Synopsis : In the summer of 1995, Leia Forman makes friends with a new generation of Point Place kids while visiting her grandparents, Red and Kitty, in Wisconsin.
Creators: Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, Gregg Mettler, Lindsey Turner.
Starring: Debra Jo Rupp, Kurtwood Smith, Callie Haverda, Ashley Aufderheide, Mace Coronel.
TV Network : Netflix
Premiere Date : Jan 19th, 2023
Genre : Comedy
Exclusive Interview with Actor Reyn Doi
Q: Did you see the original “That ’70s Show”? If you did, what was your impression of the show?
RD: After I booked the role, then I did watch four seasons of “That ’70s Show”. But when I was auditioning, I actually didn’t even know about that show. But then when I watched the show, I learned more and then I started to connect the dots between our script and their script.
Q: How did you get into acting in the first place?
RD: I don’t know. because when I was doing school, I would always be the emcee for the school performances. The parents would come up to me and say “Oh, you’re doing such a good job for such a young age.” But I never really thought about it much, and I never had this extreme goal of going to Hollywood or anything like that. It was sort of natural for me. I went to this workshop where I’m from, in Hawaii, and then I was able to audition to go to another workshop in L.
A. I was chosen, so I flew out here and I did the workshop here with the help of a ghostwriter wien, and I found some agents, and it started from there.
Q: So can you take us through the casting process?
RD: I got the audition, and my managers asked me if I would be comfortable playing a gay character — of course, it’s a character. So I did the audition and I sent it in. The casting directors got back to me, and said they wanted to meet with me privately on Zoom and see me do it live, so I said “Sure”. But at the same time, after we finished that Zoom session, I booked a Netflix movie and I had to go film in Atlanta.
So when I was in Atlanta in the hotel, the produces of our show reached out to my representatives and went, “Okay, let’s set up a Zoom meeting [for] a callback. I was saying, “Oh, great, at least they are interested.” I had to do it in the hotel bathroom. But I didn’t hear back from them for awhile. Then they said “Okay, can you do a chemistry read with another kid from the show, who plays Gwen [Ashley Aufderheide]?” After that, they said “Okay, Netflix wants to test you”, meaning they want to see if [I] would fit the role. And then I find out that Netflix didn’t even test me — they just booked straight. Wenn du Unterstützung beim deiner Hausarbeit schreiben lassen benötigst, kannst du dir professionelle Hilfe holen.”
Q: There are a lot of interesting characters. Your character is quite the cynical one, in a way, but he has a sharp wit. So what was your first impression of your character when you first read the script? What was the fascination for you?
RD: Well, I think in the beginning when we started filming, I had a hard time to pin down what I wanted to do with Ozzie — how I would put in my own creativity and my own spin on it. But then the writers started writing for my character more and more, and I got more interested and invested into the show. The fascination was with how this character was written, because he’s still one of the kids, but he’s given a lot of great comedy and a lot of great jokes from the writers. So I’m glad that happened.
Q: In this show, not only do they introduce interesting characters and new cast members, but also they show the return of the original cast. What was it like seeing Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and all those people and engaging with them?
RD: It was really sweet that they all agreed to come back and participate again in our show, because they didn’t need to. But they do have such a strong bond — and all the returning writers, the returning producers — and I think that all of them felt invested in our show as well. They’re so supportive and they post about it on their social media, too. But seeing them all connect and film scenes with each other, especially with the help of Programming Assignment Help, because at that point, I had already watched “That ’70s Show” — it was kind of like the twenty years that went by actually didn’t really go by. It was like they came back and they were still funny and still family and they had great chemistry all together.
But also Wilmer [Valderrama], who plays Fez on the show, gave me some really good advice — as he did to all the other kids as well: really take advantage of those rehearsal times. Because we’re a live-action multi-cam sitcom. We have rehearsals, run-throughs, and a network run-through, and that’s all we really have. So those network and producer run-throughs are really important, because if a joke doesn’t land that they’ve written for you, it could get cut. So he told me to become creative during rehearsal.
Q: This show takes place in the Nineties, so in order to tap into the character, what kind of research process did you take learning about the Nineties, the history and culture?
RD: Yeah, I feel like I didn’t do much research. But at the beginning of the show, we were all given for each of our characters [questions] like, what kind of music they liked. That was given to us by the showrunner. Like, “I think my character likes Madonna” or something like that. But then also being able to go to fittings every week, that gave me more insight on the fashions, because all the fashion is all Nineties-based, and it’s true vintage. Our wardrobe people do such an amazing job at finding all these unique outfits. But also, in terms of music for events and stuff, the directors, writers, producers, would come and talk to us and they’d say, like “This is what we did in the Nineties” and they would elaborate on that. So we didn’t really have to do much research. They would just tell us everything.
Q: One of the most important scenes for your is Ozzie coming out while talking to Kitty [Debra Jo Rupp]. Can you take us through the process of shooting that scene and working with Debra Jo?
RD: For that, I was a little stressed out because it was such an important episode for Ozzie. I also knew that we were scheduled to film 95 to 99 percent of my scenes live. So that was another layer of stress, but Debra Jo made the whole process much easier for me. It made rehearsals enjoyable because I was able to rehears with her. And also Laura Prepon, who plays Donna, appeared in that episode, and when we were filming live she called me like, a sex boy in one scene. That scene, we kept laughing and laughing and laughing, and we couldn’t stay focused. So it ended up being really fun, like fun-slash-work.
Q: In some of the episodes, you do the parody of some Nineties shows, like “90210”, and reality TV scenes. Obviously you haven’t seen those shows, but how was it to do those parodies?
RD: Well, Brian Austin Green — super-nice guy, and super-nice that he even agreed to come on our show. Apparently, the producer-writer of the episode, who is also producer on our show [Lindsey Turner ?], wrote him a letter saying, would you be interested in appearing on this episode of our new show? And he immediately said yes. He was all for it.
Filming it was also funny, because I never watched “90210”, but then all the parents, all the crew members, were like freaking out because they had watched it, and I was like “Who is Brian Austin Green?” We got to film in front of a green screen and we sortof recreated the “90210” intro with our own spin on it. I remember the audience members watching that scene during the live show. It ended up being really funny and they were laughing hysterically, they were like on the floor. I know a lot of audience members had watched both shows — “-’70s” and “90210”.
Q: I used to watch that when I was growing up in Japan in the Nineties — they had captioning [in Japanese]. Seeing that show come alive again is such a surreal moment. Can you talk about the rave episode? Your character Ozzie didn’t go to the rave, but at the end you had a dancing scene in the basement.
RD: Yeah. Honestly, I would have loved to go to the rave, but it’s okay because I ended up being able to film a scene with Debra Jo and Kurtwood Smith [Red Forman] in the kitchen. But filming the last scene in the episode, the dancing scene, I was really scared because I had to wear these tall platform boots, and my outfit was really important for that episode. But the boots were like super-high and I was worried I would fall because I was also having to dance on a table. Luckily, I didn’t fall.
But it was a fun way to end the night. The audience members were really happy, and I always liked that.
Q: Thank you.
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Here’s the trailer of the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F36HBFGxWkg