ZAZIE BEETZ:I don’t remember what I was doing.
I mean, the whole cast is so good.
Like, I would check my phone every three or four minutes.
Zazie Beetz, Jay Ellis, and Josh Gad on ‘History of the World Part II’.Aaron Epstein/Hulu; Hulu
I’m literally checking my phone right now just to see if they’re gonna call me.
I don’t remember.
ELLIS:Oh, yeah.
[All laugh] We’re definitely all curious about that.
But yeah, I think we all for sure were aware of what we were getting into.
GAD:I watched the original about, I want to say like 70 times.
Josh, as an actor, did it feel sort of blasphemous to portray Shakespeare as a hack?
I did a lot of research, spoke to surviving family members, and this was the real guy.
This was the real dude.
And I wanted to show it warts and all.
I didn’t want to hold back.
[Laughs] I’m just grateful that there’s no one around to sue me.
Like, that’s it.
What was that like?
ELLIS:They were both a lot of fun to do.
I mean, they were just so wildly different.
BEETZ:It’s actually a really nice thing to hear, thank you.
ELLIS:In a good way.
And so they were equally as fun.
BEETZ:Yeah, it was fun to play two different versions of this one character.
I mean, everybody was,Quinta BrunsonandJ.B.
Smoove, and just everybody.
Just so joyful and free.
So I had a great time doing both.
I imagine with a show like this there’s a lot of breaking going on.
Was there one moment in particular that sticks out to you where you just couldn’t stop laughing?
This is a genre of comedy that has almost been extinct for many years.
Like, this kind of comedy still works.
BEETZ:I remember with J.B. Smoove there’s a part where he had chickens.
And that just as a combination really did it for all of us.
ELLIS:Zaz brought this up earlier and I kind of completely forgot about it.
And everyone just kept going because we were rolling, but it literally just became a thing.
And it was so funny.
BEETZ:He didn’t know if we should keep doing it.
It was so funny.
ELLIS:It was awesome.
It was just so seamless sometimes.
BEETZ:[All laughing] Yeah, you had to have been there.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
