Pitch Perfect’s Skylar Astin Is Joining ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ in an Unexpected Role
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s fourth and final season will premiere on The CW this fall, and when it does, it’ll feature a familiar face in a familiar role. During the Television Critics Association press tour on August 6, Aline Brosh McKenna announced that Pitch Perfect star Skylar Astin would be joining The CW comedy as Greg Serrano. Yes, that Greg Serrano.
The actor — who played Treblemaker Jesse Swanson in the first two Pitch Perfect movies — is taking over the role of Greg from Santino Fontana, who exited the show halfway through the second season. Greg, as fans know all too well, was a potential love interest for Rebecca Bunch (played by Rachel Bloom) until he decided to leave West Covina to attend Emory University.
According to series co-creators Bloom and Brosh McKenna, however, this isn’t a recasting of the role, but a “reimagining.”
“Rachel and I had always been exploring [how to] bring back that character,” Brosh McKenna said, according to E! News. Bloom added that the casting switch would be addressed, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “It will be a great statement on how our perception of people changes. … It’ll have been two years since Rebecca’s seen him.”
Greg’s return to the story coincides with the beginning of the end of the series, which, according to Bloom, was always meant to be four parts. “We’ve always imagined the series as four chapters,” she told Entertainment Tonight in April 2017. “It’s a finite story and so that deadline is coming to a close.”
She also explained to The Hollywood Reporter in April 2018 that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is “a show about a very specific journey in a person’s life. And it’s not really a sitcom meant to spit out copies of itself.” She added, “Very early on, we called it a 50-hour movie. I think we’re beyond that now. There’s always going to be plot movement, so there’s only so far I think you can go with that. It could be five, but I think around four would be ideal for us creatively.”
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend returns to The CW on October 12 at 9pm ET/PT.
What do you think about this “reimagining” of Greg with Skylar Astin? Let us know @BritandCo!
(photos via Greg Gayne/The CW + Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
