It’s been nothing but positive feedback for Charly Clive since her show “Rooster” arrived on HBO. Fans have come to love the “relaxing” tone of the show, as well as the dynamic between Clive’s character Katie and her onscreen father, played by Steve Carell.
But the biggest highlight?
“So many people will comment that they didn’t realize I was English,” Clive says, “which is such a compliment.”
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The Brit plays Katie Russo, a professor at a New England college whose husband, a fellow professor, cheats on her with a grad student. In light of her public embarrassment, her author father, Greg, accepts a position as a visiting lecturer on campus to be close to his daughter in her time of need.
“I’ve the benefit of having done most of my press with Steve and he knows what he’s doing and is beloved by everyone,” Clive says. “So you have the light of him shining on you and I feel like that felt very good.”
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The 33-year-old initially got an audition for an “untitled Steve Carell project” in her inbox and didn’t need any further information to get excited.
“But you don’t think anything’s going to come of that, particularly when a big star is attached to it,” Clive said. “I thought, ‘well, I’ll just have as much fun with it as I can.’”
When the audition process led to finding a time to hop on a call with Carell, that’s when it hit Clive this might actually happen.
“And when it first dawned on me that I would be meeting, even on Zoom, Steve Carell,” she says.
Clive assumed they’d end up casting “some big American actress” and so was pleasantly shocked to get the call at the end of December in 2024 to come out to L.A.
“I’ve been pinching myself ever since,” she says.
In addition to working with Carell, Clive was intrigued by the journey that Katie goes on in such a short period.
“When you read the pilot, Katie goes through so much in such a short space of time. So even not knowing how the rest of the show was going to unfold, knowing that that’s where we met her, I thought, ‘god, there’s so much scope here,’” she says. “I loved that we were seeing a woman who is so down and out, but absolutely not willing to show people that. I think we often see men in situations where vulnerability is hard for them. It’s interesting to see a woman in that situation and have a man be a caregiver rather than the girl. And I liked the sort of gender reversal of that.”
Clive has been “desperate to make people laugh” since she was a kid, always getting cast as the comedic relief in school plays. Her father, a comedy nerd himself, introduced her to English sketch comedy shows growing up, including female-led shows like “Smack the Pony.”
“To see them making my dad laugh, I thought, ‘oh, OK, this isn’t just something that men do and actually women do it better,’” she says.
While on the set of “Rooster,” which has been renewed for a second season, she and Carell had lots of “walk and talks,” where she’d get to pepper the actor with questions between takes.
“That was kind of like my time to get mentored. Steve would never refer to himself as my mentor, by the way, but I am convinced that he is,” she says. “I’d ask him about ‘The Office’ and I’d ask him about his early stuff on ‘The Daily Show’ and about doing sketch comedy and the comedy scene in Chicago. He was so kind and I think very enthused that I was so passionate about comedy.”