When TBS invited me to Cancun for a press junket for their upcoming series Wrecked, I immediately said yes. What normal human being wouldn’t? Then I got nervous. If a network is sending journalists on a tropical vacation just to speak to their stars, it usually means the show is really good and they have a lot of confidence in it… or it is really bad.
Luckily, Wrecked is really, really good.
In the last few months, TBS has really been upping their original content game: The Daily Show favorite Samantha Bee has her own topical show, Full Frontal; her husband, Jason Jones stars in one of the funniest comedies I have seen all year, The Detour; and Rashida Jones stars in the spoof-tastic Angie Tribeca. Wrecked is another home run for the network, which is better known for reruns than original content.
The best way to describe Wrecked is Lost, but intentionally funny, or Lord of the Flies with morons instead of children. A plane crashes on a tropical island, forcing a disparate cross-section of humanity to survive together. Brothers Justin and Jordan Shipley wrote the script three years ago, while working as baggers at Trader Joe’s. “We wrote it just to try to get work on another show,” Jordan admits. Friend and producer Jesse Hara was friends with Thom Hinkle, who had just taken over as TBS’s head of scripted comedy. Jesse passed the script over to Thom, just to see if he was staffing up for shows. “He called me the next day and asked if it was available. He was the only person I sent it to! We never made another submission. It’s bizarre.”
Wrecked is a true ensemble piece, with an amazing cast that gelled instantly. “We all just kind of fell in love with each other,” says Brooke Dillman. “The chemistry came pretty naturally,” says Zach Cregger. “I think we just lucked out that these pieces fit together. I am a certain degree of funny, but when I am in a scene with Brooke, we are suddenly both funnier than we would be by ourselves.” “We are all obsessed with each other,” says Ally Maki. “We became such a family.” Everyone I spoke to at the junket wanted me to give credit to the casting director, Julie Ashton.
A quick rundown of the Wrecked cast:
Zach Cregger as Owen: “I play a guy who is a rudderless, rootless kind of guy. He doesn’t have any family foundation; he has a terrible fear of bonding with people. So he has gravitated towards jobs that keep him moving, like being a flight attendant because he never has to set up roots. He would love to form relationships, he just doesn’t have the skills. Being trapped with a small group of people he can’t escape from is his worst nightmare. It’s what he needs, but it is a nightmare situation.”
Will Greenberg as Todd: “He’s not a man; he’s a male. I modeled him after classic narcissistic turds that I’ve met. Frat bros. There is a throwback to my fraternity days, and there is a Cowboys and Indians party, where I am dressed as a Southeast Asia Indian, not a Native American, which makes it even worse. He’s like the Grinch – he meets a certain type of creature that makes his heart grow.”
Ally Maki as Jess: “I play Jess. She is part of the couple of the show, I call them ‘Jodd.’ She is a sweet, awesome, feisty girl. She is a little naïve, from Scottsdale, AZ, she has led a very sheltered life, but she’s got some fire to her. I think throughout the season we will see it come out a little more and more, and she turns into something a little stronger at the end.”
Asif Ali as Pack: “Pack is a sports agent who works in Los Angeles. His entire career is about moving up the corporate ladder, acquiring more wealth and famous clients, and viciously crushing anyone that gets in his way. He doesn’t have any friends, he doesn’t talk to his family, he is too busy working. He gets to this island, and everything that validates him as a human being does not work anymore. He doesn’t have a phone, he doesn’t have his car, clients, money, nothing. So what he has to deal with is his own humanity and figuring out, ‘what is the point of me?’ Like, if I died, would that hurt the island?”
Brooke Dillman as Karen: “Karen is a very serious, determined person with no editing system. She can’t edit herself. You will learn a little bit about her backstory. People try to help me to not just [blurt stuff out]. You can probably guess how that goes.”
Brian Sacca as Danny: “I play Danny, who is a self-conscious man who just wants people to like him. When the plane crashes he sees this as an opportunity to reinvent himself as a cop. Little does he know that that is a role he is ill-suited for. He consistently gets himself in trouble.”
Jessica Lowe as Florence: “Florence is a big time dum-dum, who thinks she is the smartest person in the world. I think that she is very lovable and very loyal, and finds a strength in the island that she didn’t know she had. She has a big trajectory over the course of the season that is somewhat unexpected.”
The show shot in Puerto Rico, which left the cast with wonderful memories: Asif loved a “vision quest” Pack went on with Chet that ended up in a techno dance sequence; Jessica shot all day on a raft that was the most “daunting, difficult thing ever,” but that “made me feel like an action star;” Will got to spend an entire 12-hour day in a pit with a baby pig named Bacon.
Zach shared a great anecdote about co-star Rhys Darby (who was not at the junket). “We were shooting the plane crash in the pilot. Originally, Rhys Darby was supposed to have this dog. A huge dog, bigger than I am – I’m not joking. He’s got this dog in his lap, it’s almost up to the ceiling. Then we learn that this dog isn’t trained. Some guy just had this dog, and he is freaking out in the plane. It’s stepping on Rhys, stepping on his balls, and he was screaming in pain. The dog was huge – and I couldn’t stop laughing. He was having a real tough time. The dog was snapping at people, so we cut the dog.”
Ally’s favorite scene to shoot was a love scene, but unfortunately, she had a rough time shooting in the tropics: “I got eaten alive by mosquitos, like to a crazy degree. I had probably over 200 scars on my legs, and I was allergic to them, so they would grow to these huge, swollen welts. It was kind of a nightmare to be honest. In the beginning, the producers said they thought it was good for my character and they were just going to keep it. But by the sixth episode, they were like, ‘It’s getting too much, we need to cover up the majority of them.’ Then I got really violently ill, maybe from the bites or something I ate, I don’t know. There was one night where Will and I shot in a tent all night, and it was filled with these fire ants, and they were biting us. He was actually in boxers. We were bitten all over our lower regions. Then to keep them out, they sprayed deet all over, so we were getting high at the same time, but still getting bit… the next day I had a rash all over the inside of my legs.”
Wrecked is damn funny. It mixes sly humor (like playing “I Just Want to Celebrate” over the plane crash) with d*ck and fart jokes (or, rather, d*ck and vomit jokes) and a highly diverse, eclectic cast with amazing chemistry for a real summer treat.
Wrecked premieres Tuesday, June 14 on TBS.
