Steve Howey‘s guest spot on Happy’s Place featured some nods to his days playing Van on Reba — but did you catch every Easter egg?
During the Friday, December 6, episode of Happy’s Place, Howey, 47, finally shared the screen with Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman two decades after they starred on Reba. The trio played entirely different characters on NBC’s current series, but the show still found a way to acknowledge Howey’s past by having his character Danny deliver a line about a group of people he knew in Houston 20 years ago.
“That was already in the script, which I really liked. It was a little wink and nod to the old TV show audience,” Howey exclusively told Us Weekly about the tongue-in-cheek reference. “This is why it was so cool.”
The actor praised Happy’s Place for finding a way to tease the highly-anticipated Reba reunion.
“I grew up with classic sitcoms and so I always wanted to do a sitcom [as an actor]. I was lucky enough to be on one that is a classic. Fans have been telling me over the years that the show was the one thing that they could bond over with their family because it was appropriate for all ages,” Howey noted. “And it still plays and people still are finding it now.”
Howey called the subtle nods a “classic sitcom move,” adding, “Those little wink and nods are really cool for the audience. It was cool for us to do it and it was already written by one of the writers.”
Happy’s Place follows Bobbie (McEntire) as she inherits her father’s restaurant and discovers a new business partner in the long-lost half-sister (Belissa Escobedo) she didn’t know she had. Peterman, 53, plays a bartender at the restaurant while McEntire’s boyfriend, Rex Linn, also appears as tavern cook Emmett.
The sitcom brought McEntire, 69, and Peterman back together more than 17 years after their hit series Reba ended its six-year run on The WB. In addition to McEntire, Peterman and Howey, the beloved show also starred Christopher Rich and JoAnna Garcia Swisher.
While filming his scenes as Danny, Howey found ways to honor his Reba character.
“The line that I did give was the first time I walked in when Reba was drawing on Melissa’s picture and she made a mustache. I say, ‘Hey, nice mustache.’ She turns around and says, ‘Wish I could say the same about yours,’” he said about how Danny’s appearance differs from Van. “But that was my line to Reba — and that’s how cool Reba is. I can pitch something and she’s like, ‘I’ll try it,’ Also speaking of being really proud of the mustache, it makes its television debut on Happy’s Place.”
Happy’s Place doesn’t just have Reba alums in front of the camera. Showrunner Kevin Abbott, who was an executive producer on Reba when it aired on The WB between 2001 and 2007, was instrumental in using McEntire and Peterman’s new NBC sitcom as a way to work with their former costars.
“Kevin had this idea for this character ahead of time. And then he was like, ‘What if Howey would do it? That would be really great to get a reunion going.’ I fit the character description so he gave me a call,” Howey recalled to Us. “The planets just aligned on this one.”
As viewers have already realized, Happy’s Place might include some similarities to Reba but, ultimately, it is its own show. Howey’s character Danny is a perfect example of Happy’s Place utilizing nostalgia without mirroring every detail from Reba.
“Van is obviously different because I was so different. I was a lot younger, a lot more naive and a lot more fresh. It was my first series regular job so it was very new. Now after 20 some years, I can bring different experiences to the characters that I play,” Howey explained. “Also the character relationships — because Happy’s Place is a new thing — are different. Yes, it’s Reba Melissa, but the characters are different. Bobbie is a lot different than Reba. Gabby is a lot different than Barbara Jean and Danny’s obviously different.”
He continued: “This guy owns his own business. He has money and he’s playing this game. Like you said, Danny was onto them the whole time. … They have something special [with Happy’s Place] that just makes sense and Reba has another lightning in the bottle show.”
Howey is expected to appear in additional episodes, but that doesn’t mean he will interact with any other former Reba costars on the show. After Abbott previously confirmed their attempts to get Howey’s former onscreen love interest JoAnna Garcia Swisher to make a guest appearance, Howey told Us he would prefer they not share the screen.
“I kind of like this idea of all of us coming back in different forms. I had my single guest star episode and JoAnna should have her single guest star episode,” he noted. “I think JoAnna would have a great time. She’s an awesome person and that’s one of the beautiful things about the show is that we’re all still in communication. I just talked to JoAnna the other day.”
Howey also doesn’t have any plans to become a series regular on Happy’s Place, saying, “I haven’t done a sitcom in years. It’s been a long time since I got back on the horse and it wasn’t easy. It was a little bit hard because of the timing and the volume and the live studio audience. I was like, ‘This is no joke.’ I got used to single camera. I got used to Shameless and then True Lies with a single camera. It’s a different vibe. I kind of got the juices flowing again and I was like, ‘I [need to] have my own sitcom. This is fun.’”
Happy’s Place airs Fridays at 8 pm on NBC.
