“Saturday Night Live” alum Bobby Moynihan stars in the new CBS sitcom “Me, Myself & I,” which follows his down-on-his-luck character Alex Riley through various influential moments in his life.
“I liked the idea of playing a real person who was going through [life],” Moynihan said of his role as the recently divorced, struggling inventor. “Alex is putting his life back together, figuring out how to be a good dad and hopefully finding a new love.”
In the half-hour sitcom, Moynihan, 40, splits the leading role between John Larroquette, who appears as Alex at age 65, and Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Alex at age 14.
The time-jumping trend, which drew fans into “This Is Us,” attempts to tug at the heartstrings of the audience by showing characters in moments that end up having crucial impacts on their futures.
For Alex, those crucial moments happened at age 14, when he moved in with his stepdad and fumbled during his first kiss; at age 40, when he found himself struggling to support a child, lacking motivation and bumming it on his friend’s couch; and at age 65, when he found love again and faced retirement.
All this time-flopping got us wondering: What age would Moynihan flash back to if he could?
“I would go back to being 30. Right before I got ‘SNL’ and I would tell myself to relax and enjoy it more,” he said. The comedian left “SNL” after a nearly 10-year run at the end of the 42nd season to make way for the sitcom, but the new dad said he also wanted more time to start a family and “sleep for more than an hour a night.”
Moynihan, who welcomed a daughter with his wife, Brynn O’Malley, in August, may be able to somewhat relate to his “Me, Myself & I” character’s fatherhood qualms, but that’s where the similarities between the two end.
“I was a lot more like Alex 10 years ago,” Moynihan said. “I feel much better about my real life than Alex does about his. He is at a very insecure time and I had that, too. But now, I am just concentrating on work and fatherhood and happy about it. Alex? Not so much.”
After learning his ex-wife plans to move away from Los Angeles with their young daughter Abby, Alex finds himself leaning on his friend Darryl, played by Jaleel White (“Family Matters”), and father, played by Brian Unger (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”). Spoiler alert: We learn early on he keeps ties with his child. Played by “Big Little Lies” actress Kelen Coleman, adult Abby’s life remains intertwined with her 65-year-old father’s.
If Moynihan could jump into the future that easily, he said we’d see him as a “happy, healthy dad who loves his family” — oh, and has leading roles in the next 19 “Star Wars” movies.
“Me, Myself and I” airs new episodes Mondays at 9:30 p.m.
