’ve created. The group is going to space and you see our interpretation of our group going to space and you believe it.

Danny Pudi – We’re doing a Claymation episode then you see our version of a Claymation episode and say “That’s pretty dark” but there is a lost reference, Peirce is coming out of the washroom zipping up his pants but it relates…

Alison Brie – … back to his mom which is why he maintains that reliability.
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Check out Alison and Danny’s interview on Breakfast Television Vancouver.

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Check out Alison and Danny’s latest interview with Television Without Pity:

On Getting Along Without Dan Harmon
Alison Brie: It’s a tough thing to learn that your showrunner is not coming back to the show, especially when he’s such a big part of the show. So I think we were a little nervous and didn’t know what to expect, but that’s not really a new feeling, having worked on our show for four years now. When we met the new guys, they really stressed how much they loved the show and wanted to keep it the same and some of our writers were still the same and so they have. We all were certainly very vocal this season to speak about what our characters would or wouldn’t do and the way things might go on the show, so we were all sort of working together to keep the show intact.
Danny Pudi: Community itself is a very specific kind of thing for all of us, so I think there was a lot of fear that the show isn’t going to, I guess, maintain its level. One thing that we wanted to make sure comes across this year is our genuine love for the show and I think you’ll see that. There is an extra level of responsibility we have to us as actors to really make sure that we’re still staying true to who these people are and what the world around Greendale is.

On That Classic Season 3 Dreamatorium Episode
Brie: We both love that episode. Obviously, Troy and Abed are sort of a unit and you don’t really get to see other people going into their world. So by having Annie go in, you got to let the whole audience go in there and really take this journey into Abed’s mind, which is a place we’re never really privy to. I think Annie and Abed have distinct differences in their characters, but also have similarities in their lack of being able to relate to other people. Annie has never really had a lot of friends and Abed has never had this many friends at one time. So in certain ways they’re similar sort of outcasts and it was fun to watch them get to know each other.
Pudi: One of the things that’s really special about that episode, which people don’t know about, is that we didn’t have a working script for the entire week. Dan Harmon would get us pages on the day as we went. So for us, it was really exciting because it was largely Alison, I and our director Tristram Shapeero in the Dreamatorium piecing it all together. I also like how there’s this kind of a language that’s happened between Annie and Abed since that episode and the timeline episode earlier in Season 3, where I was like “You should move in here” [to Troy and Abed's apartment] and then she moves in. And in the premiere this year, Abed said, “You should take forensics” and Annie takes forensics. I think there’s something kind of nice that we understand each other and we see each other thriving and I think a lot of that is because of the Dreamatorium. We know that we both have this very specific worldview.

Brie on Annie’s Ever-Evolving Relationship with Jeff
This season is sort of a fun season for Jeff and Annie fans, because as usual their relationship doesn’t really progress. I think that Annie will always have a crush on Jeff and I don’t know that Jeff will ever be fully comfortable really getting together with Annie or if that’s even as primary a focus on Jeff’s radar as it probably is on Annie’s. So I think this season is sort of like them just acknowledging and kind of moving past it in some ways to being good friends. But at the same time, there are some ways — without them actually getting really close — there will be some interesting things for fans later this season just between Joel and I. I’m not trying to tease too much, but things like an alternate reality.

Pudi on How Community May One Day Become Arrested Development
Arrested Development is my favorite comedy over the last ten to 15 years. I also came around to it late — I watched it on DVD actually — and I was blown away by it. I think that is part of the reason why I was able to also buy into that show and its nature is because I was able to watch it in bunches. It’s a word-of-mouth show and I was able to go in being like, “I’m going to give this show a full chance. I’m going to watch all three seasons right now.” And immediately I had a common language with a bunch of people who watch Arrested. I can say, “Annyong” and immediately everyone would laugh — that kind of thing. And I think there is an amount of that within Community as well, where people will start watching the show and saying, “Pop, Pop” to each other ten years from now and it will be a nice little secret language.
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