COMMUNITY: Alison Brie & Danny Pudi Talk Politics & Improvising

NBC’s Community has quickly made a name for itself as a witty, whimsical, often poignant, and sometimes outrageous show. The epic paintball episode, the stop-motion Christmas special, the blanket fort…for a show not even 2 years old, Community has already produced a treasure trove of iconic moments. In a conference call with NiceGirlsTV.com and other entertainment reporters, stars Alison Brie (Annie) and Danny Pudi (Abed) gave us the scoop on running for president, romantic entanglements, pop culture junkies, and more.

In tonight’s episode, “Introduction to Political Science”, everyone is running for student body president. Danny deferred to Alison to explain what happens in this episode, before she deftly turns it over to him. With Vice President Joe Biden set to visit Greendale, the Dean  scrambles to set up a student government which results in Annie running for president.

“Of course Annie is super excited to run for president,” says Alison. “And when Jeff kind of fails to help her she gets upset at him and he runs to spite her. So they get into a bit of a battle for the position of president. meanwhile Abed is yes, has noticed the secret service. And I would say the secret service is also noticing Abed, wouldn’t you say so Danny?”

“I would say so Alison. Thanks for saying so. Yes Abed’s storyline is that he is doing two things actually. He is broadcasting live the election results as part of GCTV so that was fun because I got to play a news anchor for a little bit. And I’ve always been really attracted to female news anchors,” Danny chuckles.  “So Abed is along with Troy broadcasting live the news and the election results. But at the same time he notices that CIA is all around campus. And it is – what can I say about that? It gets interesting. It becomes an interesting noticing versus noticing session.”

Although the show has made a name for itself with pop culture references, tonight’s episode doesn’t contain any references to movies or TV that the two could recall. “You know, honestly I felt like we were actually basing it more on real life coverage of actual political events. And, you know, there’s a bit of Hillary Clinton I think to what Annie is doing and maybe even some Bill Clinton to Jeff is doing in the thing. So we tried to keep it pretty political.”

“I play Chelsea Clinton,” jokes Danny.

“Yeah, it’s great, his hair is super curly,” Alison deadpans. But seriously, this is about as topical as they get on Community so while there may be some pop culture references sprinkled throughout the episode, it’s mostly a political satire.

Will the big “BNL debate” be resolved? “Jeff is really at odds with the group on that one,” says Alison. “There is no gray area. It is black and white.”

“There’s like probably a couple things but this is at the top of our list of differences between the group and Jeff,” chimes in Danny. It’s hard to tell if they’re joking about this; given the satirical nature of Community, the BNL debate could be driving a wedge between Jeff and the rest of the group, or Alison and Danny could be yanking our chains. Fortunately Danny takes pity on us and follows up with, “Actually no idea. I guess the answer to that question is we have no idea.”

Improvisation is encouraged on the set, resulting in some of the funniest scenes. Alison revealed that her near-kiss with Gillian Jacobs (Britta) wasn’t a scripted moment. “We just sort of like kind improvised it when we were doing it. And then – and Joe Russo one of our producers was there. And he’s like, ‘ah, that’s so great. I’ll just yell “kiss her” and then you guys do that.’ And everyone behind the monitor was like, ‘yes’. It was clearly a bunch of dudes,” she laughed. “I couldn’t believe they kept it in to be honest. But I have to say we really didn’t get that close to kissing. I think we actually got closer to kissing in a photograph that one of our writers posted on Twitter.”

The pair revealed that the Hector and Elf Maiden scene from the D&D episode was largely improvised. “They left the camera on and it just went on and on,”Alison exclaimed.  “Everyone walked out of that room changed.” Look for the extended cut of that scene on the season 2 DVD extras.

Speaking of sexy times, what’s coming up for Jeff and Annie? “Oh, the flirtation is NOT over,” Alison insists. She thinks that Annie holds a bit of a flame for Jeff, and some of that tension is present throughout the election. “I think that they’re bumping heads kind of fuels more of that. I think any time they’re together there’s a bit of that because it can’t exist or because it’s controversial I think that makes it dangerous and interesting. And obviously to Annie it’s exciting to kind of have a crush on an older guy. And she continues to try to kind of challenge Jeff in that way. So their spark is not totally dead. You catch – you might – you may catch glimpse of it in this episode but we shall see. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s going to amount to anything in the future.”

Asked about the future of fan-favorite “Troy and Abed in the Morning”, Danny said that we’ll see elements of the faux talk show in tonight’s episode when Abed reports on the election coverage for GCTV (“We just are learning now that that exists,” Alison chuckles.)  But could the duo launch a real show on GCTV? Danny isn’t sure they’ve got the material.

“I don’t know how much we would have after our guest leaves because it’s pretty much every time we do ‘Troy and Abed in the Morning’ we convince someone to come and they do like Star-burns and we give them a frog and he ends up leaving or Jeff ends up leaving and yelling.” Spoiler Alert: “We may be taking over some other talk shows as hosts,” teases Danny.

This pair of Community stars are a hoot to listen to in an interview. They talk over each other, make up games, ask each other questions, and clearly get along well. In fact, it might be fun sometime to have them interview each other. Or at least have Annie as a guest on “Troy and Abed in the Morning.” They could give her a frog.

Community airs Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.