Casting continues to heat up on Yahoo’s sixth season of the acclaimed college comedy Community, formerly of NBC. Last week, it was reported that Keith David and Paget Brewster had joined the cast in major roles, playing new characters designed to fill a void left by the departure of former series regulars Yvette Nicole Brown, Jonathan Banks and John Oliver. And now, Entertainment Weekly has revealed that Community is set to introduce Britta’s (Gillian Jacobs) parents – Martin Mull will play George Perry, and Lesley Ann Warren will play his wife Deb.
Both actors will appear in the currently untitled second episode of Community‘s upcoming 13-episode sixth season. This won’t be the first time that the pair have shared the screen – Mull and Warren previously portrayed Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet, respectively, in Clue. More recently, Mull played another dad on Fox’s short-lived, critically reviled sitcom Dads, and Warren had a 28-episode stint on USA’s In Plain Sight.
When Community returns this winter, it will be a markedly different show than the one last seen on NBC. Donald Glover remains absent, having departed in the midst of season 5, and other regulars like Brown, Banks and Oliver have all moved along for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Danny Pudi, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong are all confirmed to return, and their characters will contend with at least two new faces – a scientist (David) who has come to Greendale Community College to reinvent himself, and a consultant (Brewster) brought in to fix up Greendale after standards slip.
Showrunner Dan Harmon has also teased that airing on Yahoo will change the show in some ways. At Comic-Con, he explained that he will “let the lack of boundaries make themselves felt” in terms of content while still retaining the spirit of Community, and also that romance will be on the agenda in the upcoming season. In response to the more relaxed standards on Yahoo, McHale added at Comic-Con that an “unencumbered Dan Harmon is very exciting.”
New episodes of Community are expected this winter.