Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Adults Season 1.At first glance, FX’s Adults is about a group of twentysomethings trying to be grown-ups and ironically failing with every opportunity they get. With the Certified Fresh series now available to binge in its entirety on Hulu amid weekly drops on FX, the laugh-out-loud sitcom from Tonight Show writers Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold doesn’t pull any punches with its emotional messiness. And in Season 1’s standout sixth episode, “Roast Chicken,” the Charlie Cox and Julia Fox dinner party spiral is a literal mess. Between a horrifying roast chicken with raw insides, an uninvited guest (hello, Ms. Fox), and layers of friendship tension sliced wide open, the two showrunners and their cast — Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Owen Thiele, Amita Rao, and Malik Elassal — tell Collider exclusively how a mix of improv, raw chicken logistics, and a very real sense of discomfort helped bring the dinner party meltdown to life. Not to mention, while everyone agrees it was the toughest and most collaborative episode to shoot, it was one that best captures the show’s balance of chaos and catharsis.
Why Billie’s Relationship With Mr. Teacher Implodes on ‘Adults’

By the time the series’ charming New York bunch gets to the antepenultimate episode of the first season, Billie (Freyer) is happily dating her former high school teacher, endearingly known as “Mr. Teacher” (Cox). Things look good on the surface after Mr. Teacher (aka Andrew) admits he doesn’t care what his older, fellow divorced friends might think of her. But as we learn in this episode, he is actually experiencing his very own midlife crisis that has him trying ketamine for the first time at Billie’s very grown-up, rite-of-passage-style roast chicken dinner party. Elassal, who plays Samir, loved filming the episode and tells Collider it took about a week to film in Toronto, where they shot the first season. “We shot it over the course of a few days, and we’re in the same clothes, and we’re at the same dinner party, and we’re in the same location, and you’re not seeing a lot of sunlight, and you’re just in there,” he says. “It did feel like a day that would never end. That episode in and of itself was like a summer camp. We had our own camp within that episode.” The Canadian-born comedian adds how he and Cox had a “really late night” together following the scenes they filmed, which find Samir going to bat for Billie (one of his best friends and former crushes) while being overly protective of her feelings. As Freyer adds, Billie’s resistance to Samir’s warnings is all about her wanting to feel put together, as Mr. Teacher stood for being on the right track to adulthood, even if the pair breaks up by the end of it all.

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“Nevertheless, she persisted!”

“She was seeking approval from an authority figure from her days of being the golden child, but I think she genuinely did like him,” she says. “The thing that Charlie and I were focusing on was making sure that the first two episodes that he’s in, Episodes 4 and 5, felt like a rom-com until Episode 6, when it completely just derailed.” Despite her thinking that a part of Billie’s drive for this messy relationship was to get “approval from someone from her past,” Freyer adds how everything was really easy-going and felt organic despite all the chaos in the script. Plus, there was always room for improv from the cast. “We did a clean take as scripted, and then [the showrunners] would always let us have one for free and throw stuff at the wall,” she smiles. “It was so exciting, because we’ve now seen all the episodes, seeing how much of the improv was left in, which is always fun.”
‘Adults’ Episode “Roast Chicken” Was a Tableau for Real Life

Image via FX

Showrunners Shaw and Kronengold go on to sing Cox’s praises, calling the Daredevil star “an absolute genius” when it comes to his comedic chops. “We have been fans of his for years on so many of his projects, [so] the idea that we meet ‘Mr. Teacher,’ Billie’s English teacher from high school, with all of the hopes and dreams that she projects onto this guy [and] starts a relationship with him,” Shaw expresses is exciting. But as she also notes, over three episodes, we watch this man with a midlife crisis have a full breakdown “that is deeply funny, but also hopefully a little bit real and a little bit human.” The former Tonight Show writer adds that it’s in these three episodes that Billie learns Mr. Teacher “isn’t just a teacher, [but] just this hypothetical projected version of validation, and what she thought her adult life was going to be like.” But at the end of it all, he’s also just a guy trying his best to navigate the symptoms of being an adult, which includes having an ex-wife and “trying ketamine for the first time, [even if] it’s not going well.” As Kronengold shares, a lot of Billie’s needs for this party are based on the “ego” that goes into one’s first grown-up event. “‘Hey, this is tangible proof that we are grown-ups and that we’re sophisticated. We’re doing it for our older, essentially, ‘group boyfriend,’” he says, adding how Mr. Teacher is all of theirs to impress. “[But] then for it to go so wrong. The chicken… what happens to this absolutely disgusting chicken… is a metaphor for maybe the façade of your 20s going well, and then what’s really on the inside. It felt like it was too good to pass up.”
The Roast Chicken on ‘Adults’ Was Grosser Than You Think

Image via FX

While chaos ensues in the episode and no one is quite sure what wafting means by the end of it, Rao tells us the chicken is all “practical effects” in play. “They blow-torched the outside, and then the inside was raw. Then, for the actual slices, I think we had real raw chicken, but then Charlie had this soy meat material,” she says with her co-star Elassal adding how it was not at all tasty. Rao responds, “No, no. He spit it out after every bite. He had to eat so much of it.” Elassal adds how “everybody was so cautious” on set that day because there were scenes where they were cutting actual raw chicken. “They had to have, like, six sit-down talks, like, ‘Nobody touch the chicken!’” “We were so afraid we would eat raw chicken juice,” Rao laughs. “They were really afraid that it would happen accidentally. They were like, ‘It touched the chicken! It touched the chicken!’ They had to take it out and bring in a new tray.” Adults is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu with weekly episode drops on FX.