[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Season 2 of Bookie.]

Summary

Season 2 of the Max series ‘Bookie’ follows a veteran bookie and his ex-NFL football player friend, dealing with legalizing sports gambling and challenging clients.

Show co-creator Chuck Lorre values the dynamic between Sebastian Maniscalco and Omar Dorsey, focusing on character development over plot gimmicks.

Lorre aims to protect characters, avoid formulaic writing, and explore different comedic angles, like turning violence into humor.

From creators Chuck Lorre and Nick Bakay, Season 2 of the Max original comedy series Bookie continues to follow veteran bookie Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) and his best friend Ray (Omar J. Dorsey) around Los Angeles, as they try to save their business from the potential legalization of sports gambling in California. Collecting debts is tricky business, especially when you don’t want to actually hurt anyone to get your money, but unstable clients, and family and co-workers with their own demands, don’t help matters.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Lorre talked about how gifted they were with this cast, that Maniscalco and Dorsey make the perfect comedy team, why he doesn’t work with a master plan, never selling out the characters for a joke, Ray getting his ass kicked, and how this world is wide open for so many more stories. Lorre is also doing a Netflix sitcom with stand-up comic Leanne Morgan and discussed what makes her special, along with how she’s different from Maniscalco.
‘Bookie’s Danny and Ray Are Actually the Prey and Not the Alpha Males They Think They Are

Image via Max

Collider: What did you enjoy most about the first season of this, with what you learned about what worked best with the world, the characters, how they moved within it, and how they interacted with each other? What were the things that really stood out to you with Season 1 that you wanted to carry over to Season 2?
CHUCK LORRE: We immediately recognized that we were just so gifted with the whole cast. I know it sounds like smoke and hyperbole and whatnot, but it is a deep bench. Everybody in the cast is remarkable. We knew we could write for any combination and have any dynamic with the different characters, starting with Danny and Ray – Sebastian [Maniscalco] and Omar [Dorsey] – who are the center of the show. Those two guys together are good. No matter what else happens, we’re good with those two gentlemen characters. There was so much chemistry between them. From the moment they first read together when Omar auditioned, it was clear that they were perfect for this comedy team. I think the big lesson from Season 1 was recognizing that these were not predators, they were prey. They were victims, more often than not. Even in success, they faced enormous obstacles. Their lives were not easy, both their personal home life, but also the act of running an illegal book operation was fraught with peril and difficulty and frustration and crazy people. Knowing that we were writing for prey and not predators changed the whole dynamic of Season 2.
This is a show that is more focused on characters and relationships than it is on complicated plot or gimmicks of storytelling. Because of that, do you not have to think as many seasons out about the story you want to tell? How far ahead do you think about where you’re going with this show? Do you take it season by season?
LORRE: I wish I was that capable, but I’m not. It really is stumbling around in the dark trying to find the next moment, the next scene, the next story. A master plan where I can plot out a whole season would be fantastic. I just don’t know how to do that. So, it’s very much a treasure hunt as you go. You learn as you go, and you hope you’re making the right choices as you go.

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It feels like with a character-based story, you can do just about anything with these characters, as long as it fits in with who they are.
LORRE: Right. You have to be very protective of the characters. You can’t sell them out for a joke or for some moment that you’re in love with, if it’s not pertinent to who they are. That’s part of the job. It’s not just writing comedy, but protecting the characters without putting them in a box. I certainly don’t wanna do a formula type of thing where variations on the same thing keep happening. That is a way to go, but it is not a very fulfilling way to go. The characters have to grow, but sometimes in imperceptible ways. When Danny goes to Modesto to get his wife back, that’s a move for that character that I hope is justified by the fact that he’s miserable without her and his life is empty without her. The comedy is in him going up there and not only wooing her to come home, but having her bring his mother-in-law back with her is. It’s a careful-what-you-wish-for situation.
You also have a real top-notch guest cast. I love the guy who keeps picking up the wrong person but keeps trying because he wants to get it right.
LORRE: As we were writing that storyline where they go to private detective to try to find the man who stole their money, it just happened. What if he opens the trunk and he’s got the wrong guy? My favorite line there is when they go, “That’s not him.” And the character says, “It’s close.”
The Goal With ‘Bookie’ Is To Keep a Comedic Tone to the Violence

Image via Max

With Season 1, you told me that you’d always wanted to do something in that gray area of criminality where there could be implications of violence, but that you weren’t comfortable working in real hardcore violence. It’s not hardcore violence, but Ray does get himself into a bit of women trouble this season. How did you figure out just how far you wanted to take that?
LORRE: This big, powerful, former NFL football player getting his ass kicked by a baby mama that’s his former girlfriend and his current girlfriend goes along with the other thing that we’ve learned as we’ve been doing the show, which is that because they’re not predators, they’re prey, more often than not, the comedy comes from them being victimized. They’re not the alpha males that they think they are. Ray getting his ass kicked by those two women just felt like an opportunity for violence to be comedic. Hopefully, as he’s getting his ass handed to him, you’re laughing. That would be the goal.

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“I Think You Could Really Milk This for Multiple Seasons”: ‘Bookie’s Sebastian Maniscalco Wants To Dig Even Deeper Into the World of Gambling

Maniscalco also talks about some of the stand-out moments in Season 2 and what he’d like to explore in a possible Season 3.

The humor on this show really runs the gamut from very clever to the old classic of bathroom humor. When it comes to those kinds of jokes, is there a limit for how often and how much you can do that? Why is that something that always just seems to work and be funny, no matter what the story is that you’re telling?
LORRE: Well, it is part of being a human being. We have these biological processes that we have to deal with. But how do you know? I don’t know. It’s always a guessing game. You just go, “This feels right,” and you trust that feeling. That’s how I go for it. There’s no way to absolutely know these things. There’s a lot of guessing and trust that it feels right, so you trust the feeling. Someone might disagree with you, but that’s okay. People will disagree with you. People will watch something that I think is wonderfully funny and think it’s horrible. That’s inevitable.
Co-Creator Chuck Lorre Feels There Are Still More ‘Bookie’ Stories To Tell

Now that you’ve done two seasons of this, are you hoping for a third? Is this a world that you would like to keep exploring?
LORRE: I think it’s wide open for so many more stories. But whether there are more stories to tell, that’s up to other people. It’s not up to me. Make a phone call to HBO and Max or whoever and tell them. I don’t know how this works. After all these years, I still don’t know how those decisions get made. Somebody is gonna make that decision, hopefully sooner rather than later.
You also have a Netflix sitcom with Leanne Morgan, who is another stand-up performer that you’re centering a TV series around. What do you think it is about stand-up comics that translates to onscreen comedy? What makes her special?
LORRE: Leanne has this remarkable honesty about her act. Her stand-up is unlike anything I’ve seen in so long. It’s entirely family friendly without being cloying. It’s an honest reflection of who she is as a mother, as a grandmother, and as a daughter. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I fell in love with her stand-up. One of the things that we’re doing with the show is that we’re actually fictionalizing her life. In one of her concerts, she talks about a girlfriend whose marriage ends, and this woman is suddenly trying to figure out how to go forward in the middle of her life without that marriage. That struck me as an opportunity for a lot of stories, as well as an opportunity to feel empathy and care for Leanne’s character. She’s 57 or 58 years old, and the series is about her starting over again, which is a formidable undertaking when you’re that age. We’ve been doing this one in front of a live studio audience because it felt like the right kind of thing to do in front of an audience. It’s small, intimate family theater.

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You mentioned never knowing whether something will work or if something is going to be funny. You couldn’t have known how well Sebastian Maniscalco’s brand of comedy would translate to the show you were centering around him, and it must be the same with Leanne Morgan.
LORRE: Sebastian is a different story. I didn’t know how to translate Sebastian’s act into a series. I really didn’t know where that began. And then, I saw him in The Irishman, where he played the psychotic Crazy Joe Gallo, opposite Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and he was terrific. Forget that he’s a master at stand-up – he’s at the top of the pyramid there – he’s got serious chops, as an actor. That’s what inspired Bookie. I didn’t know how to do a show about a stone-cold killer, but I went to a colleague of mine, Nick Bakay, who had been working with me on Mom for many years, and I said, “Here’s the idea. I wanna make this guy a small-time criminal, but I don’t wanna do the blood bath stuff. I just don’t know how to do that. Other people do, but I don’t.” And he said, “A bookie.” And I went, “Yeah, that’s exactly the right tone for a small-time criminal.” When we presented it to Sebastian, he said, “Yes, let’s do it,” and so here we are.

Bookie

Release Date

November 30, 2023

Network

HBO Max

Bookie is available to stream on Max. Check out the Season 2 trailer: