By now, chances are you’ve seen Netflix’s latest action-comedy, Obliterated. The series follows a team of government special agents as they attempt to track down a nuclear bomb that threatens to destroy all of Las Vegas. The problem is, they do it after a night of partying in Las Vegas where they drank a shocking amount of alcohol and took a bunch of drugs. Sounds like a recipe for success, right?
Warning: The following contains light spoilers for the first season of Obliterated, now streaming on Netflix.
The most shocking person on the team is none other than the bomb expert himself, known only as Haggerty. Thomas Howell (Red Dawn, ET, The Walking Dead) starring C. Thomas Howell (Red Dawn, ET, The Walking Dead), Haggerty’s casting may come as a surprise. He now only strips completely in the series, but he also spends most of the first season in a drug-induced stupor.
While it may seem like an unexpected role for someone with Howell’s resume, Obliterated showrunner John Horowitz told GameSpot that it was the role of a lifetime for the actor.
“He’s a really smart, smart guy who’s been in the business for a long time,” Horowitz explained. “The moment he reads the material to Haggerty, he says, ‘This is going to be huge for me. It’s a character unlike anything I’ve ever had the chance to play. I understand this character. I know what to do with him. “
What followed was basically an “R-rated weekend in Bernese,” according to one of the show’s hosts, as the team towed him around in an inflatable boat or carried him on their shoulders. And of course, there’s the really ugly scene where his co-workers have to wash his poop off of him in a Las Vegas fountain.
“What was amazing was that he was so funny in the first episode, going out there, showing it all, and doing all that, but then he spends four episodes where he’s gone for so long,” Horowitz says. He was unconscious.” “Any scene where Haggerty is unconscious, he’s there, doing things. So, as an actor, there’s that challenge that he had. And luckily, he’s got a big toolbox of tricks. “He has in his repertoire where he was able to create moments of these things.”
For Hayden Schlossberg, another of the show’s trio, it was reminiscent of another project he and Hurwitz wrote nearly two decades ago.
“Working with C. Thomas Howell reminded me of working with Neil Patrick Harris when he made Harold and Kumar in White Castle. It’s hard to remember, but at the time, when we shot Harold and Kumar, Neil had never worked “He didn’t do comedy. Mind you,” Schlossberg said. “So you didn’t know him as a comedy star. But we deliberately wrote something that we knew would be hysterical for him in that movie. And the same with C. Thomas Howell. I just know him from so many things. From dramatic work and Different things over the years. But we knew it was a very dramatic, crazy, wild character. Hopefully people watch this and you’re just like, ‘Wow, that’s C. Is Thomas Howell doing it? Great. “
Let’s all hope Obliterated gets a second season, if only so we can follow Howl’s adventures as Haggerty even more. It’s hard to imagine how that particular character could go any lower, though it’ll be interesting to see the writers try.
Obliterated is now streaming on Netflix.
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