‘Reno 911’: Creators Reveal Fan-Favorite Character Not Returning for Quibi Revival

The hilarious Reno 911! revival on Quibi will, without a doubt, please fans of the early-2000s comedy series. But there is still one favorite character won’t be joining the return. Series stars and creators Thomas Lennon (Lt. Jim Dangle) and Robert Ben Garant (Deputy Travis Junior) recently revealed that Terry, the outrageous male prostitute played by comedian Nick Swardson, does not appear in the new season of episodes.

“Nick, I think wanted to do the show, and this is just a real unfortunate bummer of timing, but back when we were shooting…Nick was on tour,” Lennon said during a press meeting “So I don’t want people thinking, ‘Oh my God, Terry’s coming,’ because it logistically just didn’t happen. And it’s a bummer, we obviously miss and love him, and it just happened to not work out logistically.” Garant added that not having Swardson back “sucked,” adding, “But, I also just don’t want people being like, ‘When is he coming?’”

Garant went on to explain that with the shows new format there really just wasn’t as much room for many classic cameo reprisals. With Quibi, each episode runs less than 10 minutes, as opposed to the nearly 30-minute length of episodes during Reno 911‘s run on Comedy Central. “I mean it’s basically six episodes worth, maybe seven or eight episodes worth of the whole length of show. And there wasn’t enough, there were a lot of people who we had stuff for.”

Lennon explained that it wasn’t just Swardson who had scheduling conflicts, as other past guest stars couldn’t make it either. “It was a bummer cause we were also supposed to have Natasha Leggero one day. We were going to pull her off of a plane. Her famous pantsless character. Anyone you didn’t see, it was probably just a scheduling thing.”

One new guest star this time around is actor Paul Walter Hauser, who is most well-known for his roles in I, Tonya, BlacKkKlansman, and as the lead in Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell. Series star Cedric Yarbrough (Deputy Jones) had the very first scene with Hauser, and raved at how well the actor could hold his own. “He’s just brilliant. He’s just ready to go.”

Yarbrough went on to add, “The thing about the show now is that we kind of have a brand, so guest stars that come in, they know what to expect. They get the tone of the show. It’s not like what we did 17 years ago when we were all kind of figuring it out. Now we already kind of have a formula to plug in great people that we already like, and Tom, Ben and Carrie do an amazing job of auditioning people and finding people that can hang. I don’t remember very many times where, well that person didn’t work out at all.” Reno 911! is streaming only on Quibi this Monday, May 4th with new episodes every weekday until May 15th.