‘Happy’s Place’: Star Belissa Escobedo and EPs Weigh in on Sitcom’s Guest Star Lineup (Exclusive)

Happy’s Place may only be midway through its second season, but the NBC sitcom has already seen a handful of great guest stars.

Star Belissa Escobedo and executive producers Kevin Abbott and Pamela Fryman spoke to PopCulture.com about the incredible lineup.

Season 2 has already seen Cheri Oteri beginning a recurring guest role, and a Taxi reunion between Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane. These upcoming episodes will include recently-announced guest stars Jane Lynch and Eric Stonestreet, as well as JoAnna Garcia Swisher for another Reba reunion. For Fryman, who also directs a chunk of the episodes this season, the guest appearances are “so much fun.”

“Even when I hear you say it, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane came on the show.’ I was there, but it’s a really big deal,” she continued. “The roles are so fantastic.”

Abbott, co-creator and showrunner, admitted he’s “usually anti-guest star just because we only have so much verbal real estate on the show, and I love our people so much. I think they’re great. The opportunities to have these characters on and what we were able to play with them were so kinda unique that I overcame my reluctance. We had Jane on for several. We had Cheri on for three in the upcoming season. We have Eric on. They’re all so marvelous that we keep wanting to bring them back because the roles are just so rich and so fun. Jane Lynch will be playing Gabby’s mom, and that is just gold. It’s just gold.”

“They have one of my favorite screen scene moments in the season,” he continued. “They make me laugh. I mean, Jane is the only one that I’ve seen Pablo [Castelblanco] break in a scene. He doesn’t break ever. He’s so good. I mean, she did this thing where she touched him on the chin. He just was struggling so hard not to break. They’ve got some really interesting roles, and they’re integral to the characters that we have on the show. They’re fun to watch.”

“They all had such a great time being there,” Fryman added. “I mean, it’s such a welcoming cast. Sometimes it’s hard to walk into an established show, but not at all with this group. They left wanting more, too, which is great.”

Meanwhile, with all of the past and future guest stars for Season 2, Escobedo, who plays Isabella, shared that she loved it when Garcia Swisher came to play. “She was such a joy to work with, and it felt so great,” she said. “I don’t know. She was Reba’s [McEntire] daughter on [Reba]; I’m kind of in that position. I’m not her daughter, but her little sister, and so I really wanted to meet her and talk to her, and it felt really cool being able to be with her, and now she’s in this show.”

It can be assumed that there will be more guest stars to come as Happy’s Place continues. Despite initially being anti-guest star, Abbott has one A-lister on his list he’d love to see on the show.

“Somebody told me that towards the end of the last season, Octavia Spencer wanted to do the show. I was gonna check that out and make sure that that’s actually a thing, and that’s not just somebody to somebody,” he confessed. “But if she wanted to do it, I would be all over that. I would love to create a role for her to come on and play with our cast. Because that’s how it’s going to be, start us out. And when we’re going to preproduction, we’ll have somebody check because that’ll get priority.”

It’s unknown who else will be joining the fun on Happy’s Place, but fans will just have to tune in and see. New episodes air on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, streaming the next day on Peacock.