Steve Carell's slip filming ‘Rooster’ - ‘Everyone broke instantly’

Steve Carell stars in HBO's \

Appropriately, the idea for HBO’s new comedy “Rooster” hatched from an emptying chicken coop, creators Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs,” “Shrinking”) and Matt Tarses (“Bad Monkey,” “Sports Night”) squawk – er, say.

They, along with star Steve Carell “all have daughters that are about the same age, in their early 20s,” Tarses says. “And are all faced with the same issue of trying to be involved slash control their lives and them not being interested in that anymore.”

Lawrence adds, “because if you held a gun to our head, we'd have to admit we're not really doing it to protect them. We're doing it for ourselves and to try and stay in their lives as they kind of pull away, as they should, because they're adults.”

In “Rooster” (Sundays, 10 ET/PT and streaming on HBO Max) Greg Russo (Carell) is a divorced, successful novelist with a series of books starring a character named Rooster, who accepts an offer from Ludlow College’s president (John C. McGinley) to be the school’s writer in residence, where his daughter Katie (Charly Clive) also teaches. Greg hopes to comfort Katie her amid a separation from her husband Archie (Phil Dunster), who’s become involved with a graduate student (Lauren Tsai).

Dunster and Lawrence worked together on “Ted Lasso,” in which the actor embodied the self-centered striker Jamie Tartt, who softened over time.