-Today we're talking about chapters 27 and 28,

the season three premier "Everything is Bonzer!"

Directed by Dean Holland, written by Jen Statsky,

including guest cast Andrew Bering,

Dominic Burgess, Matthew Foster, Keston John, Mike O'Malley,

Lisandra Tena, Jama Williamson, Harvey Guillen,

Josh Siegal, Eugene Cordero, and Adam Scott.

Michael goes to Earth to save the four humans

from their various accidental deaths.

We see the last year in each of their lives

between their near-death

and Michael illegally giving them a second nudge.

Chidi asks a neuroscience professor,

Simone, to study his brain

and agrees to help Eleanor become a better person.

Eleanor inspires Chidi to start a cross-departmental study

on the effects of near-death experiences

on ethical decision-making.

Tahani's near-miss with sister's statue causes her

to travel to a Tibetan monastery

to shed her desire for attention.

She backslides, writing a book about the trip,

and creating a lifestyle brand,

until Michael shows up as a hippie investor

who loves her scam, which prompts Tahani

to accept Chidi's invitation for his study.

Michael saves Jason from the safe,

inspiring Jason to attempt a series of dance competitions

with his 60-person dance crew.

He ultimately goes back to a life of petty crime

until Michael poses as a talent scout

and nudges Jason to join the study.

Meanwhile in the Bad Place, Shawn and his demons

hack the Judge's system

to see if the humans are getting better,

and they realize Michael has also been cheating.

Just when Michael and Janet think they've gotten the four

together without the Judge catching them,

they realize that a demon, Trevor,

has infiltrated the group.

My guests today are cowriter of the episode Jen Statsky

and Jameela Jamil, who plays Tahani.

Jameela and Jen, welcome.

"Everything is Bonzer!"?

-Hi. -Well done.

That was quite a read.

-Thank you. -Really impressive.

-Do you need to lie down? You all right?

You need a hug? -Yeah, I need a little break.

Let's talk about general things to begin.

-Sure. -First of all,

did you have this experience? I had this experience.

I missed these people. -Yeah, no.

-Did you feel that at all?

-Yeah, I felt very emotional watching it again.

-Yeah. -I watched it on the way over

and felt real sadness.

-You watched it while you were driving.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah. -You had it on your dashboard,

one eye on the road, one eye on --

-Exactly. -I live on the edge, people.

I was being driven, obviously.

[ Laughter ]

-I love how you do stuff like that,

and you still insist any time I bring up, like,

not a lot of blue sky between Tahani and Jameela,

you're like, "How dare you?"

-No, I don't mind how dare I, I just think if I -- You know,

I haven't brushed my teeth in like two days.

I feel like there's just like, "Don't look, but it's bad."

You know, I don't bathe regularly, I'm uncouth.

-You can't say that and then say, "Don't look," right?

-I'm disgusting. -That's an invitation.

-Yeah, it's tough.

It's a tough -- -And so, I aspire

to actually be more like Tahani, 'cause I feel like

it would be a more hygienic and healthy life.

-Mm-hmm. Anyway, these characters, you missed them.

-Yeah, I miss these characters.

So glad I talked about brushing my teeth.

I really did.

And, also, this season, we are much more separated,

especially in this episode.

There's so much that I didn't get to see.

-Right, I was gonna ask you about this.

-And so, it really felt like I was just watching it as a fan.

And I was giggling and clapping, and, like...

-Yeah. -...I had my hands, like,

clasped around my mouth.

Is that the right word? Yeah. That's fine.

And I -- it was just a very emotional experience.

I feel so proud of this season.

I'm so excited for everyone to see it.

-I can't imagine how fans of the show that don't work on it

must feel, because I miss them,

and I've read lots of these scripts.

-Totally. -And I've been on set

for lots of it.

We wrapped a month, month and a half ago,

something, like, not that long ago.

-Yeah, end of July, yeah. -But watching this episode,

I legitimately find myself thrilled to find out

what happens with these folks and get back to it.

-Yeah, and it's so funny that you say that because --

I was on -- I mean, obviously I wrote it,

but I was also on set, so seeing stuff shot.

But then, yeah, you guys were kind of siphoned off, you know?

-Mm-hmm. -So abstract.

-Very much so on your own story.

You have, like, a scene with Ted,

but so all the other people,

you didn't really get to see what was happening with them.

So, yeah, that's kind of cool that, as a fan, you were like,

"Oh, wow, Jason's doing an insane dance."

-Even having read the scripts, you want to see

which takes that they used and how it turned out. -Totally, yeah.

-I can remember being in a table read

about halfway through season two,

and Morgan Sackett, the executive producer,

one of the executive producers, had his sort of Mona Lisa smile.

This one was particularly wry, and I was like, "What's up?"

And he said, "Do you want me to tell you?"

And I said yes. And he said,

"If there's a season three, it happens on Earth."

When did you guys begin discussing that,

how did that come up?

-Man, that's a great question.

We definitely knew, again, like Morgan

saying it then, we knew pretty early on in sea--

like, when we were trying to figure out season two,

where we were gonna go and what was gonna happen,

at some point very early on in talking about season two,

the idea of going back to Earth came up.

-Mm-hmm. -And I remember specifically

one day, Mike being like, "I'm so excited about them

going back to Earth, I just want to get to that."

Like, we knew that that was kind of at the end of the runway

and there was still, obviously, so much

to deal with in season two.

But we definitely, pretty early on,

had that morsel of an idea, of, like,

"Wait, what if they went back?" -Right.

-And so, it's been in the works for a long time.

So it's very satisfying to see it finally happen.

-Jameela, when was it first presented to you?

-I really actually just found out today.

-Oh, God. -The whole time,

I didn't understand what was going on. -You're not really

paying attention to the scripts, are you?

-I think we found out just before.

I think there was a muttering of it the year before,

but, really, about three weeks

before we turned up to start filming,

Mike sat each of us down and broke down the whole kind of --

in a two-hour speech that he gave individually to all of us.

-Right.

-He broke down the entire season.

So this time, it was the exact opposite of season one,

where we weren't told anything,

including our names, our characters,

whether or not we would be fully nude for the whole season.

Nobody knew. -Were you disappointed?

-I was so sad.

'Cause, as you know, I'm just big on...

big on getting this body out.

But, yeah, season three,

we knew exactly what was going to happen.

It was really, really exciting.

And such a new experience to be out and about in the world.

-Now, in order to record this podcast today,

the episode doesn't drop until the 27th,

so we're about two weeks before that.

In previous seasons, have you ever had

advanced screeners of the episodes,

or do you watch them on television like a normal human?

-No, I watch them on television.

Sometimes we get -- I think we're given them

a couple of hours before the episode runs

so that we know how to live-Tweet along

so we know what's coming. -Oh, very good. Okay.

-But I don't like to do that,

so I just watch it with everyone else.

In fact, season one I didn't watch at all.

-Really? -Yeah.

Not until the very, very, very end.

So I would just read other people's Tweets,

about what they were talking about,

sort of copy and paste those onto my own Twitter,

'cause I was just mortified.

-Were you not watching 'cause you were like,

"I can't watch myself?" -No, yeah.

I can't watch myself destroy Mike Schur's comedy.

And then when I heard it had gone okay

and I hadn't been fired,

I then watched season one just before season two.

-Jen, were there any changes in the writers' room

between these seasons?

-Yes, we -- between season two and three, yes.

We added a couple people.

We added Kassia -- writer-wise you mean? -Yes.

-Yeah, we added a really great writer named Kassia Miller.

She had been on "Last Man on Earth."

-Oh, great. -Great show.

And also, like, really cool in that both,

I think something we share with --

or shared with -- "Last Man on Earth,"

it's unfortunately not on the air anymore,

is, like, a kind of like a show, a comedy,

a network comedy that is a cliffhanger show.

-Yeah. -Like, really, plot and story

is such a big part of the DNA of both of those shows.

So Kassia's great.

She's super funny and smart and great.

And then a stand-up named Rae Sanni.

She came, yeah, from the stand-up world.

She had written on

"The President Show" back in New York.

-Oh, great, yeah. -Yeah, which is great.

And so, yeah, it was --

This was, I think, our biggest writers' room year.

I think we had like 13 or 14 people.

I remember you coming up and just being mortified

at how many disgusting writer bodies

were crammed into a small room.

-That is not the nature of my disgust.

-I read your face, I read your face.

I knew what it was. -No, it was --

-Do you have resting disgust face?

-I have resting "I'm not welcome in this room" face.

-Oh. -That's how I enter a room.

-Are you English? -I'm Scottish.

-That's such an English trait. Okay, sure.

-Yeah, yeah. That's what you were reading.

-Okay, got it, got it. -Not that there were so many --

And I felt like I was interrupting,

'cause Mike was like, "Oh, here's Marc.

Let me briefly tell him

what we have until episode 11 of season three."

-Right, yeah.

-So it was simultaneously a ton of information, and also,

I felt like I was not invited to this dinner.

-You're always invited.

-And I'm not gonna eat the soup until I do it.

-Both of you, always invited.

-Let's get into the episode a little bit.

We open on this mysterious, weird bridge,

the out-est outskirt of the nether realms of the afterlife.