Rachel Bloom on this surprising and devastating Reboot finale

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers of Reboot, which dropped its season one finale on October 25.]

When the first season of To restart ends, Rachel Bloom’s Hannah Korman, the co-showrunner of the revived 2000s sitcom Go up to the right, is largely where she started: she has the show she wanted to do, and she watches her dad Gordon (Paul Reiser) come out. Over the previous seven episodes, we’ve seen their professional and personal relationship gradually deteriorate – and seeing Hannah left alone again was a punch.

In his heart, To restart is to bring back memories of the past. When Hannah asks Hulu to restart Go up to the right, he almost immediately wins over the leaders of the network. She offers to bring new attention to a once beloved but forgotten sitcom, promises to reunite the original cast – Reed Sterling (Keegan Michael Key), Clay Barber (Johnny Knoxville), Calum Worthy (Zack Johnson) and Bree Marie Jensen (Judy Grier) — and adapt the show for a generation raised on the binges of prestige television. When original series creator Gordon shows up, a wrench is thrown in his plans – and we quickly discover that Gordon is Hannah’s father who left her decades before.

With a stacked cast and sharp humor, To restart quickly became one of the hottest shows of the fall season. The audiovisual club sat down with star Rachel Bloom to discuss the end of the season and where we are headed.

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The AV Club: So the final episode got pretty real, compared to the previous ones, which were a lot more wacky. And I’m talking specifically about Hannah and her relationship with Gordon. It was kind of a bittersweet note, where he leaves her again at the end, but does so in a way to protect her. Do you think she sees it that way?

Rachel Bloom: Look, I won’t know for sure until, knock on wood, we get a season two., but if I had to guess, and especially the way I was playing that last scene… it’s a give up. I think if you ask her, she might see the logic in that. I think if it was someone else, she might see him as more balanced, but because it’s her dad essentially repeating her core trauma, it’s devastating.

In the scene with Peter Gallagher’s character [new studio head Tyler], right off the bat, I called Paul “Dad” – it would be the first time Hannah called her dad “Dad” on the show. We don’t underline it, but, overall, her defense of her dad is that she’s turning some kind of therapeutic turn, and I think her dad is putting her back to square one by abandoning her.

AVC: Obviously Hannah resented her for a very long time, and that was mainly her motivation to restart Go up to the right. But once he reluctantly came back into her life, it seemed like she realized she missed him in a different way. It’s one thing to have a hole in your life and another to know so acutely what you’re missing.

RB: Absolutely. And below the surface, when you talk about parenting trauma – what Hannah went through, with her father leaving them completely for another family, which is very traumatic, and Gordon is absolutely wrong, none of that is on Hannah – as much as every child professes to hate their parents, every child deep down wants their parents’ love. From what I’ve read, I’m not a doctor, but that’s the most basic need we have. I imagine finally having his father’s love superseded his need for revenge.

AVC: When you started playing this character at the start of the season, did you know that’s where the characters would end up? In shows with longer seasons, you don’t necessarily know where you’re going to end up, but with eight episodes, were you playing with that in mind?

RB: You know, we weren’t really told about this season’s arc. And that’s fine, because what you’re doing then is just playing what’s on the page. Frankly, what I saw wasn’t so much playing the arc before, because the stakes for my character were so high in the first episode. She enters this hot. She arrives angry, she wants to ruin her father’s legacy. How does that take me, as an actor, through each episode, and how is that maintained or mitigated? Every storyline was kind of this gradual, gradual softening, so by the time we got to the end of the episode, it was actually nice that I didn’t realize he would give it up, because that was also a surprise for her.

AVC: Like you said, she’s hot; she is very angry. But career-wise, she’s obviously quite successful. As the season progresses, she mellows, not just with Gordon, but she begins this relationship with Mallory, with Gordon’s help. I think there’s a trope where the female protagonist has to choose between her relationships and her career, and there was no choice here, and in fact, opening up to those relationships actually helped her career.

RB: That’s such a beautiful point, because I think a lot of artists – and I think Hannah is an example of those people – see their misery as being synonymous with being good at what they do. And that’s why I think some people don’t go to therapy, but it’s also why some people are almost proud of being romantically reluctant. They say, “Well, that gives me my edge.” And it’s like “Bullshit”. This idea that “I’m going to be lonely and bitter and miserable, but great art will come out of it.” No, great art can also come from being happy, that’s fine.

AVC: You see the writers room and it’s such a collaborative environment; it really can only help you.

RB: Exactly. You open up.

AVC: Speaking of those writers’ bedroom scenes, I was curious, on Crazy ex-girlfriend, you were the star, but you also wrote a lot of it, you created it and you wrote the songs for it. But here you were just playing. How was this transition?

RB: It’s very liberating to just act on something. In the end, it’s not my vision. The original vision is great; that’s why I signed in the first place. I guess because I was the creator of a show, and when you do that, you put your heart on a plate, you put your soul on the outside. I was very free to say, “No, I didn’t write the show. I act to the best of my abilities.

Steve [Levitan] was very nice and said, “Listen, you’re a great writer, let me know whenever you have any thoughts.” And I was thinking most occasionally, mostly about a question about my character in any given episode. But for the most part, it was really nice to sit down and do my acting work. Because I did the other thing, and I want to do the other thing in the future, but that’s not the thing where I do that. It’s not my show. It’s coming from someone else’s mind, and I’m part of that team, and it’s also really wonderful.

AVC: Sounds pretty good compared to what I’ve heard over very long days Crazy ex-girlfriend.

RB: Certainly, something that I have realized is that CXGF it was like 16 hour days, but even if i was just playing [in Reboot], you would still have 12, 13 hours a day. It made me realize even more, Woah, the production is brutal. Even when I’m not creating anything and in the editing room, the production is still really, really difficult.

AVC: Did you feel that those writers’ bedroom scenes in To restart were fairly representative of your experience in real writers’ rooms?

RB: I think [the scenes are] quite specific. God, all the lunch order stuff is so specific – Azmina’s character, they call her “two soups”. There was someone in the crazy ex room that followed this bizarre diet, and every day he ate like three whole chickens. The whole office smells like chicken all day. So it’s very, very true to the writers room.

AVC: You also talked about how when you created CXGF, you originally pitched it on Showtime, and it ended up on The CW, where, at least with the pilot, you had to tone down some of the more raunchy humor. Watch the first episode of To restartjust the tongue, I was a little breathless—

RB: And you see Judy’s breasts!

AVC: Yeah! I thought, Alright we’re definitely on Hulu cause they can do it. Do you think there was an effort to push it a bit more, because it was on Hulu, or do you think it was less self-censored?

RB: Less self-censorship. I think it was inherent in the writing. When you do a network show, no matter how good it is, you’ll never get a full slice of life, because you can’t curse, and people curse. That’s exactly what life is.

AVC: So, you don’t know if you’ve been renewed yet, but it seems like the audience really got hooked on this show. What would you like to see in a second season?

RB: I think I’m just thinking of continuing what we have in the first one, with higher stakes. With even more tension. Which I think was set up in the season finale. So I’m excited to see how all the fallout from the season finale plays out.