SUBURGATORY: Jeremy Sisto on George’s One-Night Stand, Tessa Growing Up, Reuniting with Alicia Silverstone, and the Season Finale

SUBURGATORY’s George has never handled the thought of his daughter growing up well — case in point, when he feared she was having sex in the show’s first episode, he moved them to the suburbs — but if you mix some of those old suspicions in with some good-natured ribbing from his pal Noah, things are bound to explode.

To try and get some details about what’s going down, Jeremy Sisto (George) was kind enough to hop on the phone with me to tease that, his reunion with CLUELESS costar Alicia Silverstone, and what fans can expect from the season finale…

So it seems George is going to freak out again over the thought of his daughter having sex. What can you tease about tonight’s episode?
JS: Eventually, I imagine, he’s going to have to accept it, but that’s quite a bit a way. Quite away from where he is at this point. He reacts in the same way he reacted in Manhattan — he basically avoided any kind of real progress in his reaction by uprooting them and moving them to the suburbs. So it’s kind of like he’s denying any kind of real acceptance of that, and the same level of unconscious, repulsed by the whole concept of it. And [since he’s] unable to think like an adult, he starts acting out in ways that are desperate and silly from an outsiders’ point of view. And from his own view, later, I’m sure he’ll look back on these times and hopefully be able to laugh at himself. But he has no ability to stay distant to the situation and have some kind of self-awareness. That goes out the window. So it’s really funny stuff.

And then his manhood gets called into question by his friend, Noah, and ends up having a sexual encounter with someone he was not expecting at all. Some really, really fun stuff happens in that episode, and it’s also a good episode to tune in if you haven’t tuned in to the show, because it centers around this core relationship of the show, between George and Tessa. The father-daughter thing that is in the initial heart of the show. And while I’m so glad there’s all this other stuff which is so awesome, if you haven’t tuned in [before], it’s nice to start with a show like this. An episode like this that has the core relationship focused on.

George has a one-night stand the same episode he’s giving his daughter grief about having a form of birth control in her possession? Is she going to call him out on his hypocritical behavior?
JS: Oh yes. Yep. You’ll see the episode — I haven’t seen it yet — but it was kind of one of those days where you are running around chasing your tail trying to disprove or prove something and you don’t even have a moment to think because you’re too busy doing. I think at the end of the day, he’s so exhausted by it all, he kind of realizes how far he’s gone. And that’s the beauty of their relationship — at the end of the day, they’re usually able to reconnect and call each other out on who’s being a jackass and who is in the wrong, while at the same time, being aware that they have issues that are unable to be resolved unless one person accepts that his daughter is going to grow up. [Laughs]

He can’t uproot the family every time he thinks his daughter is about to have sex. It would be quite expensive, I’d imagine.
JS: Exactly! [Laughs] when something happens and you have this big action to react to it, it’s really just a way to not actually deal with what happened. He hasn’t progressed at all with his feelings towards this. His impulse is just to act, react and just get it out of his world. And eventually, I’d imagine, he’s going to have to come to terms with the concept of his child growing up, but it doesn’t happen in this episode.

And of course your former CLUELESS costar Alicia Silverstone will be appearing on the show later this season. How has that reunion been?
JS: It’s been great. We were good friends back then and lost touch a decade ago. So it’s been pretty interesting to reconnect with someone like that and just share our experiences. After CLUELESS, she had such a whirlwind of a life, with all this attention and we were both very young, so it was nice to just go through our war stories.  I think it will be really satisfying for people who love CLUELESS and people who saw HIDEAWAY. I think it will be a very satisfying relationship [for the audience], because it is for us.

Will there be any winks to your previous jobs together or are you wiping the slate clean?
JS: Oh, there are some winks, yes.

Anything you can tease?
JS: I think the winks are more lines here and there that echo our earlier stuff together. But the actual relationship itself is its own thing. She plays a unique, goofy character that she’s great at. And her entrance into the show creates a lot of conflict for the characters that are there. And a lot of…it’s some good stuff. From a CLUELESS fan outlook, I feel like they used the fact that we had this history together in building how they built this [SUBURGATORY] relationship. There’s almost this sense of being really comfortable around each other, like to someone you’ve met before. I feel like they were able to skip some steps in the relationship because we were able to feel like we’ve known each other before. I think it’s an interesting choice the writers made and I’m excited to see it.

I know you guys just recently had your last table read of the season. What can you tease about what you read there?
JS: Well, it’s a pretty wacky episode. I guess there’s stuff going on that I’m not allowed to say, but the ultimate end is that there — I will say it ends on Mother’s Day, and Mother’s Day in Chatswin is a huge event. And Tessa obviously not having a mother, that issue is really — it reemerges in a way that makes me really want to see what happens next season. [Laughs] But the episode itself is pretty, it’s a pretty all around wacky, crazy one. Usually when you do the table read, the next day there’s a whole other draft, so I don’t know what it’s going to be, but it has a lot to offer and it has a poignant ending that I think is great. It’s a unique show, to me, from the half-hours that I do watch, there’s really nothing that I watch that’s like it. To have a real heart and character arcs that change over the whole season, and to have a story. I think that’s kind of rare in this kind of medium. And I think Emily [Kapnek], our creator, and the other writers are doing a really great job at balancing the funny and the sincere. And I like being on the show.

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SUBURGATORY airs Wednesday nights at 8:30 PM on ABC.

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