Ted Danson solved his first case on Netflix’s A Man on the Inside — but what comes next?
After the show premiered on Thursday, November 21, Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Lilah Richcreek Estrada shared their season 2 wishlist exclusively with Us Weekly.
“[We should do a case] in Hawaii. That would be so cool. Or Fiji,” Ellis, 45, shared before Richcreek Estrada, 35, added, “A fancy cruise would be [great]. We could do Rome or Greece. Or something beachy and fun.”
The cast has tons of ideas but they don’t know what show creator Michael Schur has planned. “They don’t tell us anything,” Richcreek Estrada shared. “They don’t want us to give things away. We don’t know.”
Schur’s most recent show, A Man on the Inside, is based on Maite Alberdi’s 2020 documentary The Mole Agent. The comedy series follows a recently widowed retiree Charles (Ted Danson) who infiltrates a senior living facility to help solve a case for private investigator Julie (Richcreek Estrada). His mission is to find out who has been stealing from the retirement community, but Charles starts to feel at home at Pacific View very quickly.
“I do want to be purposeful about what [projects] I pick, which is what’s so amazing about working with Michael Schur because what he writes about is important and it’s purposeful,” Danson, 76, told Us earlier this month. “There’s intention behind what he writes. So yes, it can be funny, but it is fully human and I love [it]. I think that’s what actors love most is exploring the human condition. It doesn’t mean you can’t be silly and funny.”
Danson went on to share what he learned from making A Man on the Inside, adding, “I talked a good game of, ‘I’m enough at my age to keep playing.’ I think after I got through the entire thing it was, ‘Yeah, it’s OK for you to look your age, Ted.’”
He continued: “It’s OK for you to have aches and pains. You don’t have to get rid of them to keep working. Just keep working, enjoy where you are, no matter whether it hurts or not, just keep going.”
Richcreek Estrada, Ellis and Stephanie Beatriz also took away a meaningful message about living life to the fullest.
“We portrayed the best case scenario that we do get to get older. I personally think that you can create every stage of your life to be big and beautiful and exactly how you want it. So I’m excited to keep doing that regardless of how old I am,” Richcreek Estrada, 43, shared with Us. “And I think our show gives us permission to do that at any stage of our life. It shows us that it’s possible.”
Ellis, meanwhile, called A Man on the Inside a “beautiful invitation” to enjoy getting older.
“It holds the aging process in such dignity, love, optimism and light,” she noted. “Getting old is the best case scenario. That’s actually what we want. We want to be here for a long time. … There’s such optimism about aging in this show. I think people really connect with it.
As for Beatriz, she hopes the audience walks away from the show appreciating life more.
“Sometimes you just got to laugh about this s—, otherwise you f—ing lose your mind. When you look in the mirror and see another wrinkle, you’ve got to laugh,” she told Us. “Sometimes you have to look at life and think to yourself, ‘This is actually pretty good. We’re still in it and it’s pretty damn good.’ Then when someone leaves this life and you miss them and you love them you think, ‘Damn, wasn’t that so good that I miss them and I love them still?’”
A Man on the Inside is now streaming on Netflix.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi and Mariel Turner
