Breaking In Creator on the Show's Resurrection

When a TV series is cancelled, it usually stays cancelled, with very rare exceptions. However, Breaking In bucked the odds this past year, when FOX reversed their decision to cancel the show, ordering a second season that will debut March 6th, airing on Tuesdays nights at 8:30pm, sandwiched between encores of New Girl and brand new episodes of the Zooey Deschanel hit.

At the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour this week, I spoke to the show's creator and executive producer, Adam F. Goldberg about Breaking In. Season 2 will see Megan Mullally join the cast, as Contra Security's new boss, while there are no current plans for Michael Rosenbaum to appear as Dutch, due to scheduling conflicts. We spoke about these changes, the difficulty in scheduling Odette Annable (now that she's also one of the stars of House) and more.

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IGN TV: This is such a rare occurrence in television. Usually if a network leaves a show off their schedule at the Upfronts in May, that's it. So what were you hearing right after that?

Adam F. Goldberg: I mean, right away, FOX didn't pick up the show but then picked up the actors [options] quickly thereafter. And I was in such a holding pattern that I almost would have rather just known that it was cancelled, because it's like you don't know what to do. You're just in limbo. So [FOX president] Kevin Reilly was always saying, "I want to build a whole [comedy] night. Let's see how New Girl works." And then when they started getting stuff, they picked it up. So I think they knew that [New Girl] was something really special and that it could hopefully anchor a night and people could find Breaking In a little bit more, which is a little bit more of a difficult thing to understand than New Girl.

IGN: Were you already tossing around ideas for the second season, because you knew there was a chance?

Goldberg: No. The on-again-off-again was so painful that I was like, "When it comes back I'll deal with it. For now, I'm going to come up with a new show." So I went out with a new show and pitched that and sold a new show to FOX. Then when the show got picked up, it was really surreal meeting with writers talking about Oz again. It was like, "What!? I can't believe I'm doing this! This is just bizarre." Then also bringing in Megan is just a way to open up the world, and it's been really easy to think of stories now when you have someone like her.

IGN: You talked about the idea of creating a foil for Oz. Was Megan's character one you quickly gleaned upon or were there different iterations of what that might be?

Goldberg: Well, what it was initially was we were picturing Sharon Stone. You know, a ball-buster comes in and takes over the company, which… My thing in the room was you've just seen it before. Just this hard-ass that comes in calling the shots, which would be interesting for Oz, but I didn't know what was new about that character. And then when Megan came in with a take on the character… Which is she's just so kooky and you're like, "How is this woman in charge of a huge corporation?" And then you realize, oh my God, she's a genius. So that's just a really interesting take on her character, who can manipulate you and she's so nice and funny. Then you realize, "Oh my God, I'm just doing whatever she says. She's so fun to be around!" It's a great dynamic to have our group go corporate. The office last year was not a corporate place. And just introducing that whole world with all those characters should be really fun this year.

IGN: I was going to ask, why is Oz not the boss this year? Has Contra been sold?

Goldberg: Yeah, he sells the company.

IGN: Does he live to regret that then?

Goldberg: He does, he does. He sells the company to what Christian mentioned -- which I love and he loves -- which is to OCP. Which I don't think a lot of people will appreciate, but the people who get it will. That kind of says everything.

IGN: IGN readers will get it.

Goldberg: Right, yeah, yeah! That they're selling it to the company from RoboCop. And look, I went to [the owners of RoboCop], and they're rebooting the movie, and I'm like, "I want to use OCP. Like, I want it to be the company from RoboCop buys Contra Security." And they were rebooting the movie and they just said, "In a world when we're redoing it, we can't just have you guys screwing with our franchise in a weird way." So we just changed it -- they don't own the letters OCP -- so it is what it is. It's "Optimal" Consumer Products.