Under its recent regime change, TBS has refocused its efforts on comedy with Angie Tribeca leading the way. On June 14, Wrecked, an irreverent comedy from Jordan and Justin Shipley about a group of plane crash survivors, continues that groove.

I talked with star Zach Cregger (Whitest Kids U Know) about TBS’ new direction, debunking those Lost comparisons and Redditing on the toilet.

Are you an aisle or window person? Or the only human who prefers the middle seat?

Oh my god, what kind of psycho would say the middle seat? Nobody says the middle seat.

I’m going window. I like to hunker down and be in my own universe. I look out the window, lean against the wall, turn my brain off. If I have to get up once and bother people to pee, so be it. Where are you?

I’m with you. I don’t want to be bothered. I’d rather not have to get up.

Anything you can do on a plane to dilute the fact that you’re on a plane, go for it.

What does that entail? TV, music, books?

God forbid I should sit with the silence of my own thoughts for a second.

Don’t do that.

That’s how I operate. I gotta be fully entertained and distracted at all times. That goes beyond planes though. I can’t even go to the bathroom without my iPad.

What are you watching on the iPad?

On the toilet it’s always Reddit. I got all my different subreddits that I go through and tackle that. It doesn’t even matter. That’s the really depressing thing. I don’t even care if I’m looking at something that’s good or bad as long as it’s just something, as long as I’m not thinking…I feel like it’s not just me. We’re all addicted to distractions. I’m looking at mundane, totally meaningless stuff that I won’t even remember the second I put my iPad down.

My memory has gotten way worse.

For sure. I don’t know if that’s a product of getting older, or if it’s a direct result of my constant information barrage. I’m in my mid-30’s, I’ve never been in my mid-30’s before, for all I know this is how everybody is in their mid-30’s, but I doubt it because my brain turned to mush. I’m getting stupid. It’s true.

What’s the biggest difference from a sketch show to an ensemble comedy?

When you’re doing a sketch that only needs to live for 50 to 90 seconds, the boss of every scene is the joke. It doesn’t matter what my character is. In a long-form series, you certainly do want to serve the joke, but what’s most important is that my character has consistency. It’s one more moving part you take into account.

How much improvisation is there?

I love to improvise. I come from live comedy. I was a stage comedy actor for about 10 years before I started doing television. Improvising and all that shit is my bread and butter. But honestly for Wrecked, I so loved the jokes on the page, that I felt my job was to protect their words and make sure they got presented in the most effective way possible.

I think a lot of shows do what’s written and riff for the remaining takes, and we did that to a degree. Sometimes you’ll do a project where you know the script is weak and you’re gonna to have to improv or it’s going to be bad. This was not the case.

I love that every episode’s synopsis features the tagline: “In addition, the island makes a discovery that could change everything.” What’s your favorite discovery of the season?

I gotta be careful because I don’t want to get into spoiler territory here, but I’m going to because it’s so good. Near the end of the season, a character that we met at the beginning, who is gone, and I’m not talking about James Scott ladies, keep it in your pants, comes back and is transformed near the end of the show. It is dark and really funny. It’s my favorite episode, and involves cannibalism and dementia. I’ll leave it at that.

Wrecked is clearly a product of Kevin Reilly’s bold new direction for TBS. What’s it been like at the network?

I didn’t realize there was a new regime over there. They gave me the script: you gotta read this, it’s really funny. I heard it was for TBS and I was like, no thank you. I had negative associations. Not negative associations, I just wasn’t the demographic for the TBS programming of the past.

Then I read the script and was like, oh my god, this is amazing. But could a show like this be on TBS? Is it going to have to go through the TBS machine and turn into something bad? I went over and met with everybody over there and it was immediately obvious it was a new deal. I’m happy to say the network is completely changed. All you have to do is look at the new lineup of shows. It’s cool, darker. They get great people: I’m a huge Michael Showalter fan. For a network to appreciate artists like Michael or the Shipleys, it shows it’s a new deal. I never thought I would say that I’m proud to be part of TBS, but I’m so pumped. I really am. That’s not just me being a little corporate shill.

What’s your stranded-on-an-island movie, book or TV show?

Part of me thinks I should bring a book I haven’t read before, because you need an adventure. Who wants to read a book they’ve already read? I also don’t want to sound like a pretentious dick but part of me wants to say Infinite Jest, because I love David Foster Wallace and the book is over 1,000 pages long and it’s funny, cool and has everything. But who wants to talk about Infinite Jest in an interview? You’re going to sound horrible. But it would take me a solid year to read that book. That would be one year down.

It’s one of those books I’ve had for years and still have yet to read it.

I read 700 pages of it about two years ago and loved it. Absolutely loved it. And then put it down. You ever do that? You just put a book down and have every intention of picking it back up and somehow a year goes by and you haven’t. I still think about starting that book over again.

I have a pile of those beside my bed.

There’s no shame in that. I used to have a lot of guilt. I was looking at my bookshelf and I’d go, wow about 50 percent of these books I’ve read three-quarters or one-quarter of. Then sometimes you read that one book you devour because it’s so good. That’s what I should be doing: waiting to find those books. If I have to kiss a bunch of toads, that’s okay. I’d rather burn through 50 books to get to that one, than drudge through ten. I don’t feel any guilt about that anymore.

I still hold that guilt.

Let it go dude. Life’s too short.

If there’s one takeaway from Wrecked, what would it be?

A lot of people, and I fell into this camp before I read the script, we’re like, it’s a spoof on Lost. It’s not. I didn’t watch Lost. I don’t care about Lost. You don’t need to like Lost or give a shit about Lost for Wrecked to be a show you love. Think of Wrecked as Lord of the Flies, but instead of kids, it’s morons.

Follow those morons over to TBS June 14 at 10/9c.

[All images courtesy of TBS]

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