The Big Door Prize Season 2 premieres on April 24 a year after its first season concluded on Apple TV+. Josh Segarra and Chris O'Dowd both return.
The series follows a group in a small town that discovers a machine, the Morpho, that can tell people their potential. While it seems like a no-brainer to use, there are consequences to using it. In The Big Door Prize Season 2, the townspeople discover that the messages become more cryptic, resulting in more paranoia regarding the messages.
ClutchPoints got to speak with stars Josh Segarra and Chris O'Dowd about The Big Door Prize Season 2. The duo revealed their blunt reasons for using the Morpho machine if it was real. They also discussed the proposal scene that left them in “stitches” and a potential IT Crowd revival and Segarra's Scream 7 return.
Josh Segarra, Chris O'Dowd-The Big Red Door Season 2 interview
ClutchPoints: This is a fun full circle moment for me. It's almost a decade to the day I met you, Chris, outside the theater where Of Mice and Men played on Broadway.
Chris O'Dowd: Oh, s**t, man! [smiles]
Well, very strangely, because I had a vibe last night, I went for a pint down in Hurley's on 48th [street], and realized that, because it was [the] theater next door, and I think we opened 10 years ago this week. And I was like, Oh, wow, that flew.
It feels like 20 [years] in a different way because the world has changed so much in that time. [laughs]
CP: I just asked the creator of The Big Door Prize about this and Josh, I'll start with you for this question. If you could have one of the Morpho machines at the beginning of your career and look ahead and see your full potential, knowing the pros and cons of using the machine, would you take a look?
Josh Segarra: Ooh… I would — I'm curious. And I hope that it wouldn't affect the journey. I hope that it would just tell me, “Hey man, all is going to be good. So just keep doing what you're doing. Enjoy every step.”
But I don't know, man, I kind of feel that way even without that machine, you know? Like, we're all good. It's all going to be good. As long as we're enjoying every step of the way, I think we'll be okay.
COD: Would I do it? I think I probably would just for there to be something to do.
Both: [laugh]
COD: I don't know if I would put [any] weight [into] it.
JS: Yeah! That's what it is. I mean, dude, if this machine told us that we were gonna be dads, we'd be stoked. If it told us we'd get to do this with you [points at me], we'd be stoked!
COD: But if it came out now, and it said “infertile,” and I've already got kids, it opens up a lot of convos.
JS: Whole different beast.
CP: One of my favorite moments in The Big Door Prize Season 2 is Chris, your character says something about taking the easy route in life. For both of you guys, can you recall a time that you didn't take the easy path?
COD: I mean, I've emigrated twice for my career. And that always feels like a big ordeal [laughs], or going to some far flung place.
I did an improvised movie with a Munich film school director where we traveled around India. I casted at night and then we would shoot during the day because we couldn't afford lights and I ended up in a hospital with Delhi Belly and the whole shebang and that was just to get on-camera experience. [laughs]
That felt like a risky ordeal.
JS: Part of the thing that I'm addicted to with what we get to do is the idea that I'm constantly scared of what the job is going to be and what the next step is going to be.
But it's not like a scared that scares me, it's more of a, at the end of every job, you're unemployed again, man. So now, I look back at it and I love that feeling. There's an excitement to what comes next.
A week before I got this job, if you'd have told me I'd be working with Chris, working with David [West Read], working with this cast that Dave's assembled for us, and we'd be in Atlanta, having pints, enjoying the Atlanta summer, I would've been like, What? We get to do that?
So maybe a week before I was a little scared of what's going to come next. And all of a sudden this comes along. It's awesome.
CP: One of my favorite scenes in the season is the proposal scene. So Josh, was any of that improvised for you?
JS: Nah man, that's all [director] Sarah Walker, that's all David West Read, that's our writing team. My job is to make it look like it's improvised. But they give me all those words and I've had a lot of fun seeing where they take Giorgio.
And me and Mary Holland, that's one of my bestest [friends] right there. So knowing that they were going to put us together, and I got to see Mary's costumes on the drawing board and got to see her tracksuits and her big hair, got to see her nails, that was incredible.
Mary was walking around Atlanta with these giant beautiful nails. It was awesome. [smiles]
CP: Chris, while filming that scene, was it ever hard to stay in character and not break at all?
COD: Oh, I mean, we were [breaking]. There was a lot of laughing going on that day because it was wild and relentlessly funny. And those guys are such a good comedic duo anyway. So, to have such a fun scene to play with, we were really in stitches.
And it went on and on and on. And it just never felt [like it] — we could have gone on for three hours and we would have been delighted sitting there.
So yeah, I love watching that.
CP: Chris, one of my favorite sitcoms growing up was The IT Crowd. I really loved that show. I know it's been many years since it ended and technology's evolved, but could you ever see a revival happening? If so, what would you want to see in that revival?
COD: Oh yeah, never say never. It's interesting to think [about] because it was such a tech-y show and things have moved on. I feel like we did like a Facebook episode or whatever. That might be the only [social media episode]. Maybe we did an early Twitter episode, I don't know.
But it's all gone so dystopian now. Maybe that would work well. Maybe we'd just be playing trolls of a different description. [smiles]
CP: Josh, I was reading about an interview you did last year where you seemed very confident about a Scream 7 return. Is that still the case? And is there anything you want to see from Danny?
JS: Man, I'm still confident about a Scream 7 return. It's game on. They need me, I'm there.
What do we want from Danny? I don't know, man. Let's let him be the killer, you know what I'm saying? Let's let him cause some problems. Or, if they need me to be who I was in [Scream] 6, which is an unemployed actor chasing his dreams with a giant 40-foot ladder in his 600-square-foot apartment in New York City, I [have] got you as well.
CP: Chris, I was recently in Dublin for my birthday, and was bought a drink, but they told me that you can't have ice in it. Is that true?
COD: Well, now, I think there are a lot of different ways to look at this. My personal feeling is, there is a reason that they serve whiskey a lot [of times] at 40%, right? Which is essentially the alcoholic level of most whiskeys that you would find.
Now, if you're going to have a single cask whiskey or even a single malt whiskey, it'll usually be higher than that. It might be up to 53, 54 percent at the top. In that case, most whiskey connoisseurs would say, “You should add a touch of ice or a touch of water” to bring the natural alcohol level down a little bit because that is when it's most conceivably beautiful.
The Big Door Season 2 premieres on April 24 on Apple TV+.
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