Amid the flashiness of the story about a preteen prodigy who went from the playground to the red carpet overnight, direct your attention to “The Other Two.”
More specifically, to 30-year-old Brooke played by Brooklyn’s Heléne Yorke and 28-year-old Cary (Drew Tarver).
The new NYC-set show that’ll air directly after you get your “Broad City” fix pokes fun at a Justin Bieber-style come up: A 13-year-old with a signature hairstyle and stage name (ChaseDreams) captivates the entertainment industry with a cheesy debut single, “I Want to Marry U at Recess.”
“The Other Two” comes from former “Saturday Night Live” co-head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, giving it an instant spotlight ahead of its Thursday premiere. And rightfully so. The jokes come smoothly in this half-hour series as it twists its focus to, you guessed it, the other two strikingly ordinary siblings in the picture.
“The thing Sarah and Chris understand so well, is that the day-to-day is so funny,” says Yorke, a Brooklyn Heights resident. Her down-on-her-luck Brooke provides what can only be described as millennial mockery. Her character truly believes her ordinary life is worthy of fame.
“She’s squatting in apartments while representing one of these giant high-rises downtown,” Yorke, 33, says of her real estate agent character. “She thinks she’s cool, she’s with it. She’s got it together except when her brother Chase turns into an overnight success, she realizes she doesn’t.”
As a New Yorker for the past 11 years, Yorke says she easily related to Brooke’s struggle to find her footing.
“We all loved ‘Friends,’ but nobody could have afforded that apartment, right?” she says. “Most of us when we got here, we did live in basically closets with roommates. That’s real life.”
That’s real life for Brooke and Cary, too, who flail around in their brother ChaseDreams’ new world. It’s a chase for fame perfectly fit for an Instagram age: Brooke sneaking onto red carpet premieres by day and Cary returning to a cramped apartment by night.
“It happens to all of us. You get to your late twenties and early thirties and you think my life is supposed to be a certain way and it’s not. It never is,” she says, reflecting on her early years in the city.
Before landing gigs on HBO’s “High Maintenance,” ABC’s “Quantico” and Fox’s “American Dad,” she was mixing theater auditions with a job at Physique 57 on Sixth Avenue at age 22.
“I woke up at 5;30 a.m. to open an exercise studio and was eating bacon, egg and cheeses at the front desk,” she recalls. “I took a step back in order to take a step forward and I think that’s what makes Brooke’s story so relatable.”
Brooke fits in well alongside the network’s more established fictional faces (like “Broad City’s” Abbi and Ilana) for both her unexceptional lifestyle and her admirable optimism.
Kicked off the red carpet? Brooke sneaks back in after dark and asks staffers to serve as her personal paparazzi.
“As much as you don’t want to say misery loves company, to know that no one really has it together is such great comfort,” Yorke says. “I think a lot of people will identify with Cary and the internal struggles he has and Brooke sort of blindly going through her life like everything is fine and taking the opportunity to adjust to something that was wildly different than what she thought her life was going to be.”
“The Other Two” airs Thursdays on Comedy Central at 10:30 p.m.
