The upcoming eighth season ofBrooklyn Nine-Ninewill raise serious issues, but will do so while maintaining its comedic roots, according to Andy Samberg. The actor, who plays Jake Peralta in the cop-based series, said the new season of the show will “not shy away” from the “serious problems” of real-life but that all they can do is raise the issues, they can’t solve them.
“I think it’s important for us and foranyone watching our showto keep in mind if we’re looking for a half-hour comedy show to be the ones to solve this problem, we’re in trouble. Our job is pointing out that stuff isn’t getting done right and spreading the word that we’re hopeful that it can get better.”
Samberg then went on to say that he believed thepolice procedural sitcomhas always presented the police force in an authentic way, but the that the new season will force them to take an introspective look at themselves.
“I do believe that our characters need to examine their roles in the world. They’re going to be forced to look in the mirror and see who they’re complicit with. We have a decent track record of addressing social issues.”
The actor continued, highlighting that the real challenge of the new season was to find a balance between addressing ongoing issues whilst avoiding “punishing viewers who like our show and care about our characters.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, the cast ofBrooklyn Nine-Ninehave addressed thedifficult position of being a comedy cop show in modern America, with Samberg revealing that he and the rest of the cast of the show are now trying to find a way to craft the new season amid the current political climate. “We’re taking a step back, and the writers are all rethinking how we’re going to move forward, as well as the cast,” Samberg said. “We’re all in touch and kind of discussing how you make a comedy show about police right now, and if we can find a way of doing that that we all feel morally okay about. I know that we’ll figure it out, but it’s definitely a challenge, so we’ll see how it goes.”
Co-stars Terry Crews, who plays Sergeant Terry Jeffords, and Andre Braugher, who stars as Captain Raymond Holt, have also spoken about theapproach to the eighth season, with the former revealing that they scrapped the first four episodes that had already been written, “[Producer Dan Goor] had four [new] episodes all ready to go and they just threw them in the trash. We have to start over. Right now, we don’t know which direction it’s going to go in.”
Braugher meanwhile has said that the new season was a “good chance to tell the kinds of stories that heretofore have only been seen on grittier shows,” and that the show needed to “commit itself to telling the story of how these things happen and what’s possible to deal with them.”
Brooklyn Nine-Ninehas now been officially renewed for an eighth season which will air sometime in 2021. This comes to us fromVariety.
