LOS ANGELES, Aug. 26 (UPI) — The Other Two star Helene Yorke said Season 2, premiering Thursday on HBO Max, finds her character twice as overshadowed as she was in Season 1.
Season 1 saw Brooke Dubek (Yorke) and her brother, Cary (Drew Tarver), play second fiddle to their celebrity brother, YouTube sensation Chase Dreams (Case Walker). In Season 2, their mother, Pat (Molly Shannon), becomes a successful talk show host.
“She finds some pretty astronomic success and kind of eclipses the two of us,” Yorke told UPI in a phone interview. “She has a pretty wide fan base, very different fan base from Chase, who has all these young teen girls in Season 1.”
In the season finale of The Other Two, Chase’s manager, Streeter (Ken Marino), agreed to include Brooke on his management team. When Season 2 begins, Chase decides to go to college, leaving only one other client to manage.
“She decides that’s fine, she’ll represent her mom in ‘lame daytime,'” Yorke said.
Streeter will come to regret letting Brooke into his world, Yorke said.
“He becomes pretty insecure about his place in the management world,” Yorke said. “As Pat gets busier and busier, Brooke becomes pretty capable.”
Pat’s show becomes such a success that Brooke is quickly overwhelmed with management duties. Yorke said Season 2 gives her a chance to exhibit her physical comedy.
“I’m running around like an absolute lunatic in Episode 3, bad hair and kind of traipsing about,” Yorke said. “In the first episode, I’m throwing up off of the side of a building.”
No matter how much work she does, Brooke remains overshadowed by Pat because Pat is the celebrity fans see on television. Yorke said The Other Two creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider based this theme on their experience writing for Saturday Night Live.
Yorke said Kelly and Schneider would share stories of SNL fans mobbing the cast, but ignoring the writers. Likewise, Brooke is organizing a lot of the show Pat’s fans enjoy, but they only recognize Pat.
“Your loftiest dreams are not always what they are cracked up to be,” Yorke said. “They are harder and you spend a lot of time up late, on conference calls and outside of parties.”
Brooke spent Season 1 hustling to establish herself in business while her younger brother achieved instant fame as a YouTube singer. She spends Season 2 hustling to make sure Pat receives all the opportunities her hit show affords.
“Brooke Dubek is somebody who wants to dive headfirst in a pool and doesn’t necessarily check if there’s water in it first,” Yorke said. “She approaches her life with wild abandon and the idea that anything is possible.”
Yorke said she could relate to Brooke’s hustle as an actor. Yorke said she began ballet dancing when she was 3 years old, and she went to University of Michigan for musical theater.
Professionally, Yorke got her first TV role on an episode of Louie in 2010. Then she did episodes of 30 Rock and High Maintenance, and played regular roles on Masters of Sex, Graves, The Good Fight and Katy Keene.
“One thing typically leads into another,” Yorke said. “For this show, when I was called in to audition for it, [Kelly and Schneider] had seen me on High Maintenance.”
In Yorke’s family, Helene is the only one in show business. Yorke said she is the Chase of her family, yet her brother, Sudsy, can still overshadow her and other family members.
“My brother, Sudsy, did go to West Point and served his country,” Yorke said. “We do play second fiddle to that notoriety quite a lot.”
The Other Two originally aired on Comedy Central in 2019. Comedy Central announced its Season 2 renewal at the show’s Television Critics Association panel Feb. 11, 2019, before it had aired.
Yorke said the cast and crew had completed five of the season’s 10 episodes when the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down in March 2020. That lasted a year, during which time Warner Media moved the show to HBO Max.
“We started shooting bright eyed and bushy-tailed in February 2020,” Yorke said. “It threw a bit of a wrench in our jolly plans to get going with Season 2 but we made it.”
New episodes of The Other Two premiere Thursdays on HBO Max.