We spoke with comedic actor Thomas Lennon (the legend from The State, Reno 911!, The Odd Couple, Viva Variety) amid the release of Chosen Family, his new movie from writer-director Heather Graham — who also leads the cast. Lennon steals his scenes as Matt, the hilarious but supportive friend of Ann (Graham), a single yoga instructor trying in vain to connect with her new boyfriend’s devilish seven-year-old daughter. It’s the latest laugh-out-loud project in a long line of similarly comedic ones from Lennon, whom Comedy Central fans might remember best from the acclaimed mockumentary series, Reno 911! And it sounds like another reunion between its beloved cast is not exactly out of the question down the line.
“I can’t imagine we wouldn’t do more Reno 911! because we already have all the outfits, which is basically the hardest part,” Lennon told MovieWeb. “You can tell that we don’t really overthink it when we do it. If anything, we really underthink it quite a bit.” He continued:
“But what’s neat to me to see, is that… we never really reference politics. We never really reference time.
Reno 911!,
in some ways, is like
The Simpsons
, which is: The characters never grow up. They never mature. They never get better, they never learn anything. Like, every
Reno 911!
starts exactly at zero again, which is one of the fun things about it…
We literally are a cartoon. We’re animated characters, except we’re alive
.”
Who Is Thomas Lennon’s Chosen Family?
In the meantime, Lennon nails his supporting role in Graham’s second directorial project, Chosen Family — marking their second collaboration thus far. “I’m lucky enough now to be in two of Heather’s movies. The first one was called Half Magic, which, if you haven’t seen it, also a hilarious movie,” Lennon told us. “The first Heather movie, I just auditioned for her, and she was so much more pleasant than I even imagined she would be. She was a good laugher, really loves comedy, and she likes to laugh. And sort of immediately, I was like, ‘Oh, she just has a great sense of humor and, like, this will be a fun person to do stuff with.’ And that movie proved to be exactly that, which was a super fun movie to be in.”
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Lennon also opened up to us about how he was able to connect to the unique foundation of Graham’s Chosen Family story:
“I do have a pretty obvious ‘chosen family’ that I’ve been a part of for a super long time, which is my comedy group The State… and we’re basically still on tour now…
I’ve honestly spent more time with my comedy group in my adult life than I have with my literal family
, except for my sister, who also just happened to marry into my work family, in The State… So [
Chosen Family
] definitely strikes a cord with me because my chosen family ended up being, you know, people I spend time with more than my literal family.”
From Brainstorm Media, Chosen Family is now playing in theaters and available on digital platforms like YouTube, Google Play, Fandango at Home, and Apple TV.