When Steph Curry Wanted to Become a Sitcom Star, the Minds Behind ‘Happy Endings’ Sprung Into Action
What do you do when one of the biggest sports stars on the planet asks you to write a role for him? If you’re David Caspe and Adam Pally, you think quickly.
The duo — who first worked together on the cult ABC sitcom “Happy Endings,” created by Caspe and starring Pally as Max Blum, a disheveled gay man making ends meet as an unlicensed limousine driver while mooching off his ensemble of Chicago friends — never expected to find themselves writing a mockmentary about Steph Curry. But when the Golden State Warriors star teamed up with his wife Ayesha Curry to host the game show “About Last Night” on what was then called HBO Max in 2022, their comedic fates changed forever.
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Each episode of the show featured different celebrity couples answering embarrassing questions about each other, and both Pally and Caspe appeared as guests along with their respective partners. They quickly developed a rapport with Curry, which led to the NBA star reaching out with the hope of collaborating on a scripted project.
“When we were on, we kind of started giving it to Steph a little and he would give it back and it kind of formed this friendship,” Pally said. “And then after that, him and his production company called us and said, ‘Is there anything that you have?’ And we said, ‘Give us two seconds.'”
While they didn’t have a preexisting script that would work for Curry, they quickly turned to their longtime friends and collaborators Matthew and Daniel Lipman, who worked with them on both “Happy Endings” and the YouTube original series “Champaign, Ill.” The four men came up with the project that became “Mr. Throwback,” which premieres today on Peacock.
The six-part mockumentary stars Pally as Danny, a Chicago-based sports memorabilia dealer who played middle school basketball with Steph Curry — and was a much better player at the time. As his life crumbles around him amid crushing gambling debt and a daughter that’s disinterested in him, he decides to track down his old friend with the hopes of finding a financial windfall. As he works his way into the entourage, he butts heads with Kimberly (Ego Nwodim), Curry’s high-powered executive assistant who has little tolerance for the distraction he poses.
Writing for someone with no prior acting experience could be seen as a challenge, especially when you’re dealing with one of the most recognizable people in the world. But even as the team opted to lean into Curry’s public persona as the nicest man in professional sports, they found themselves impressed by his natural comedic gifts.
“I think once we sort of landed on what the version of his character was going to be, which is just basically a heightened version of who he really is — just like a warm, magnanimous, funny, generous, humble guy — just slightly making fun of himself in our version of the show, it was just like we just sort of wrote to that and assumed that the safest thing would be the closest version of himself. And he exceeded our wildest expectations,” Matthew Libman said. “So many of his improvs got in the show. His chemistry with his co-stars, we were just blown away by. They genuinely loved each other on screen and off so quickly that it was just easy and it just got better and better.”
“Mr. Throwback” is the third series that Caspe, Pally, and the Libmans have written together. And while it still boasts much of the witty banter that made “Happy Endings” so beloved, the serialized plot provided them with an opportunity to take a creative step towards more ambitious storytelling.
“I think ‘Happy Endings’ was a lot more joke dense, and we were really, really concerned with just packing that with jokes and we love that,” Matthew said. But I think as we’re getting older, we have kids, we’re getting—”
“Less funny?” Daniel interjected.
“Softer in a lot of ways,” Matthew continued. “It’s sort like how Michael Jordan developed the turnaround jumper. He couldn’t dunk anymore. So now we are leaning into the emotional and the storytelling. Honestly, a lot of what we’re inspired by, which you can hopefully see in the show, is some of the great dramas on TV and incredible documentaries and that type of storytelling. We just we felt that if you’re telling too many just crazy word jokes or limericks, it’s maybe not going to be as believable. It’s sort of like the story dictated what type of show we needed to make.”
While Season 1 only spans six episodes, Curry and company are already thinking ahead to future stories to tell. If they get their way, “Mr. Throwback” will enjoy a run that far exceeds the three seasons of “Happy Endings.”
“Those people like Jesse Armstrong and some of those other people who are like, ‘Look, I think I’ve told the story that I came here to tell in these four seasons,’ or whatever? You will never hear that from us,” Caspe said with a laugh. “We will grind it into absolute dust. Episodes that are basically ripped off from other episodes of the exact same show.”
“They will have to rip us off set,” Matthew Libman added. “It’ll just be three skeletons in video village.”
“Mr. Throwback” is now streaming on Peacock.
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