Thomas Lennon, whose comedy knows no bounds in the mockumentary series Reno 911!reveals he (literally) didn’t give a shit when Quibi – home of the show’s revival – shut down.
Quibi had a short-lived but adventurous run. The streaming platform consisted of bite-sized programs around 10 minutes in length. It saw the talent of Darren Criss, Don Cheadle, Chrissy Teigen and the cast of Reno 911!when the show was revived after Comedy Central’s cancellation after six seasons on the platform.
The comedy series returned for its seventh season on Quibi in May 2020 and was renewed for an eighth season in September. And sadly, the cast and crew were hard at work when the platform shut down next month. Lennon, who co-created and starred in the series, narrated The AV Club that they filmed an explicit scene when the news broke.
The actor made a movie called Dangle’s Retirement Plan, in which he played an “amazing ballroom dancer” opposite Wanru Tseng’s “Cindy the Sex Slave,” who was a police station intern.
Lennon told the AV Club they were “terrible” to him in the scene, explaining, “So I pretended I had my pants down all the way and I pretended to get in a bucket in the scene poop, in this giant, like, empty soundstage.”
And unfortunately, at that moment, Lennon experienced a rude awakening. He said: “I’m over here with no pants on a bucket and I see everyone kind of crowded to the monitors and they’re talking in hushed tones. And I just kind of look and I’m like, ‘Is there anything I should be worried about?’ And then when we finally cut it, everyone’s like, ‘Hey, Quibis… it doesn’t exist anymore.'”
He recalled his immediate reaction: “I was like, ‘Oh! That was strange.’ Because… the pooping on the bucket, that was definitely, that was for Quibi, so…”
Shortly after the platform shut down, Roku acquired the rights to its programming that made the eighth season of possible Reno 911! to move to The Roku Channel, which means Lennon’s achievement thankfully didn’t go without recognition.