Entertainment
‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’ Most Unexpected Twist Yet Rewrites the Sitcom
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’ Episode 2
Summary
On the surface, NBC’s newest sitcom, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, is about a disgraced football star (Tracy Morgan) trying to rewrite his legacy. But it’s also about the guy holding the camera because, as these first two episodes prove, millennial filmmaker Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe) is not just there to “document” the former athlete. He’s there to poke around until that scar talks.
It’s why Episode 2’s “Nittany Means Big” hits as hard as it does. In Monday’s latest half-hour, we learn that Arthur isn’t satisfied with the clean version of Dinkins’ “food poisoning game.” Once he notices Reggie has Penn State newspapers dated before the game even happened, it’s all over, and the truth gets dragged into broad daylight, where we learn of a mascot theft plan, a gross trash-water escape, and vomiting that wasn’t a freak accident so much as a natural consequence of trash-water.
As Erika Alexander’s Monica accidentally gives away a crucial tell while Arthur interviews her for the documentary, the award-winning actress frames what that does to Reggie perfectly in an interview with Collider. “That’s the beginning of him showing that he’s an unreliable narrator about his own life,” she says as Reggie’s reaction is pure Reggie — anger, denial, and control-freak panic. But Morgan’s take on Alexander’s note is almost weirdly sincere: “Nah, the blow was to the public… The lie was to the public.”
It’s that denial that series co-creator Robert Carlock also points out that Reggie and Arthur share in common, and more so than their clashing egos. As the former showrunner for 30 Rock puts it, they both have “a scandal, a failure, or something that they feel like they need to get past.”
In our exclusive interviews with actors Morgan and Alexander, alongside showrunners, Carlock and Sam Means, we unpack how Episode 2’s “food poisoning” reveal rewrites Reggie’s myth, why Monica’s been carrying the fallout for years, how Arthur’s own scandal fuels his obsession with the truth — and what all of it sets up as the fallout only gets messier in the remaining eight episodes this season. Including those 30 Rock Easter eggs you might have spotted!
Erika Alexander Says the “Food Poisoning” Truth Proves Reggie’s an Unreliable Narrator
Reggie can’t take the truth behind the “food poisoning game,” and Monica’s buried frustration starts to surface in a way that changes everything.
COLLIDER: Episode 2 sort of reveals the truth behind the food poisoning game, and it reframes Reggie’s legend. Is the bigger blow that he lied to the public, or that he’s been lying to himself about what kind of player or person he was?
MORGAN: Nah, the blow was to the public. I know who I am! I know what I am. The lie was to the public. That was the bigger blow — when you betray the public. I play football! They believed in me! And then I gambled.
ALEXANDER: And you know what? That’s absolutely the truth. That’s the beginning of him showing that he’s an unreliable narrator about his own life. And they both shared the lie. Actually, she accidentally gave it away when Tobin was interviewing Monica. She didn’t mean to, but then suddenly it just pokes holes in a person that’s kind of tired of being a pincushion. Tracy doesn’t want all this stuff. He’s mad at her. He’s like, “Why did you tell him that?” And she’s right because Reggie can’t take it.
MORGAN: She called him a bearded infant.
ALEXANDER: [Laughs] Well, you know, that’s a pretty correct description.
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Yeah, it is. [Laughs] Erika, Episode 2 makes it very clear that Monica has been carrying a lot of the history. What’s the one thing that you say you would say that she refuses to say out loud because she knows it would change everything?
ALEXANDER: I think that maybe as a woman and a protector of her family, she has dreams of her own, and that she’s tired of sort of sacrificing them for the messes that Reggie Dinkins keeps causing in her life, and she wants that freedom. She’s right about the agency, and she wants that. I think she’ll refuse to say it, but maybe that’s her journey is to start to get more for her life and not just work for her ex-husband.
MORGAN: She ain’t going nowhere.
ALEXANDER: You see how it is?
MORGAN: She said that in the pilot. She said she don’t need me. I said, “Good, then go on with your bad behind.”
ALEXANDER: Tania, do you hear this?
MORGAN: And when I was outside with the radio, what happened? She came back to Papa. I had the radio, and she refused to let me put the album on, and she came right back to me.
ALEXANDER: What’s that syndrome called when a person can’t leave their torturer?
Stockholm syndrome.
ALEXANDER: Stockholm syndrome.
MORGAN: Stockholm!
ALEXANDER: That’s exactly what she’s got. [Laughs]
MORGAN: Stockholm in the house!
ALEXANDER: And he’s happy about it, Tania.
MORGAN: Stockholm in the house!
Robert Carlock Explains How Far ‘30 Rock’ Easter Eggs Can Go Without Overdoing It
Carlock explains the Easter eggs, and Sam Means co-signs that while the nods are fun, the show’s goal is still to be its own weird thing.
COLLIDER: I read an interview where Tina Fey, who is the show’s EP, said there are 30 Rock Easter eggs throughout the entire first season. What was the rule for you guys? How far should you go before it stops feeling like the same universe and becomes something new?
ROBERT CARLOCK: That’s a great way of putting it. I hadn’t thought of it. Part of it, to be honest, is like, “Well, we need a name for this wine. Well, we already have the Donaghy Estates label. Legal has already cleared it.” We did try to do one Easter egg that we tried to put in. We needed a name for a fancy store, and in the 30 Rock world, there was a store called Vattené, which means “go away” in Italian. Evidently, since then, someone has started a clothing store called Vattené, so it didn’t clear! Our own stupid name didn’t clear.
When does it get to be too much? I’m not sure. I don’t want this to be in the same universe as 30 Rock. I think maybe eventually, in Season 7, Tracy Jordan will play Reggie in the movie or in a sketch on The Girlie Show. But we do want it to share that DNA at the very least. It is a little nod both to hopefully people who liked that show and enjoy finding those little things, but also the promise of this is going to be a weird take on the world we live in and be full of jokes.
In Episode 2, that is the first time the show really punctures Reggie’s mythology with the truth behind the food poisoning game. When you built that reveal, what did you want the audience to realize about the stories that Reggie tells himself versus everyone else?
CARLOCK: There is a level of this. One of the reasons, Tania, that we wanted the characters to include the maker of the documentary, and for everyone to be aware of the documentary, is that idea, which I think is so prevalent today, where people are able to photograph themselves and celebrate themselves and promote themselves so easily and so readily. At its heart, this is a family comedy, but there is a level that you’re getting at, which is that theme of the way we try to present ourselves to the world. Reggie and Arthur, as well, and Monica, you discover, all have really significant reasons in their lives for wanting to maybe change the narrative that’s emerged, and take control. The show is about redemption and second acts, and that plays into it.
SAM MEANS: Yeah, what he said.
How Daniel Radcliffe Helped Fine-Tune Arthur for ‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’
Means says Arthur was built for Radcliffe from day one, but the real magic is the Tracy-Daniel “feedback loop” once they’re in scenes together.
Sam, Daniel [Radcliffe] has such a specific comedic sort of rhythm. Did the Arthur character change when you saw Daniel in the part?
MEANS: That’s interesting, because we have worked with Daniel before. He was on the [Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt] interactive, and then he was also a voice on our animated show, Mulligan, so we’re very aware of his comedic chops, and we are excited to bring those to broadcast television, because I feel like a lot of people might not be familiar with them.
CARLOCK: And we wrote Arthur for him.
MEANS: Exactly. So from go, when we imagined the character of the director, the sort of self-important director coming in with his own agenda, we had Daniel in mind. So, it is very much written for him, but at the same time…
CARLOCK: You’re always learning.
MEANS: Yeah. Seeing him and Tracy together and how they interact, especially, creates a feedback loop. And we always consider the characters on our show as a collaboration with the actors who played them, and he’s very thoughtful about the character. He, maybe more than anyone, is coming to us having read the script and thought about it, with thoughts about his character and where it should be going, and even about jokes for other characters. He had cut a joke once for Tracy after the table, really just for room, just for time, and he came to us and said, “I really miss that joke.” [Laughs]
CARLOCK: And we put it back.
That pairing is not obvious. That’s what I love so much about ensembles, and this show does it so well. When you put them all together, there are different comedic elements, like when you put Bobby [Moynihan]’s character with Erika [Alexander]. There is something to be said for seeing different layers, so I do appreciate that.
‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’ Will Stay Messy, but Relationships Are Going To Shift
Carlock says the fun is “shuffling the deck,” pairing characters who shouldn’t work together until they suddenly do, starting with a Rusty-Monica twist next.
If these first two episodes are proving that it’s never really a neat comeback story, what’s the next big turn that you’re excited for viewers to see that changes how we understand Reggie and Arthur’s partnership?
MEANS: I think one big thing is their relationship with each other. Obviously, they’re very, very different people, but they do have the same thing in their past, a scandal, a failure, or something that they feel like they need to get past, and they need redemption for. So, even though they’ll always be butting heads about what the documentary should be about, and on a very personal level, what a good life is. They also have this commonality and this common ground that, over the course of the season, even if Arthur is trying to push back against it on a professional level, ends up with them becoming friends.
CARLOCK: I think it’s a sort of a lesson, and you touched on it in your previous question, too, and we learned at 30 Rock, which is, how do you create an ensemble where there’s a ton of disagreement about what sandwiches to order and politics, and also all this overlap? And one of the really fun things about 30 Rock was like in Season 5, saying, “What would a Frank-Jack story be like?” and sort of going in immediately and just knowing the skills that these actors had, and saying, “What’s a Rusty-Monica story?” and realizing, “Oh, that can work. He has something to give her.” Surprisingly, it’s a sort of dating story in the third episode. Anyway, just shuffling the deck and seeing what the characters bring out of each other.
MEANS: Right off the bat, we wanted to get Monica and Brina together to hopefully subvert that ex-wife and new wife story that you might expect from the two of them, and also let their characters exist in a world that’s not defined necessarily by Reggie.
This interview has been edited and abridged for clarity and length.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins airs Mondays at 8:30 p.m. EST on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
- Release Date
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January 18, 2026
- Directors
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Rhys Thomas