By Gavin Boyle
JoAnna Garcia Swisher will guest star on HAPPY’S PLACE, reuniting her with her on-screen mom from REBA, Reba McEntire.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said HAPPY’S PLACE creator, Kevin Abbott. “We absolutely want to bring some of the old cast members on — and in very different roles than what they played on REBA. Steve [Howey] is our first one up, and we’re trying to figure out how to bring JoAnna in. We only want to have the old cast in if we can really utilize them in a fun, impactful way.”
Swisher will join the show as Kenzie, a local influencer who is hired by Happy’s Place to help them with their social media presence. It is unclear if she will appear multiple times, or if her character will be one and done. Last season, Howey joined the show as a potential sperm donor for a character that wanted a baby.
Related: HAPPY’S PLACE Just Added Another REBA Face
“One of the arcs for [Melissa Peterman’s] character Gabby is that she thinks she wants to have a baby…and the Steve Howey character [Danny] becomes a potential sperm donor,” Abbott said. “We’re hoping that Steve’s character can come back” — but as of now, he’s only slated to appear in the HAPPY’S PLACE Christmas episode, aptly titled “Ho-Ho-Howey.”
HAPPY’S PLACE was renewed for a second season at the beginning of the year after earning monster viewership during its first season. The pilot episode aired to 17.6 million viewers across all platforms and increased its Friday night timeslot numbers by 54%.
“HAPPY’S PLACE Season 2, we’re in production now…and we’re just so glad to be back and get to work with each other; and it’s not work. It’s play,” McEntire said in a short behind the scenes video she posted on Instagram this summer, adding in the caption, “Y’all ready for another round?”
One of the reasons for the show’s success is that most people working on the show have been colleagues for a long time. Many of them carried over from REBA which first aired 24 years ago.
“We just pretty much carried over what we did on the REBA TV show,” McEntire told IndieWire. “[Producer] Kevin [Abbott] always made sure that we were laughing, and it was funny and witty and snarky, but always by three-quarters into the show, there was a poignant place that was fit for everybody to relate to. It was the heart. Everybody was choking up and crying, and then there was a singer in there that got everybody back on track, that this is a comedy.”
“But we learned that from past sitcoms, Andy Griffith on the ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW — I pretty much raised my son the way Andy did Opie,” she continued. “So, that was the lesson that we learned on the REBA show that we carried over into HAPPY’S PLACE. We’ve got to laugh. We’ve got to cry. But if we do it together, we’re all stronger.”
HAPPY’S PLACE returns for Season 2 starting Friday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. on NBC and will be available the next day to stream on Peacock.
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