With reporting by Alex Zalben.
There’s not a lot more that Will Forte can tell us about his new Fox comedy, “The Last Man On Earth,” than what we already know from the title. It seems to be exactly what it sounds like: The “Saturday Night Live” alum plays a guy who just so happens to be all alone on the planet. The just-released trailer for the show plays like a dark comedy, with Forte wandering the aisles of an abandoned grocery store pantsless and trolling for porn, and, still pantsless, singing into a megaphone at an empty Dodger Stadium, acquiescing to an invisible crowd’s demands for just one more song.
As a short, the concept works tremendously. As a series, however, a potential audience member wonders just how much mileage can be had out of a one-man show.
At the Fox upfronts this week, MTV News had the chance to ask Forte exactly how the heck he planned to pull this off.
“We’re writing it for my family,” he joked. “My family’s gonna love it, my family’s gonna be really interested, and if we get other viewers, that’s alright, but we’ve got the Forte family locked up.”
“No, we’re actually very excited about it. We’ve come up with a lot of really fun, interesting things and twists and turns.”
Not that he can tell us about any of those twists: “I don’t want to say too much about it, but we’re really excited about it. It’s a really fun, dark, at times but mainly just straightforward comedy with a really fun tone.”
There will be dialogue and physical comedy, Forte said, but it’s been a learning process feeling his way toward making the show’s concept work.
“It’s a lot of work,” he said.
“The Last Man on Earth” will air on Fox in fall 2015.
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