‘Adults’ Star Malik Elassal on the Scene That Took Him 40 Takes and That Surprise Finale Hookup

It’s hard to scroll social media at the moment without seeing Adults star Malik Elassal. The FX sitcom returned for its second season last week, and between some creative show marketing and meme-able scenes, Elassal and his costars are seemingly everywhere.

Season two of Adults is just as funny as the first, if not more, and apparently just as delightful to make. “Seeing these people again is exciting,” Elassal tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom. It’s late on a Friday and the 30-year-old’s fresh from a mid-press cycle nap — more on that later, though. He adds, “It just feels like we’re doing a good thing.”

Throughout much of the season Elassal plays the dutiful friend to his core group — Lucy Freyer’s Billie, Owen Thiele’s Anton, Amita Rao’s Issa and Jack Innanen’s Paul Baker — and dutiful boyfriend to Rachel Marsh’s Carly. Well, except when he’s not, particularly in the season’s sixth episode “Pop Girlie.” Thanks to some bad advice from Anton, Marsh’s Carly decides to ditch dental school and focus on her real passion — becoming a K-pop star.

“That was actually a tough one to play,” says Elassal. The comedian notes how unlikeable it is for a character to not support their girlfriend and try to manipulate her into finding her new endeavor, even if he’s right. The song “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy)” is a fan favorite online right now, so maybe he wasn’t completely right.

But the angst makes for good comedy. “It was just a very conflicting thing, which is the best thing for a sitcom. I think somehow, just because he thinks he’s a good person, that he thinks he can do no wrong. Even if the thing is messy, you see that he feels that way about himself a little bit,” Elassal says. He quickly adds, “I didn’t know that I felt that way until I just said that.”

It’s strange to see himself acting out things he remembers shooting. It’s not his own life, but it does feel real at times. He and the cast will work tirelessly to get something just right, only for it to play for mere seconds onscreen, but that’s just the way it works. “It is really odd, but we just all really care about making this thing so much,” he says.

There’s never been a “phone it in” day for Adults, but there are plenty of days where it’s hard to not break on set. The show just released a blooper reel that proves just how much laughter is happening while the team is shooting. But no portion of season two made Elassal laugh harder than Julian Manjerico’s Zac Carlos.

“I cannot convey to you how hard every single person was laughing on that day and how hard it was to do that, to watch Julian Manjerico dance like that,” the comedian says. “I was specifically watching Jack try so hard not to laugh, that literally tears were stress falling from his eyes from trying not to ruin the take.”

Another highlight of season two was the introduction of Paul Baker’s “bro” friends, a gaggle of stereotypical, although well-meaning, dude bros. Those bros also happened to witness one of the hardest days on set for Elassal. In the show’s dramatic and jam packed finale, his character Samir and Marsh’s Carly call it quits before she moves to Seattle.

Unfortunately, Samir was in the middle of trying to make a grand romantic gesture when the breakup happened, which included the bros, Julia Fox and a basketball. Elassal had to shoot the ball “like 40 times” on set. “All these bros have to watch him hit a basketball shot. I hit it once in rehearsal and thought, no worries,” he says.

“When it came time, I was just fucked. I had to do it 40 times and keep a tear in my eye. I didn’t have any thoughts in my head,” the actor continues, lamenting on how ridiculous it was to be wasting Fox’s time. “It was like being on mushrooms. There was no time or space. There’s a hundred crew members looking at me. There’s just money flying around my head.”

After that finale breakup comes another big plot moment for Samir — hooking up with Billie. It’s the first time Elassal’s talking about it with someone not involved in the show, and he’s not totally sure how he feels about it.

“I’m worried for Billie and Samir,” he says. “I’ve had that happen in a friend group before, where two people hooked up. They either got to get married or this is bad.”

The actor’s hopeful that it’ll be sweet and turn out well. But as the actor playing Samir, he’s a little nervous his character is going to “fuck this up.” He was also very surprised when he got that final script, even though he saw the breadcrumbs along the way. The team chose not to tell the actors beforehand, so they wouldn’t play towards that throughout the season.

“The fans already think we’re doing that all the time, and we’re really not. We’re just playing the scenes out,” he says. Elassal’s seen plenty TikTok edits of himself with long looks that he doesn’t even remember. “Where did you even get that footage? I didn’t even do that,” he jokes.

The comedian and actor is trying to find moments of rest amidst the busy promotion schedule for the season, which has been extensive. But he’s also found that he sometimes needs a little bit of structure. He was late for the scheduled start time of this interview, for instance: He was trying out being a “nap guy,” but it didn’t work out.

“Can you include this?” he asks. “He took his retainer out and locked in for the interview. This guy needs to be working at Walmart again. I’m too off leash.”

All episodes of Adults season two are streaming on Hulu. The show also airs weekly on FXX.