AMERICAN AUTO: Ana Gasteyer Previews Payne Motors’ ‘Race to the Finish’ to Save Katherine’s Job

It’s “Judgement Day” on AMERICAN AUTO, as the April 18 season 2 finale finds the Payne Motors employees desperately trying to raise the stock price to save Katherine’s (Ana Gasteyer) job.

“There’s been a clock set since the premiere, since Katherine said, ‘I won’t step down, I won’t take the money,’ which [was] made very clear in season 1 is my top priority,” Gasteyer tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “And shocking, shocking—shocker among all shocks—’I will actually put my neck on the line for my team to save their jobs. I will remind them of that as often as possible, but I will stick it out,’ and we will have this entire season arc where we are racing the six-month clock [to raise the value of the company].”

With the deadline down to the final day, “there is a legitimate race to the finish….she knows that there’s no love lost there,” Gasteyer acknowledges. “The board can’t stand her at this point. No one’s going to give her any grace or extra room. She’s going to have to really pull a rabbit out of a hat—and it turns out that she pulls a Pika out of the hat.”

As the team tries to showcase their (very) affordable car, things take a turn…through no fault of their own.

“It’s so relevant and so funny and [creator] Justin [Spitzer] does such a good job, always, of accidentally hitting upon something deeply topical,” Gasteyer says. “And this year…you really do see the vicissitudes of the most minor, unforeseen circumstance causing disaster in the international stock market.”

“So you can do whatever you can within the world of Payne and then, you know, along comes a typhoon just to really distract the matter—some act of God that you can’t get away from,” she continues. “And the funny thing is, again, bookending-wise, our premiere [massive wildfire, which was caused by a car malfunction] really was an act of God, as well…we end with yet another biblical event against us.”

For Katherine, however, it’s been a tough year in all elements of her life—not only has she been fighting to keep her job, but she and her husband split.

“This is a person whose work matters 80 percent and her marriage mattered 20 percent,” Gasteyer says. “She definitely is characterized by her success, by her public image…and as Justin has said, over and over and over again, yes, we are making fun of some real out-of-control buffoons in the C-suite. But at the same time, she didn’t get there by accident. She was the CEO, for a long time, of a big pharmaceutical company. She didn’t come from nowhere. She has her MBA….so she’s not a total dodo.”

“She’s just in over her head, and she’s in an industry that she doesn’t understand,” she continues. “And she’s also, frankly, had a lot of misfortune. There’s been some uncomfortable turns of events. I think the stakes are very, very high for her, oddly, personally, around losing her job—that would be the most humiliating thing that could happen to her.”

Watch the video for more from Gasteyer…

AMERICAN AUTO, Tuesdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC

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