About halfway through Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 6, I noticed something a little odd. Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) and her husband Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) hadn’t actually kissed yet. I didn’t think a kiss was necessary, but it was just a funny detail I kept tucked away in the corner of my mind. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the lack of PDA. A slew of fans tweeted about it fervently during the season. It got to a point where showrunner Dan Goor added a joke in the season finale, in which Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) confronts his beloved friends about not kissing in public. And so they do. Off-camera. A cruel, cruel joke.
Oh, did we miss something? #Brooklyn99 pic.twitter.com/HJuSGIKPyF
— Brooklyn Nine-Nine (@brooklyn99) May 17, 2019
Fumero tells me over the phone that in season 7, “I think we more than make up for it.”
I audibly ooo’d at this.
She says the lack of PDA wasn’t on purpose, it sort of just happened that way.
“It was something we realised very late in the game, maybe even when people started pointing it out,” she says. “I remember there was an episode where we were going to kiss and we decided to scratch it.”
One time Samberg had the flu so Fumero was glad she didn’t have to kiss him, which is fair. But she didn’t think much of it at the time.
“There were kisses that were written in that we didn’t do for whatever reason and we just didn’t think about it at all. So it really was funny to us when people started pointing it out, like ‘oh damn’, and then Dan came up with that joke for the finale and we just thought it was so funny. It was mean but it was funny.”
As for season 7, Fumero teases that “big things” are coming. At the end of season 6, Captain Holt is demoted to a patrolman.
“All of a sudden, Jake and Amy are his superiors,” Fumero says, adding that Holt has a new partner played by SNL veteran Vanessa Bayer.
“There are also some beloved Brooklyn Nine-Nine guest stars who return. I’m pretty sure I can say that Pimento comes back, because he’s in the trailer.” He is.
“Also, there are a lot of ensemble episodes this season. We did a lot of episodes that involved the whole cast in the storyline, so I’m super excited to see that.”
But as for our favourite cop couple, or maybe second if you prefer Hitchcock and Scully (Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller), Fumero tells me that we’ll be spending a good chunk of time with Jake and Amy outside the office.
I ask her about a potential NOINE-NOINE baby.
“I don’t know, maybe,” she teases. The main reason I ask is because Fumero is three weeks (!!!) away from giving birth to her second child.
“Me being pregnant in real life was a total weird coincidence,” she assures me. “I had a whole meeting with the writers one afternoon for three hours, and we talked about all the possible stories to film this season with Jake and Amy. I think I found out I was pregnant a week later, so nothing influenced the writing is what I’m trying to say.”
But Fumero says the baby talk (re: season 6, episode 12) will come up again in season 7.
Nine-Nine aside, Fumero is keen as hell to talk about her new Marvel show that was announced earlier this week. It’s called M.O.D.O.K and it’s an adult animated series.
“M.O.D.O.K is essentially a floating evil head robot man who wants to rule the world,” self-described “Marvel geek” Fumero shares.
“And the show centres on his family life and also his work life. I play his daughter, aptly named Melissa, and she looks like him but she’s a teenager.”
Melissa is navigating her own world and aspires to be a super villain just like Dad. She’s also really into figure-skating and being popular whether by force or by charm.
“The show is set in the Marvel Universe,” she continues excitedly. This next bit comes out in a rush: “Iron Man shows up! And different superheroes show up, and there are so many storylines. And I’m part of this! I’m in this world! This is so nuts. I am fully geeking out, I’m so excited. I think we’re probably going to be at Comic-Con!”
But, she warns, “the show’s super dark super fun and very inappropriate. And definitely NOT FOR KIDS.”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine on the other hand is completely family friendly. You can catch the premiere (double) episode of season 7 on SBS at 8.30pm on Friday, 7 February.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuJ1ih5srzw&feature=emb_title
