Considering just how many laughs Happy’s Place serves with each new episode, it’s not at all shocking that the stars behind the beloved characters are cracking up between takes as well.
In an interview with NBC Insider, Pablo Castelblanco revealed that he “couldn’t hold” in his laughter any time his Happy’s Place co-star Melissa Peterman said one specific, hilarious line from an early Season 2 episode.
In “Izzy and the Professor” (Season 2, Episode 6) featuring guest stars Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane, Steve (Castelblanco) and Gabby (Peterman) find a phone that was left at the bar and can’t resist snooping. While Takoda (Tokala Black Elk) tries to stop them, keeping the phone safe in his locker, they eventually snag it and read all the juicy texts.
Melissa Peterman had Pablo Castelblanco in stitches on Happy’s Place with this one line
After reading off messages that appear to be from an angry lover, the phone rings. Gabby and Steve nervously answer the phone as a woman’s voice (later to be revealed as Kane’s) yells: “I’m talking now! I started a new life, and by the way, I did sleep with your brother!”
Castelblanco reveals the dialogue that followed made him break again and again. In the episode, Steve, shocked by what he heard on the phone, says, “She didn’t have to sleep with the monster’s brother!”
Then, as Castelblanco recalls, Peterman delivered her line “without missing a beat” as she says as Gabby: “You don’t know. So often the only option is sleep with their brother.”
“I just remember I couldn’t hold it,” Castelblanco told NBC Insider. “Every time she would do that line at my face, I just always broke. And I was so afraid that by shooting day I was gonna laugh in front of the camera, because throughout the whole week I never not found it funny. I think I just had to really bite my tongue or my cheek to just not laugh at that moment.”
“I just broke, I broke down, I could not hold it. It was so, so funny,” Castelblanco continued. “I just love when my friends make me laugh.”
Castelblanco also opened up about sharing these hilarious scenes with Peterman, explaining that the Minnesota native and former Reba star pushes him to not hold back.
“My favorite thing of working with Melissa on something like this is she will like encourage, and I mean this in the best way possible, she will encourage your worst impulses,” Castelblanco told NBC Insider. “She will just be like, ‘Well that’s dumb and funny, just go dumber and just go funnier with it.'”
In a separate interview with NBC Insider, Peterman gushed about how the chemistry between the cast has grown “deeper” since Happy’s Place first premiered and is now “more comfortable, more relaxed.” In fact, she shared that they were all out to dinner for Castelblanco’s birthday when they found out Happy’s Place had been picked up for a third season. “We didn’t have to get him a present, let’s just say that,” Peterman joked.
“The group text definitely can get more sarcastic and silly at times,” Peterman shared of the Happy’s Place cast. “We know each other. There’s a shorthand, which is great.”