Garret Dillahunt's Return to TV Comedy With 'Sprung' Includes a 'Raising Hope' Reunion and Redemption Arc

After Garret Dillahunt starred in 88 episodes of creator and showrunner Greg Garcia's family sitcom Raising Hope from 2010 to 2014 and then recurred in almost a dozen episodes of Garcia's anthology comedy The Guest Book from 2017 to 2018 (with a stint on The Mindy Project in between), all it took for him to return to television comedy was to not be "having a ton of fun on a job I was doing."

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic when Dillahunt also considered that he wasn't "a young many anymore," the actor tells Metacritic. "I think when those things combine, you start thinking, 'Wait a second, if I'm going to do this, I don't have time to not be having fun."

Dillahunt began thinking about everyone "working their asses off out there, just trying to survive and keep their kids sane and educated" and began to wonder what "small thing" he could do that would help and who he could do it with. Garcia immediately sprang into his mind and became his first call.

"I don't want to sing 'Imagine,'" he recalls thinking, "but I want to make people smile for a second."

The result is Sprung, a 10-episode comedy from Garcia, who writes, executive produces, and directs, and Dillahunt, who stars and executive produces (the latter for the first time). The show centers on Dillahunt's character Jack, a man who was serving the mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years for a drug charge when he gets released four years early at the start of the pandemic outbreak in the U.S. With cities under stay-at-home orders and with nowhere to go, Jack crashes with his cellmate Rooster (Phillip Garcia) and Rooster's mother Barb (Martha Plimpton). Complicating matters is Gloria (Shakira Barrera), a female prisoner who lived in the cell below his and who he talked to through the toilet, but who he lied to about his age, looks, and a whole lot of other things — and who is also crashing at Barb's house. Additionally, Barb wants her new roommates to become her crew for new crimes, in order to earn their stay.

"For some reason, I'm always drawn to themes of shame and redemption. I don't know what that says about me, but some of my most rewarding experiences have been playing people who are trying to make up for something they've done, or are just trying to change or forgive themselves and move along," Dillahunt says.

Jack fits that bill as a man who didn't follow the law at the time but never hurt anyone either. "He's not blameless," Dillahunt admits. "And he has to deal with that [in the show]. But he didn't ever plan on doing any crime [and] he never felt like a criminal in the first place. I have a line in the first episode where I say, 'That's just not my vibe.' And it's true. He was just a kid selling some weed [and] he probably liked to smoke a little weed."

The consequences came down hard for Jack, and while he was in prison he cut himself off from his family out of the feelings of shame Dillahunt talks about. As the season unfolds, he will have to confront those feelings, as well as people from his past, while also striving to move forward. But that all is easier said than done, especially because the dream Jack worked toward while in prison — becoming a teacher — is not one he can achieve with a felony drug conviction on his record (something Dillahunt points out no one ever warned Jack about).

So, when Barb needs him to be a part of a toilet paper robbery (it is still early pandemic days in Sprung, remember), he not only agrees, but also, he uses the knowledge he gained while in prison — knowledge that will be shown via flashbacks to his time inside — to level up their jobs.

"As awful as prison, I'm sure, was for Jack, he seems he seems pretty good at it. He seems to know how to survive, but it's not like he leads a gang or something or he's in with the white supremacists. He seems to be able to maintain a level headedness there; he didn't lose himself or become a monster somehow," Dillahunt says

"But then, when he can find no other way to survive, he justifies the real crimes they do by only robbing people who are doing harm to others and then with his winnings, he does a little Robin Hood, I think, to ease his guilt," Dillahunt continues.

The show may start out seeming like a robbery of the week, but it soon turns into a much more elaborate serialized caper that involves a corrupt politician (played by Kate Walsh) trying to get rich off the COVID-19 vaccine.

Although the last four years of Dillahunt's career have been more focused on dramatic work across screens big and small — from playing John Dorie on Fear the Walking Dead, to Captain Monroe in Ambulance, Pa in the Where the Crawdads Sing adaptation, and appearing next in Blonde — he believes comedy is "how people survive" hardships, so he was excited to get back to some lighter fare and play in a world that he describes as "lovingly odd" and is inspired in places by Coen Brothers films, especially Raising Arizona. (Look for homages to that movie in the premiere episode, Dillahunt previews.)

He was also excited to reunite not only with Garcia, but also with Plimpton, who played his TV wife for four seasons on Raising Hope and who he has wanted to work with again (and almost did, he shares, when she called him about Mass), but was concerned it could be "too meta."

"We both were concerned that if I play her husband in that it's just going to be Burt and Virginia again," Dillahunt says of that 2021 film.

In some ways, concerns about similarities could have crept into Sprung, as, like Raising Hope, the ensemble comedy centers working-class characters who don't have a lot of money but do have a lot of love. That is a specialty of Garcia's, Dillahunt is quick to give credit, saying, "Sometimes it feels like those are the happiest homes and a lot of ways. People communicate with each other, or to survive you help each other. It's a challenge, but there's so much reward in that challenge. A lot of it is has to do with family, whether that is your actual family or your created family, your chosen family. A lot of people don't have blood relatives anymore, but you have this circle of friends that keep you sane and keep you laughing and pick you up when you're down. It's a necessary part of life, I think more and more now, and that's something Greg's really skilled at."

Again, what made the difference was the desire to just not waste any time, settle, or compromise a vision.

"Ultimately, I finally thought, 'I love working with this person. I almost trust no one more than I've ever worked with. Let's let's never do that again; let's just work together when we want to work together.' She's good enough that she's not playing Virginia [in Sprung]. She's completely different, I think our relationship is completely different and, and something we're both good at, I think, is is inhabiting the characters we're playing," Dillahunt explains.

In addition to inhabiting Jack, though, Dillahunt pulled double duty as an executive producer. The series shot all 10 episodes at once, cross-boarding and shooting out a location, even if it meant going from a scene in the first episode to a scene in the eighth episode and then a scene in the middle of the season, all in one production day. That is a lot of continuity for an actor to keep straight when it comes to a character's emotional arc (even before you consider the flashback scenes), but on top of that, Dillahunt was watching and sending in notes on dailies, listening to and suggesting music to consider, and more. The veteran performer stepped behind the camera before (to direct an episode of Raising Hope in 2014), but Sprung brought him to a whole other level.

Thankfully, even though it was more work and responsibility, it was also more fun.

Sprung is

Get to know Garret Dillahunt:
With almost three decades worth of film and television credits to his name, Dillahunt is best known in most circles for his television work on Justified (Metascore: 86), Deadwood (85), the aforementioned Raising Hope (76) and Fear the Walking Dead (63), and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (73). However, some of his most memorable films are 12 Years a Slave (Metascore: 96), No Country for Old Men (92), and Widows (84).