Alison Brie on Nathan Fillion and the Community finale

So, back in March, you might recall I published my multi-layered hypothesis on Community‘s 2nd season finale here on CliqueClack. In short, I guessed that there would be an underlining Firefly theme and — more importantly — Nathan Fillion would make an appearance, at least as a small cameo. Well, a few days ago I had the chance to talk to Alison Brie (Annie on the show) to ask her about the finale, which is premiering at 8:00 PM EST tonight on NBC. How could I not jump at the chance to ask her about Fillion’s visit to the set?

Of course, I first spent a good 15 seconds telling her how much we over at CliqueClack love the show, how we were so thrilled they’re getting a third season, how Jay loves Annie and Britta. I basically went totally fangirl on her for a quarter of a minute … which isn’t nearly as sexy as it sounds. Still, I know I wasn’t the worst in the Q&A … one blogger asked if Annie would be wearing chaps for the western paintball game (which, bless her heart, she took in stride). Not even I got to that level of awkward.

So, after that moment of fangirl glee, I composed myself and asked her about Nathan’s visit and a potential cameo from our favorite Browncoat.  After what seemed like the longest pause ever, Alison replied, “I do not know if you will see a cameo, but Nathan’s great. […] He’s such a nice guy. So, yeah, any nods to any shows that he’s been on are done with great joy because he’s a good guy.”

So, I know it wasn’t a complete confirmation, but it sure wasn’t a “no,” was it? My grand hypothesis still has legs, damnit! I couldn’t tell you which half he’d be in, but I’d put money on him making an appearance somewhere in the finale. If I had to choose, I’d love to see him play a Mal Reynolds hallucination being experienced by Troy and/or Abed, compelling them to keep fighting the good fight in this most epic of paintball games. Alison was careful not to give away too much, but did mention that there will be cliffhangers for both tonight’s and next week’s episodes: “I feel like we leave you on the brink of something bigger is at hand […] I think this is two years in a row now that my biggest shock of the season has been the very last episode just going, ‘Oh, oh, that’s how it’s going to go.'”

Alison also reminisced about her first experience with Nathan: “I met him first because I’ve done this sort of live action old timey radio show at a theater in L.A. that he was part of as well, and a lot of people from TV were doing it. [..] And it was really funny to meet him because my mom, who came to see the show, was so excited. That was like her big deal for the evening and he was super gracious.”

Before my time was up, I couldn’t help but ask about her character on Mad Men. Alison described Trudy as a partner for Pete, “Really with Trudy it’s mostly about her just loving Pete. I think Pete can be a very despicable character and people love to hate him. And what’s fun about playing Trudy is that she really doesn’t bear witness to a lot of his horrible deeds. And she just loves him and wants to be an amazing wife to him, which in that alone makes her a quirky character because he’s so odd. You think, ‘Who could love this guy,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, this woman.’ It kind of makes sense.”

Clacked by Katie Schenkel
on May 05, 2011 @ 16:00 EST5EDT