[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Happy’s Place Season 1, Episode 7, “Ho-Ho-Howey.”]
Happy’s Place made way for a very special guest star in the latest episode, appropriately titled, “Ho-Ho-Howey,” which saw Steve Howey reunite with his Reba costars as Danny, a business owner in search of a holiday party venue.
An acquaintance of Gabby’s (Melissa Peterman) from the dog park (despite her not having a pup), Danny drops in to check out the space, which Bobbie (Reba McEntire) is desperate to rent out after a last-minute dropout that was going to cover the staff’s health insurance fees. The only catch? Gabby lied to Danny about who she was, claiming she was Bobby, which leads to a rather interesting game of pretend as the staff plays different roles in the ruse.
Ultimately, Danny knows they’re lying but still wants to move forward with hosting his company’s party there. As fans of Reba know, Howey played alongside McEntire and Peterman for years as Van on the comedy. Below, Howey opens up about the mini Reba reunion, reveals what it was like to play a bar patron instead of the bartender as he did for years as Kevin Ball on Shameless, and much more.
Casey Durkin / NBC
How did this guest role and mini Reba reunion come about?
Steve Howey: Kevin Abbott, the showrunner for Reba, who’s now doing Happy’s Place, reached out to me and said, “I have this idea for this character and want to know if you want to come play with us.” And I was like, “Are you kidding? Absolutely.” It just made sense. It wasn’t anything that made me feel uncomfortable or weird, and it wasn’t Van, [my character from Reba].
I liked that. This was an opportunity to reacquaint with some people that I adore that I grew up with, Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman. I’ve always said that Reba has the Midas touch. [She’s] an amazing person, and a mentor for me. So [when] Kevin asked me to come on, I was like, “Dude, are you kidding? Tell me when.”
Did it feel extra special and festive since it was the holiday episode?
It was. I mean, they decorated the set. It’s the Christmas holiday episode and also we didn’t know this at the time, but when we shot [the episode], at the very end we sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and NBC’s airing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a lead-in to Happy’s Place. So what kind of amazing Christmas kismet.
Related‘Happy’s Place’: See Steve Howey Reunite With ‘Reba’ Costars Behind the Scenes
Danny mentions that the crew of Happy’s Place reminds him of a family from Houston. Is it fun to add little nods to Reba fans like that?
I loved it when I read that in the script. It was in the first draft and went straight into tape night, and I love that wink and nod because obviously, people are new and have never seen Reba. But some people have heard of the show or have seen it once or twice. Then there’s the diehard fans who love the star Reba and then love the show. There’s a lot of people who have grown up with us. The cast gets a lot of fan mail and requests and we talk to people who tell us that was the one show that got me through some tough times or it was the one show that my whole family would get together and we never got to spend time together. We all have these stories. So yeah, coming back and giving that nod to the fans was special for me. Hopefully, it’ll be special for them, too.
Did you have any say in Danny as a character?
Everybody was very responsive. I came up with the joke in the beginning about Reba kind of digging on me about the mustache. So she liked that, she kept that. [But] no, I was just trying to find the groove and the reality in the guy of, how do you show that he knows what’s going on and at the same time, not giving it away? I didn’t want to indicate that he knew Gabby was lying, Bobbie was lying, and the rest of the staff were lying. I wanted it to look like it was an organic discovery. I was more focused on the subtleties and showing the inner life in subtle ways of what my character was thinking.
But there are some moments there that are Van [from Reba] because Van is a lot like me. That’s inevitable. Every actor plays themselves in a lot of different ways. Danny’s different in where he comes from and how he’s a business owner that owns a business [that manufactures and] distributes the cone of shame for dogs and the relationship that he has with Gabby. So I wanted him to be funny but also sincere.
Did it feel strange playing a patron after being the bartender for so many years on Shameless?
No. The Alibi is a completely different vibe. I seem to always be in bars, don’t I?
Happy’s Place, Fridays, 8/7c, NBC
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