Steve Carell on ‘Rooster’ Falls & ‘The Office’ Physical Comedy Roots

Steve Carell’s latest comedy, Rooster, premiering on HBO on March 8, 2026, is already drawing comparisons to his iconic role in The Office, specifically regarding his physical comedy. In a recent interview, Carell reflected on a scene in the third episode of Rooster, where his character, Greg Russo, a successful author, comically slips and falls even as attempting a shortcut on the Ludlow College campus.

The scene involves Greg wearing dress shoes for the first time in some time, attempting to project a professorial image. The shoes, however, prove treacherous. “There’s a whole storyline that he wears shoes – and he’s not a dress shoe guy, but he figures, ‘Well, I’m sort of a professor now, so I have to look like one.’ So he puts on these shoes, but they’re slick on the bottom,” Carell explained. “So that was sort of fun to play and to kind of foreshadow what was going to happen later in my just walking like stuff that wasn’t pointed to or talked about, knowing that there was going to be something – like a big splash – later on.”

The fall itself is multi-staged. First, Greg slips while entering his first class as an instructor. But the more significant tumble occurs on the shortcut, where he slides uphill before losing his balance and tumbling down the incline. He recovers with a nonchalant, “That was a dangerous shortcut,” before proceeding to class, only to have his students immediately notice his injuries.

Carell drew a direct parallel between this incident and a memorable moment from The Office, specifically Michael Scott’s fall into a koi pond in Season 6, Episode 8. “The one that comes to mind was when Michael Scott falls into the koi pond,” he said. “And I think the trick there is to act like it wasn’t premeditated, and this is all like happening in real time. People fall down. It’s never elegant.”

According to HBO, Rooster centers on Greg Russo (Carell) as he navigates his relationship with his daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), an art history professor at Ludlow College, who is also dealing with a marital breakdown with her estranged husband, Archie (Phil Dunster), and his recent partner, Sunny (Lauren Tsai). The series also stars Danielle Deadwyler as Dylan Shepard and John C. McGinley as Walter Mann, the president of Ludlow College.

Carell emphasized the similarities in the creative atmosphere between the two shows, noting a shared “freedom to try anything.” He suggested that the key to successful physical comedy lies in maintaining a sense of spontaneity and realism, mirroring the approach taken in The Office.

New episodes of Rooster are scheduled to air every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.