"Those Who Can't" star Ben Roy learned a hard truth about filming for television compared to the web - sick days don't exist. Roy and his co-star Andrew Orvedahl pushed through illnesses during filming of their new TruTV comedy while their co-star Adam Cayton-Holland breezed through production without a sniffle.
"Ben got really sick while we were shooting and he asked, 'What happens if you get sick?' And everyone was like, 'You don't get sick,'" Orvedahl recalled in an exclusive interview with Headlines & Global News. "He had a really high fever, and if you watch the episode, you'd never guess the scenes where he's burning up with a 103 degree fever."
The three gentlemen comprise The Grawlix comedy troupe from Denver and are transitioning from doing a web series to starring in TruTV's first original scripted series, "Those Who Can't." The show was originally developed through Amazon's pilot program between 2012 and 2013 before it was picked up by Turner and added to TruTV's original programming slate.
"It was a little frustrating," Orvedahl said about the year and half between the Amazon pilot premiere and TruTV's order. "We started working on other projects. We kept making videos. We were actually working on a 'Those Who Can't' feature film idea right up to the point when Tru picked it up."
"Those Who Can't" centers on four high school educators who, try as they might, don't exactly excel at teaching or in their personal lives. Orvedahl plays a gym teacher who struggles to relate to his students, Roy is a history teacher with some anger-management issues and Cayton-Holland puts his real Spanish language skills to work as a Spanish teacher.
"Hablo mucho español," he rifled off. "I do speak Spanish. I lived in Spain, and at times in my life I've been completely fluent, but it's fallen off a bit because I'm out of practice."
Roy also brought a bit of a personal touch to his character Billy Shoemaker, who is inspired by one of his former teachers. A Vietnam veteran, the dedicated educator easily went off on tangents sparked by a student's simple question or statement.
"You could just start talking about Vietnam or anything around that time and it would be like, 'Didn't you guys all smoke pot?' and he'd be like, 'It was a different time, man!' and he would just go off and it was way better than having to do work."
They are joined by Maria Thayer, whom the guys met at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and stars as Abbey Logan, in charge of the school's media.
"We auditioned a lot of Abbeys, and she was the one who auditioned and just ran away with it," Cayton-Holland said about his co-star.
The feedback from real-life teachers about show show's portrayal of the profession has been a mixed bag. Orvedahl attended a teacher cookout with two friends from Denver who are in the public school system. He received positive feedback from those teachers and their colleagues and heard them describe the show as a "fantasy version" of how they wish they could behave during school hours or discipline their students.
Others have not been so impressed, but Roy states the show is not meant to be an attack on teachers.
"A few teachers we get say, 'We already have a tough time.' Honestly, those people don't get the joke, and they weren't going to get it," he said. "I think we make fun of teaching in the same way 'Children's Hospital' makes fun of the medical profession. They don't have a problem with doctors. It's just a satire show and it's an environment where our awful characters can exist."
"Those Who Can't" premieres tonight, Feb. 11 with back-to-back episodes starting at 10:30 p.m. EST on TruTV.
