Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: Jarrett Austin Brown, Stumble, Taylor Dunbar

Stumble: Brown & Dunbar on Adjusting to Weekly TV, Showrunners & More

Stumble's Jarrett Austin Brown and Taylor Dunbar spoke with us about showrunners Jeff & Liz Astrof, adjusting to weekly television, and more.

When Jarrett Autin Brown and Taylor Dunbar got cast in the Jeff and Liz Astrof NBC mockumentary series Stumble, it provided its own unique set of challenges. For Brown, who plays football-player-turned-cheerleader Dimarcus, it marks the first time he's part of the main cast of a TV series. For Dunbar, who plays the loner kleptomaniac-turned-cheerleader Peaches, it's her first major on-screen role. The series follows Courtney Potter (Jenn Lyon), who is fired from her position as cheerleading coach at a local college and takes a job at a struggling community college, restoring its cheerleading program and filling the roster with misfits. Supporting her on this venture is her football-coach husband, Boone E. Potter (Taran Killam), who still works at the school where she was fired. Brown and Dunbar spoke to Bleeding Cool about adjusting to the weekly episodic television and how the Astrof's helped develop their characters on set.

Stumble Stars Jarrett Austin Brown and Taylor Dunbar on How Showrunners Helped Them Develop Dimarcus and Peaches

What intrigued you about Stumble, and how do you feel that you both adjusted to weekly episodic television?

Brown: Oh, that's a loaded question for sure.

Dunbar: Great question. [Brown laughs]

Brown: That's a great question right there. I'm intrigued by great writing, the ability to dance, flip, and be in a mockumentary. We get to break the fourth wall, which is every actor's dream. To be able to talk to the audience and be like, "Y'all seeing what I'm seeing right now" [Dunbar laughs], that's amazing. To answer the second part of the question, it's a weird medium in which you work. As an actor, you're thinking about your work and process from beginning to end, but when you get an episodic, you just think about the process as it goes. You never really know where a character might go. One day it might be this, one day it might be that, so it's been fun to just stay on your toes and trust. We have such brilliant writers, so it makes it so easy to be like, "Okay, I'll fall into that and work that avenue," but yeah, stay on your toes, trust your writers and your cast, and y'all get it done.

Dunbar: Yeah, the joy of the show, the hope and the light of it is attracting, and every time I see the poster, I see the colors, anything associated, and it makes me happy. It feels like I'm getting like a loud hug, like there's something about Stumble that's like a tonal play. I graduated from college, and we mainly focused on plays, and we did not study sitcoms, mockumentaries, or any of that, so it was interesting to develop a character weekly and not know where they're going to go.

I usually know the end of the stories, but I have no idea where [Peaches] will end up, so that's been so cool, and our writers have been generous to each of us with our characters, their stories, and the things we get to do as characters and all the different colors, so it's interesting and amazing watching them do what they do.

How have Jeff and Liz [Astrof] helped you guys as creatives? Was there anyone in the cast in general that you're linked to, just to kind of get into the swing of things, into that show mindset?

Brown: I'll go first and say "trust." I'm going to use this word a million times, because on this set and this process, it led us to where we are, and it's a remarkable thing from day one. Jeff and Liz, as creatives, allow you to trust yourself and trust them, but really, they set it up for you to trust yourself. As an actor, you're very vulnerable in a space where sometimes it's 10 people on set, sometimes 200, and they allow you to be vulnerable, trust your instincts, and allow that to get you where the character's going to go versus "Just look at what's on the page." There are so many times they come up to us and like, "What do you think about this? What do you think about that?" With that collaborative experience, you genuinely feel like you've marinated in your character, you can take risks in the space, and the writer's not going to be like, "Hey, say my words!" It's a great medium to work with.

Dunbar: Yeah, I second that. There is real trust and joy in being around each other. We also have a great balance of being like, "That didn't work." There's that trust of, "You can shoot really hard and make such a dumb mistake," but the love of like, "Hey, thanks for trying. That didn't work." That collaborative process has been…Yeah, you must have that safety net to build comedy and heart and give people the freedom to be clowns.

They couldn't have facilitated a better environment. Jenn Lyon, being the number one, trickles down to everybody else, feeling so protected, loved, and supported. She, Taran, Kristin [Chenoweth], and everyone in our cast I steal from, I learn from, I watch, and I see you know how they ask for notes or what they do differently, and everyone is so clever. You don't want to miss a single thing that one of us does, because it's all unique and good.

Season one of Stumble, also starring Anissa Borrego, Arianna Davis, Georgie Murphy, and Ryan Pinkston, is available to stream on Peacock.

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