TV Talk: Swissvale native Billy Gardell grateful for ‘Bob (Hearts) Abishola’ success

A few weeks ago, Swissvale native Billy Gardell received welcome news: An early third season renewal of his CBS sitcom “Bob (Hearts) Abishola,” returning with a new episode at 8:30 p.m. Monday on KDKA-TV.

“That never happened to me on ‘Mike & Molly.’ They usually made you wait until May with the upfronts,” Gardell said by phone from Los Angeles last week. “But they’ve been so pleasantly surprised by how well (‘Bob’) has done, they gave us an early pickup. As an actor, if you know you have a job going into the summer, it makes the summer so much nicer.”

Like “Mike,” which centered on the relationship of a couple who met at an overeaters’ anonymous meeting, “Bob” is also about a couple: Detroit sock company owner Bob (Gardell) who falls in love with his Nigerian nurse, Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku).

“You’ve got two people from completely different backgrounds that take a chance on each other because they fall for each other,” Gardell said. “Right now, we need to see examples of love. We need to see examples of open heartedness, we need to see examples of kindness, because I don’t know if it’s just me, but you don’t see much of that these days.”

Gardell also likes that Bob is unafraid.

“The way you take the fear of something new out of your life is by experience,” Gardell said, “but you have to have an open mind and an open heart and open eyes for that, and I think Bob has that.”

Recent “Bob” episodes featured Gardell dancing to “Uptown Funk” (“When was the last time you saw a 300-pound guy (tripping) the lights fantastic?”) and in a two-parter Abishola’s husband, who long ago abandoned his family, showed up, threatening to derail Abishola’s plan to divorce him and marry Bob.

“He’s gonna reappear because when people get divorced, you have to be able to be grown ups and deal with that,” Gardell said. “This show is grounded.”

Gardell said the series is back on track to fulfill Bob’s and Abishola’s plans to marry, although he’s not sure when that will happen.

“There’s a surprise twist at the end of this season that I don’t want to give away but, again, it’s based in reality,” Gardell teased.

In the meantime, Gardell continues to rise at 5:30 a.m. West Coast time on Tuesdays to call in to WDVE-FM’s morning show. He hasn’t been back to Pittsburgh in more than a year because of the pandemic, and he’s looking forward to signing up to get the covid-19 vaccine once he becomes eligible later this month.

“I have to be very careful with this because I’m overweight and I’ve got Type 2 diabetes, and I’m just not taking chances,” Gardell said. “I literally haven’t been anywhere except to work and back home.”

Gardell said filming “Bob (Hearts) Abishola” in a covid environment hasn’t been that different in one specific way: The show never had a studio audience pre-pandemic.

“They want some realism and they want some deeper feelings and you have to have the freedom to do five or six takes,” Gardell said. “When you have an audience, usually they’re patient for two takes.”

Gardell praised production company Warner Bros. for implementing covid-19 safety protocols.

“Every day, you’re tested,” he said. “You wear a mask in rehearsal. When you do film, you take your mask off, you do your scene, you put your mask on and you get out (of the soundstage) again.”

Gardell said he has no plans to film any extracurricular projects during his summer hiatus.

“My goal is health. That’s it,” he said. “This pandemic made me think more about longevity than anything else ever has in my life. So I really want to work on getting the rest of my weight off, get to a comfortable weight and then ride off into the sunset, man.”

‘Rust’ cast additions

As Showtime’s “American Rust” gears up to film its first season in Western Pennsylvania this month with the previously announced Jeff Daniels (“The Newsroom”), Maura Tierney (“The Affair”), Bill Camp (“The Night Of”), David Alvarez (the upcoming “West Side Story” remake), Alex Neustaedter (“Colony”) and newcomer Julia Mayorga in leading roles, the show added to its cast.

Deadline.com reports Dallas Roberts (“The Good Wife”), Nicole Chanel Williams (“Boomerang”) and Clea Lewis (“Ellen”) will have recurring roles.

Based on Philipp Meyer’s novel of the same name and set in the fictional Mon Valley town of Buell, Fayette County, the series follows compromised chief of police Del Harris (Daniels) as the woman he loves, Grace (Tierney), finds her son (Neustadter) accused of murder.

Mark Pellegrino (“Lost”) will be a series regular, playing Grace’s unemployed husband.

Roberts will play Harris’ best friend, a local pharmacy owner who dispenses Harris’ PTSD medication.

Lewis plays a religious woman who’s fearful of how her husband will react to Grace’s efforts to unionize a dress factory.

Williams plays JoJo, a loner who shows recent high school grad Isaac (Alvarez) the rules of the road. Camp plays Isaac’s father, a disabled steelworker, and Mayorga plays Isaac’s sister, a law school grad who returns home.

Kept/canceled

Apple TV+ announced the renewal of biographical docuseries “Dear…” for a second season to stream later this year. The show filmed a season two episode on Pittsburgh native Billy Porter locally last fall.

CBS renewed “The Equalizer” for a second season.

The CW ordered an American version of the British whodunit horror competition “Killer Camp” that The CW aired last summer.

FX’s “Pose,” starring Pittsburgh native Billy Porter, will end with its seven-episode third season, premiering at 10 p.m. May 2.

USA’s “Queen of the South” will return for its fifth and final season at 10 p.m. April 7.

Winning Canadian sitcom “Kim’s Convenience,” available in the U.S. on Netflix, will end with its fifth season.

Apple TV+ renewed animated musical comedy “Central Park,” co-created by Carnegie Mellon University grad Josh Gad (“Frozen”) and featuring the voice of CMU grad Leslie Odom Jr., for a third season in advance of its June 25 second season premiere.

Channel surfing

On Wednesday, Netflix tweeted confirmation that the next play by the late Hill District native August Wilson to be adapted by the streamer will be “The Piano Lesson,” which was previously filmed as a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” TV movie in 1995. … Pittsburgh native Don Roy King, who won the Director’s Guild of America award for variety/talk regularly scheduled program for “Saturday Night Live” last year is nominated again this year for the “SNL” episode hosted by Dave Chappelle in November. … Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, re-airing at 8 p.m. Friday, drew 17.8 million viewers to CBS Sunday night, more than double the viewership of The Golden Globes the week prior. … Josh Gates of Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” and actor Christopher Lloyd set out to find the prop DeLorean Time Machine in the four-part “Expedition: Back to the Future,” streaming Monday on discovery+ with guest appearances by “Back to the Future” stars Michael J. Fox and Lea Thompson.