Toward the end of filming The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, the cast and crew decided to surprise Tracy Morgan for his 57th birthday. As No. 1 on the call sheet, Morgan had been particularly generous to his co-stars, and his co-stars wanted to return the favor. So, they treated Morgan to a live mariachi band playing his favorite song. “You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a mariachi band from New York play ‘Super Freak’ on a studio floor,” says his co-star Erika Alexander.
The NBC mockumentary is the brainchild of 30 Rock creator Robert Carlock, his longtime collaborator Sam Means and executive producer Tina Fey, but Dinkins has been Morgan’s show from the beginning. In 2024, the Saturday Night Live alum was in the middle of his Neighborhood spinoff Crutch, but the looming acquisition of CBS by Larry Ellison’s Skydance Media had the comedian and his team looking elsewhere for projects. He put in a call to his old 30 Rock team and let them know he was going to have time in his schedule for something new. “We love Tracy, so Bob’s your uncle,” says Carlock, who was finishing Girls5Eva at the time. “We jumped on it.”
Carlock and Means took the same approach that worked so well when developing Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: They started with their lead actor and considered his voice and what kind of character he could embody, eventually landing on the idea of a mock documentary about a disgraced football star as he attempts to launder his image and earn himself a place in the Hall of Fame after sports betting derailed his career.
