The Unicorn has quickly become a solid hit for CBS, so much so that the freshman series was renewed for Season 2 about five weeks into its run. The comedy, which stars Walton Goggins as Wade, a widowed father of two who's trying to begin dating again with the help of his overzealous friends, has clearly managed to connect with audiences, but the same is true for those in the cast. Rob Corddry, who plays Wade's friend Forrest, believes he knows what the best part of working on The Unicorn is for him.
I love making this show. I think the cast itself has been the best part of the experience for me. When you’re shooting the show for the first time, there is always a weird, awkward gelling where you have to almost force a chemistry until one develops. A lot of us happen to know each other. Michaela Watkins, who plays my wife on the show, we played husband and wife on a movie. I knew Omar [Benson Miller] from Ballers and Walton [Goggins] I knew from friends. The chemistry was there from the beginning and it was easy and it made the show sing. It’s a half hour comedy, but it’s not afraid of the feels.
I have to say, just thinking about walking onto the set of The Unicorn as an actor and immediately feeling the chemistry between myself and my castmates gel the way that Rob Corddry talked about to CBS Local really does give me a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling all over. Which makes complete sense, because that's exactly the kind of feeling I get on a weekly basis as I watch Wade raise his daughters and deal with a string of dating disasters.
We've all sat down to watch a show we had high hopes for, only to be confronted with a group of actors who don't quite feel settled into their on-screen relationships with one another. All types of television series are susceptible to growing pains when they first get going, but few things can ruin the flow of a show faster than not being able to feel like the characters really do relate to each other the way we're being told they do.
And, as Rob Corddry noted (and as one might be able to imagine) that kind of situation isn't great for the actors, either. Trying to make magic happen every week and create a TV show that people believe in enough to return to week after week is difficult enough without needing to force the chemistry between the cast to come bursting to life at every turn. Luckily, Corddry and his fellow actors on The Unicorn didn't have any such issue.
While it's one thing to be familiar with someone you end up working with because you run in similar social circles, as Corddry and Walton Goggins do, I can imagine that it's also very comforting to have worked with an actor before and go into a new gig knowing that your work styles won't clash. Corddry has been working with Omar Benson Miller, who plays Ben, on the HBO sports drama Ballers (which stars do-it-all megastar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), and had also already played husband to Michaela Watkins, who is once again his on-screen wife.
Part of what's made The Unicorn successful is the fact that, from the start when audiences tuned in, they could connect with the story, not just because it was a very real life situation that hit on "the feels," as Rob Corddry called them, but because the interplay between Wade and all his friends (who also include Maya Lynne Robinson, fresh from The Conners, as Michelle) felt so easy, funny and earnest.
We can all see how Rob Corddry and the rest of the cast of The Unicorn do what they do so well when the show continues on CBS, Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. EST.
