In the comedy series “The Other Two,” Case Walker plays ChaseDreams, a teenage pop star who’s hit it big with songs including “My Brother’s Gay and That’s Okay!”
A send-up of the business and celebrity culture, “The Other Two” doesn’t really focus so much on Chase, but rather on his sister Brooke and brother Cary, both in their twenties and very un-famous and adrift.
At the start of season two — now streaming on HBO Max — Cary, played by Drew Tarver, is getting nowhere as an actor. He’s stuck in cheesy hosting gigs for an array of brands.
Brooke, played by Heléne York, had desperately taken a job as her younger brother’s manager. But with Chase headed to college, she’s on the hunt for the next young superstar, stalking out kids’ birthday parties.
As Brooke and Cary flail, their mom Pat, played by Molly Shannon, has hit it big as a daytime talk show host.
“The Other Two” was created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, creative partners who first met at “Saturday Night Live,” where they became the head writers in 2016. That’s also when they started thinking about “The Other Two,” writing the pilot on their weeks off from “SNL.”
Season one of the series aired on Comedy Central. Filming of the second season was underway as the pandemic hit in March 2020. By the time it resumed nearly a year later, the show had found a new home on HBO Max, where seasons one and two are now streaming.
Kelly and Schneider are happy to be with a new network, where their show will be easier to find, but said it was a total surprise when they learned “The Other Two” was changing homes.
“It all happened completely independent of us,” Schneider says. “We just got a phone call one day.”
“The Other Two” creators talk to KCRW about the challenges of having their production shut down midway through filming season two, how they choose which celebrities they to poke fun at, and why including lots of uneuphemestic sex talk is no big deal to them.