Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey, and creators Robert Carlock and Sam Means — along with Daniel Radcliffe — talk reuniting for their NBC football series.

Touchdown dance: How the 30 Rock team drafted new wacky comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins

Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey, and creators Robert Carlock and Sam Means — along with Daniel Radcliffe — talk reuniting for their NBC football series.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

EW's editorial guidelines

December 16, 2025 12:00 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

"Get up and shake your stinkin' ass, baby!"**** When Tracy Morgan tells you to dance, it's hard to say no. Even on this blisteringly cold November morning in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, the Emmy-nominated actor and stand-up comedy legend is determined to heat up *'*s cover shoot for his new NBC series *The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins*. He's curated the '70s disco hits blaring out of the portable speaker for maximum groovy vibes. In between takes — and sometimes even during them — he swivels his hips, raises his arms, and bops his head along to the beat.

"Don't try and tell me you don't like this music. I know you feel this music," Morgan tells the EW staff assembled on set as the chorus of C.J. & Co.'s "We Got Our Own Thing" hits a crescendo.

Morgan's new football comedy series *The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins* (premiering Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. ET/PT) wrapped filming on the season 1 finale the night before, so he and his costars Daniel Radcliffe, Erika Alexander, and Bobby Moynihan's spirits are already high as they celebrate during this cover shoot. That said, this could have also just been a random Tuesday during production, since Morgan turned that set into an impromptu dance party every single day. EW witnessed it firsthand two weeks earlier when Morgan arrived to the Yonkers, N.Y., soundstage playing upbeat tunes despite the early morning call time.

"Tracy's always walking around with that damn speaker," *Living Single* alum Alexander says with a smile during a rare quiet moment. "It'd be 7 o'clock in the morning and we're jamming, and it felt good."

Tracy Morgan as Reggie Dinkins and Daniel Radcliffe as Arthur Tobin on 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins'.

Scott Gries/NBC

There's a method to his madness. Series co-creator Robert Carlock, who previously worked with Morgan on *Saturday Night Live *and* 30 Rock,* laughs in disbelief as he remembers how Morgan would somehow plan his arrival on the *Reggie Dinkins* set blasting Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" at *just* the right moment in the song.

"He timed it so that the drum solo happened as he landed, and the whole crew was just dancing and singing along," Carlock says. "And that was the start of the day! It was fantastic."

From Morgan's sheer, uncontained joy in between takes to his constant dance parties, it feels like he's been waiting for this moment all his life. And in a way he has, because, as he explains, "this *is* my life."

'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins' star Tracy Morgan photographed exclusively for EW.

*The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins *is a massive family reunion, after all. Originally titled *The Untitled Tracy Morgan Project, *the new series brings back the team behind *30 Rock*: Carlock, co-creator Sam Means, and executive producer Tina Fey all collaborating with Morgan once again for another wacky NBC sitcom. But it goes even deeper for Morgan, since he's a former high school football star (and current sports megafan) finally getting to play a professional athlete.

"This character is really funny, was a jock, and only means well — it’s literally Tracy," Carlock says.

There are key differences, however. Morgan plays the titular disgraced NFL superstar, who was banned for life from the league after accidentally revealing he bet on his own New York Jets games, resulting in the team's downfall. Reggie hires award-winning filmmaker Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to move into his home and make a documentary about his life and career in the hopes it will win back the respect of his fans, peers, and family — and ultimately help him achieve the impossible dream of getting into the Hall of Fame. But he'll have to own up to his past mistakes first.

Tracy Morgan as Reggie Dinkins and Jalyn Hall as Carmelo on 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins'.

Scott Gries/NBC

"Reggie's backstory is he let the Jets down, and that is a real psychic wound felt by the whole city," Means says. "That’s why he's pulled back from the world when we start the show, because people really feel deeply about these things and aren't happy with him."

While Morgan doesn't share his character's love for the Jets (he's an enthusiastic Giants fan), he does relate to Reggie's desire to fix his reputation to benefit everyone in his life: Monica (Alexander), his ex-wife who still works as his agent and business manager; Rusty (*SNL* alum Moynihan), his former Jets teammate who stayed loyal to a fault after the scandal; Brina (*Days of Our Lives*’* *Precious Way), his supportive, ambitious, much younger fiancée; and especially Carmelo (*Till'*s Jalyn Hall), his teen son forced to grow up in his shadow.

'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins' stars Daniel Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan photographed exclusively for EW.

"This show is all about legacy," Morgan explains. "Because that's all you got. That's what you leave your children. Hopefully, in real life, I made people laugh and left my children a good legacy that they could build on."

The comedian is also deeply concerned with the legacy he leaves with everyone on a smaller scale every day — for example, the impact he makes on the cast and crew of an NBC comedy show, or even an EW cover shoot.

"All these people left folks that they love behind at home [today] to make me look good, so I've got to not let them down. I owe them. And I owe it to my audience to give them the best that I can."

Morgan believes he's followed this mantra since "day one" of his career, but Fey says that he's become even more dedicated, in a beautiful way, after surviving a fatal truck collision in 2014 that left him critically injured and killed his friend, fellow comedian Jimmy McNair.

Tracy Morgan photographed exclusively for EW.

"Listen, Tracy's literally happy to be alive," Fey says. "And that energy is contagious. He's thrilled to be able to work and make comedy, and he loves everyone around him. Getting to hang out with Tracy between takes, he'll be telling a crazy story, and then the next moment he and I will be embracing and he's in tears about his gratitude for life. He's just such a wonderful presence to be around, and I've really missed him."

In fact, Morgan is the reason this *30 Rock* reunion is even happening in the first place, nearly 13 years after the Emmy-winning comedy ended.

"I didn't want *30 Rock* to be over," he says, explaining that while he loved playing the unpredictable but well-meaning sketch comedy star Tracy Jordan opposite Fey's frazzled head writer Liz Lemon for seven seasons, it was the real-life community of the show he missed even more. So rather than reviving or rebooting *30 Rock*, he went to Fey, Carlock, and Means in January 2024 with the hopes of getting the band back together for a totally new series.

Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe on 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins'.

Scott Gries/NBC

"We literally at one point on *30 Rock* had Tracy read the phone book, and it was just so funny," Carlock says. "We just love writing for him, and we thought building a world around him would be a lot of fun."

They didn’t have to think too hard on what that new world should be, either. They had never created anything centered on sports yet, and Morgan is a passionate sports fan.

Daniel Radcliffe photographed exclusively for EW.

"We've all seen Tracy at Giants games — and famously at Knicks games having eaten the wrong thing.... I don't know if you saw him throwing up on the court last season, which he believes brought them good luck in the playoffs," Carlock says with a laugh. "So many of my conversations with him over the years have been about our shared love of sports, and there's this unending firehose of athlete documentaries, most of them where the athlete himself is a producer, putting out a fluff piece about themselves. It just doesn't stop."

Satirizing the now-oversaturated sports documentary field felt like a great way to explore how Reggie seeks redemption by trying to atone for the mistakes of his past while also struggling to give up full control of the narrative to the actual director.

Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe photographed exclusively for EW.

"That idea of the subject also being a producer of the documentary is such an interesting insight into what you want to present to the world," Means says. "That creates a fun conflict between Reggie and Dan's character, Arthur Tobin, and their dueling perspectives on what should be in the documentary, what should be on camera, and who gets a say."

Radcliffe was always the creators' first — and, essentially, only — choice to play Reggie's exasperated documentary director. They literally wrote the part for the *Harry Potter* alum after working with him on *Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend* and their animated Netflix series *Mulligan*.

Daniel Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan photographed exclusively for EW.

"He's made some wonderfully weird choices in his post-*Potter* career, and I'd like to think this is one of them, doing a sitcom," Carlock says. "But he's a busy guy. He's a national treasure. We just didn't know if he'd be available, but he loved it and stars aligned."

For his part, Radcliffe is shocked to hear that the role of Arthur was written for him, especially since it never came up while working with the creators all season long.

"I didn't know that," he admits. "I guess there's part of me that was like, 'Right, yeah, they wrote a very specific English character with a relationship to major movies and blue screen stuff.' I'm sure if I said no, they would've found somebody brilliant to play it, but I'm very flattered."

Tracy Morgan, Daniel Radcliffe, Erika Alexander, and Bobby Moynihan photographed exclusively for EW.

Once Radcliffe officially signed on, Carlock, Means, and Fey went right to Morgan to deliver the good news.

"That day I found out Daniel Radcliffe was going to be on my show, I knew we got a hit," Morgan says. "Because me and him are from two different worlds. And we had chemistry automatically."

Radcliffe attributes that chemistry to the way he immediately recognized how "paper thin" of a line there is between the real Morgan and his fictional *30 Rock* character, Tracy Jordan — because Radcliffe "grew up" watching the sitcom. Working together, they became so close that Fey recognized Radcliffe's "deep love" for Morgan was reminiscent of her own relationship with him*. *

"When the end of the season came, I sent Dan a note, and I was like, 'You and I now have a shared deep understanding of Tracy Morgan,'" Fey says. "I feel like his character and Liz Lemon have a lot in common in that way."

Reggie and Arthur's relationship, however, will be a lot more tumultuous onscreen than Tracy and Liz's dynamic. Radcliffe teases that Arthur's growing frustrations with Reggie's desire to control the documentary narrative leads the director to do "questionable things" to him and his family on camera, all in the name of his "art."

"He does much worse things than a lot of the characters that I’ve played before," the Tony-winning actor says. "There are a few episodes where I did come up to Robert and be like, 'You are really banking on the idea that people will just like me and forgive me for doing some things.' There's probably a couple moments in the series where I would've kicked me out of that house, but I do get my comeuppance — as I should."

Bobby Moynihan photographed exclusively for EW.

The showrunners mainly looked to Michael Jordan's 2020 docuseries *The Last Dance* for inspiration, not only for Reggie's documentary but also his life and career.

"It's always been the rumor that Jordan was betting on games, and that's why he went and played baseball," Carlock says. "Our pitch was sort of like, 'What if the poster boy for the league was gambling?' And I love that they addressed it in that documentary — I couldn't believe they did — but what if he'd gotten caught? The level of disappointment, betrayal, and everything else we missed out on not having those next five or six years or whatever we had of him was sort of the kernel of the idea."

There was another real-life sports star whose shadow loomed large throughout the making of this show: MLB's infamous legend Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball for life after betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds. (Rose's ban was lifted posthumously in May, eight months after his death at 83.)

Erika Alexander photographed exclusively for EW.

"Pete Rose went to his grave not getting in the Hall of Fame because of gambling, and now we have sports gambling everywhere," Morgan says. "It's a shame that Pete Rose never got in. Like Reggie says in the show, 'I bet on myself to win.' He never bet against his team, and Pete never bet against his team. Pete Rose will never be forgotten. That was my motivation in this show — this is for you, Pete."

Carlock, Means, and Fey all praise Morgan for delivering a powerful performance in the series that shows more of an emotional side than fans might expect to see from the comedian.

"You get to see a lot of heart from Tracy," Fey says. "Reggie has some feelings of regret about his life, and choices he wishes he'd made. And Tracy, having been through so much, really plays those scenes beautifully. He's just coming at it from a deeper place than ever before."

Tracy Morgan photographed exclusively for EW.

That all sounds (appropriately) heavy, but don't get it twisted: This is still from the minds that gave us *30 Rock, *and it's not only written in the same cartoonish comedic style, it's also taking place in the same universe. Radcliffe loved noticing throughout filming many different references and Easter eggs, which Carlock confirms are intentionally linking both shows (you can't fight synergy, Lemon).

"It'll be a real test for the people of TikTok to see if they, 1. find the show on broadcast, and 2. if they can find the *30 Rock* Easter eggs," Fey says. "There's a lot of rewards for paying attention. This is like the *Severance* of comedy."

While Carlock doesn’t want to spoil all the surprises, he can reveal one they shot during the last week of production.

Precious Way as Brina and Bobby Moynihan as Rusty Boyd on 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins'.

Scott Gries/NBC

"We just had a scene where they were pouring Donaghy Estates champagne," Carlock says, referring to Alec Baldwin's character's terrible sparkling wine from the first season of *30 Rock*. "We asked our graphics and prop people to hunt that down, which they did immediately, so we had Donaghy in there. I'd like to live in a world where Kenneth Parcell [Jack McBrayer] is running NBC as well, but that might not be for another couple hundred years in the *30 Rock *timeline, right? We are always trying to do those little things without breaking everything. But yeah, I'd like to think that *The Girly Show *is still on, and it should be on their TV."

"Reggie just happens to look a lot like Tracy Jordan," Means adds.

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.***

Morgan already has plans for more *30 Rock *crossover in the future by getting his former costar and current executive producer Fey to make an onscreen appearance "one day," since she remains firmly behind the camera for the first season.

Fey admits her complicated filming schedule for season 2 of her Netflix series *Four Seasons *made it "impossible" to even make a cameo. "But I would love to come do something with Tracy," she says, before adding with a laugh, "by seasons 8 or 9."

Daniel Radcliffe photographed exclusively for EW.

That said, the show did recruit an all-star lineup of guests for the first season. *Saturday Night Live *alum Heidi Gardner appears in two episodes as Tisha Basmati, the glamorous, passive-aggressive wife of Reggie's long-time rival. And Tisha hates Monica just as much as her husband hates Reggie, further adding to what Alexander notes is Monica's "crazy and delusional" persona.

"She's just one moment away from, like, 'They’re going to call a 5150 [psychiatric hold] on me and I won't even know when I went down," Alexander says.

Meanwhile,* The Daily Show*'s Ronny Chieng stars in three episodes as Barry, a slick, aggressive, powerful sports agent who tries to poach Monica for his own company and force her to drop Reggie as a client. *L.A. Law*'s Corbin Bernsen shows up for a few episodes as Duck Donovan, Reggie's former NFL coach who blames Reggie for his own life falling on hard times post-scandal, and goes everywhere with his emotional support cat, Namath. And *Pitch Perfect *alum Anna Camp has a two-episode arc as Narcissa Ocean, Arthur's wild ex whom he blames for his own career implosion.

Erika Alexander as Monica on 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins'.

Scott Gries/NBC

"It's been really fun to unpack this mysterious past that Dan's character has, and the mistakes he made and has tried to kind of keep quiet," Carlock teases. "And that comes back to haunt him as well."

As Reggie and his family soon discover, Arthur's past and desire for redemption are surprisingly similar to Reggie's: The filmmaker had been fresh off an Oscar win for a prestige documentary when his career was derailed after footage leaked of him having a mental breakdown on the set of the Marvel movie he was directing.

"He absolutely — the only phrase that comes to mind is — 'ate s---,'" Radcliffe says. "I don't know if there's a better way of saying that. He just tanked it, did so badly, had a meltdown on set that was so epic that it went viral in the way that the David O. Russell thing went mental."

Erika Alexander photographed exclusively for EW.

The showrunners are quick to clarify that the character of Arthur is not based on Russell, but that scene specifically is based on the director's infamous rant against Lily Tomlin on the set of 2004's *I Heart Huckabees*. That's where the real-life similarities end, however, since the fake Marvel movie they created is based on... well, complete and total nonsense, so don't try to find any connections to real comic books.

"*Professor Squeeze in the Monoverse* is what it's called," Carlock says. "If you know anyone who's looking for a terrible Marvel script!"

And we've only just scratched the surface on all the hijinks coming this season. There are also Brina's rap music videos from her beef with another low-level influencer. Rusty gets stuck, Winnie-the-Pooh-style, in a washing machine ("You know it's going to be a fun day at work when you get measured to make sure you fit in a washer," Moynihan says, calling his character a "big, dumb idiot"). There's a full "whodunit" murder mystery episode that Alexander calls their version of *Knives Out *— but "no one dies," Carlock adds.

Daniel Radcliffe photographed exclusively for EW.

Moynihan laughs as he remembers filming that *Clue*-like episode, because the whole cast was "locked together in a fake living room together for a week and a half."

"It was a really funny episode, but my absolute favorite part of it was four days in, we were all sitting there in complete silence," Moynihan says. "And Tracy just looked up and, 'Hey, when did we shoot the murder mystery episode?' The one we were currently shooting."

Morgan was in on that joke, but his costars are currently keeping a big secret from him — and it actually involves his beloved on-set dance parties.

Bobby Moynihan photographed exclusively for EW.

"Yesterday, Tracy had his last scene and he had gone, and I didn't want him to know how much he missed out," Radcliffe says. "But when we wrapped a few hours later, a spontaneous dance party just broke out on set in a way that I have never seen before. It was so delightful."

Moynihan pulls up a video he took on his phone the previous night of the entire cast (minus Morgan) and crew dancing around the living room set to Kool & the Gang's "Celebration," revealing it went on for over 45 minutes.

Even though he missed out on this final dance party, something tells us that Morgan would be proud of the legacy he left behind on set. **

*Directed by Kristen Harding and Alison Wild*

*Photography by Peter Yang*

*Motion - DP: Cory Fraiman-Lott; 1st AC: Christie Leitzell; Gaffer: John Izarpate; Best Electric: Ella Gibney; Key Grip: Dylan Kaplowitz; Best Grip: Rolan Shlain; Swing: Dom Ciofalo*

*Production** **- Productioner Designer: Lana Boy; Set Decorator: Cyrus Gainer; Set Dresser: Peggy Yee; Props Master: Hunter Grace Hayes; Art Assistant: Gawaine Ormsby; Wardrobe Stylist: Sam Spector; Assistant: James Vazque *

*Photo - 1st Assistant: Ariana Rodriguez; Digital Tech: Jordan Zuppa; Producer: Trisha Koury*

*Post-Production -** **Color Correction: Nate Seymour/TRAFIK; VFX: Derek Viramontes; Design: Alice Morgan; Animations: Evan Weselmann*

*Tracy Morgan - Grooming: Ja Nina Lee; Barber: Panda *

*Daniel Radcliffe - Grooming: Tanya Pacht *

*Erika Alexander - Hair: Debra Hare-Bey; Makeup: Frederick Sanders *

*Bobby Moynihan - Sabrina Rowe/Exclusive Artists*

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Comedy”