Rob Horn
Appearances
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
How are you? Rob does funny. It has been so long. You look exactly the same. Well, thank you.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
The thing is, it was early in the first season and we wanted to start to set up where that relationship might go and how that might go and the internal conflict of the characters. And that it was more dimensional than just a rivalry between the two of them or just a conflict between them, but that there actually was an attraction that they were fighting.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And so once you could set that up early in the season, you really had the opportunity to play with that. And also, and this is all from the incredible mind of Yvette Bowser. So we just wrote the words. It was all from her. Yeah. But also one of the wonderful things about it was you got to see how alike they actually were as characters and how they were fighting their similarities.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And that that's where their attraction came from was the fact that they were so much alike they couldn't stand looking at themselves that deeply.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
It was a number of things. The chemistry between the two actors was undeniable. And there was so much comedy to be mined from that. So Yvette would sit down and say, what do you all want to write? What characters do you want to write? And so Danny and I said, we really want to write something for Max and Kyle.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And so we brainstormed that idea at the table with all the writers and she let us write it. It was very in our wheelhouse, that kind of conflict comedy, that sort of banter.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And I think because we, before this, before Living Single, we're writing Designing Women, we really started to learn how to sort of elevate that kind of comedy and sort of make it what we do.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Well, you know, I say... Thank you. I was raised in a household of all women. So I didn't have a dad. And I was raised by my mom and my grandmother and my twin sister. And so I sort of... And I think maybe because I was gay at a time when there was a, you know, when it wasn't as accepted as it is now. And so you learn to understand what it's like to feel like a minority in some ways.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And being raised by all women, I sort of got an insight and an understanding of... the prism for how women view the world, much more so. And I was sensitive to that, and I just sort of related to it. Wow.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Because one of the great things about Living Single, and also about the dynamic between those two characters, is that it was never mean. It was sarcastic, and it was funny, and it was biting, but it was never mean. None of the comedy in that show was ever mean. No. I think that's what made it so relatable.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And the thing about those two characters is that they were so smart. So they knew how to press each other's buttons in a very specific way, which really helped with the dynamic. And I think the audience really wanted them to get together. The audience wanted them. You saw that coming. The fun was going to be how and if it was going to happen.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Are you hoping for different takes? Well, I... I've been very lucky that I've gotten to work with a cast like Living Single. And the six actors on this show, the principal actors, were spectacular. You all wore a... It was like watching the Carol Burnett show. Because it was just like you were truly an ensemble. Everybody elevated everybody.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yvette created such specific characters that it was kind of easy to write for. I love... my reason for being on this planet is to make people laugh. Nothing gives me more joy than bringing laughter. And so to see your work presented to an audience and in live theater, one of the things I love about live theater is you hear that laughter instantaneously.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And we had a live audience on Living Single, and they would go nuts. They would go nuts for you all. It was crazy. And often when you do live studio audiences like that, people would want to leave early because you do take after take. Our audience stayed. Yes. They were committed. They wanted to. And that was...
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Well, you know, the thing about it was we really wanted to set up the integrity that Max had as a character, as a lawyer and as a character. And she couldn't she just couldn't lie. She couldn't she couldn't pretend to be something she wasn't. You know, I remember we talked about this. Does the reveal come because she just couldn't handle Kyle anymore? But it wasn't that.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
It had nothing to do with that. It was that she just... Her integrity couldn't handle lying. Yeah, but also one of the things that I love about it is how her friends rallied around her and were willing to play that game and lie for her and make all this stuff up for her. And she just... Couldn't be responsible for that.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
I mean, it's a beautiful thing that it showed so early in this series how connected this these women were and that they were family.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yeah, that was a big part of it. And, you know, I got to say that I've been doing this thing for 35 years now. And I think, and without a doubt, Living Single was one of my favorite experiences and adventures in this business because of you all. The cast just... loved each other so much. We had so much fun.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
It was just, you would write for these incredible women and they would bring this stuff to life in a way that was better than anything you could write. It was a, it was a wonderful time in my life and it taught me how to do what I do now. Yvette Bowser taught me how to do what I do now.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yeah, I mean, I may be wrong, but if I remember correctly, she was the first woman to have her own show on network television. Black woman, yes. And black woman, yes. And she also, this was one of the shows that put Fox Network on the map. And and there had never been a show like this for women who were strong, supported each other, loved each other, were funny, were were independent.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
That had not been done with with women of color before. And so this show was groundbreaking. And at the same way of that.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
running a room was groundbreaking because she wanted everybody to excel she she really took young writers like us and brought us under her wing and taught us and said i'm going to teach you how to run a show i'm going to teach you how to work in a room i'm going to teach you all this she was never threatened by anybody else's talent she supported them she wanted you to be great so the writers room were as much fun as the set was
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Because you could say anything and do anything and you would never have to worry about being judged or being wrong. Everything was met with love in that room. It was a great training ground. And so many writers from that show went off to become incredibly successful because of Yvette Bowser. And of course, she still is a legend and has just been winning awards and writing incredible stuff.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
But I love that woman. So much of my career is owed to her and what she gave me as a writer and as a person.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Oh, gosh. That's so good to hear. I got goosebumps, right, girl?
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
There's no time for those conversations. I mean, it is a mosh pit. It is crazy. You have, what, four or five days to do a new play every week.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
There really isn't. And the showrunner, Yvette, is dealing with the network and the studio and the writers. She's the middle person for all of it because they give their notes. And she then has to siphon those notes down to us in a way that we understand what we have to go in the room with her and then do.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
At the same time, we're dealing with next week's episode while she's editing last week's episode while we're arcing out this. It's all happening at one time.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yeah, but you all were so good at it. And the longer we went on, the more you all really got into the depth of those characters.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Well, you know, at the beginning of the episode, she's she's convinced she doesn't care that she's going to be fine. And what happens is he comes with this woman and she's not fine. But I don't think she's, if I remember correctly, it has nothing to do with the other woman. It has to do with her lack of closure with him that she never got.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Because Max is a kind of character that she's very cut and dry. She's very sort of, there's not a lot of gray with Max. And that relationship, she thought she was fine because she always thinks she's fine. But she wasn't done. And having him there showed her she had to finish this.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
She's very vulnerable. And one of the things that that would tell us all the time, which is true, which is any great comedy is grounded in truth and is grounded in some kind of relatability and dramatic situation. Comedy is drama through the prism of humor. Come on. And so what was great about Living Single is we did this a lot, which is you'd be laughing, laughing, laughing.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And then suddenly you'd have a moment of pathos or a moment of truth. And it made the comedy even funner, more funner or even more fun because we didn't have to make that funny. All we had to make that was truthful.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yeah. And Danny and I had a partnership for years. We were together for 15 years as a partnership. And we were so different. We brought very different things to that partnership. And Yvette put together a room. Everybody was good at something different in that writer's room. She was very smart about that.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Everybody that she hired was great at either a certain character or a certain dynamic or a certain talent so that together it was cohesive.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Buckle up. It's about to be good. We loved writing. We loved you all. We loved you and loved writing for you. We used to get in trouble because we would sneak down to the set to try to hang out with you all the time.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Here's the thing that I love about them. I think they would never have broken up. I think they would just still be fighting and bantering and not holding anything in, which is what would keep them together.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
And so I think they'd still be together and still be that couple that everybody just, that were fun and funny and angry and fighting and all that and had incredible sex because they held nothing in. They told the truth to each other. If they were new characters, that's an interesting thing because the world has changed a lot since we did this show.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
But I don't know how much they would have changed. I think Max would still be fighting for the same things she fought for, social justice and equality and right. And I think Kyle probably would have got off and had a career in show business and become a singer, which is really, I think, what he always really wanted to do, right? And I think they would still support each other. I think...
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Max would say, initially think I've got to hire a partner in a law firm, marry a partner in a law firm. And then, and she'd have a whole list of what she thought she wanted. And then she'd fall in love with him anyway, because it was, because it was. Meant to be. Meant to be. Yeah. Meant to be. They were meant to be. Sort of like Overton and you. Yeah.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
You know, those two characters were just meant to be together.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
To this day, I still walk around all the time going, Flava! Flava!
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Yeah. Came on the show. Flavor. Flavor. Flavor. That, and I always go, and you'll remember this one.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Absolutely. I loved that. He was a blue collar Renaissance guy.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Thank you for that. He was a philosopher in many ways. He was great.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Right now, I'm opening two shows. One is a show I had on Broadway called Shocked, which we're opening at the Regent Park Open Air Theater. And then I'm opening Disney's next big musical, Hercules, which is opening at the Royal Drury Lane. Come on. All within a month of each other. I'm going to ask you this.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
Ultimately, it was. I love television. I started as a playwright, went to L.A., had this career in television that I never expected, which was a great training ground for me. But I always knew someday I'd end up going back to theater. But I still do both. As you know, television has changed a lot, especially post-COVID. And so I'm very happy in New York writing my plays and musicals.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
It's an honor to talk to you all. I love that living single. I mean, it's still as popular as it was. Yes. And it's crazy, isn't it? Okay, so Erica, you know this. Erica came to see one of my shows on Broadway. The cast went nuts. Bananas. Bananas. Bananas. The generations are re-watching this show and relating to it. And there's a lot of power in that.
ReLiving Single
No Lie featuring Robert Horn
It's human work. Every day I thank Yvette for giving us the opportunity to be a part of this family. Thank you.