Paul Scheer: Mr. Thursday Night

BY JEFF CLARK
Senior Editor
Pop-Rock Candy Mountain

Every fall TV season, there is the one standout show that everyone is going to be talking about the next day at both the literal and proverbial water cooler. This year, that show is FX’s The League (although “Community” on NBC has finally started to come into it’s own and has had some great episodes recently.)
The League is an ensemble comedy about a group of friends who have a fantasy football league. As someone who picked QB Tom Brady as my first round pick in 2008 only to watch him injure himself in the first game of the season, the ups and downs of fantasy football are real, damn it, and The League recognizes this.
Comic Paul Scheer plays Andre on The League which is reason enough to watch (If you need other reasons: Nick Kroll, Jon Lajoie and the use of great words such as “dick” and “pussy.”).
Scheer is one-third of the comedy ensemble Human Giant, the greatest show MTV fucked up and didn’t know what to do with since “The State.” He’s also had a recurring role as Kenneth’s nemesis “Donny” on 30 Rock and was recently on Parks and Recreations. He’s also a prolific comedy writer and stand up comic and he was recently married — he’s a busy guy. However, he did takes some time from his bust schedule to discuss The League, Harold Ramis and Human Giant, among other things, with Pop-Rock Candy Mountain.

Co-creator Jeff Schaffer has quite a TV pedigree for his connections with “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Is that something that excited you about this project?

Definitely, plus Jeff gives amazing foot rubs.
In the last few years, I’ve been coming from a place where I like to be very hands on in the production of whatever project I’m doing but whenever you get a chance to working with such talented people like Jeff and Jackie Marcus Schaffer all that goes out the window. Their credits are phenomenal and they are incredibly smart and funny people, so it’s been great to learn their style by watching them work.

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