Interview: Adam Scott on the Course of His Career and Coming Back to ‘Party Down’

When the first two seasons of Party Down first aired on Starz from March 2009 to June 2010, that was just before Adam Scott joined the cast of Parks and Recreation and endeared himself to a generation of TV fans. It was also long before his starring role in the Apple TV+ drama series Severance, which earned Scott his first Emmy nomination, along with another bid for producing the series. Now, Scott is back in season three of Party Down, playing the familiar role of catering bartender Henry.

Awards Radar had the chance to speak with Scott about how, unlike Henry, he’s seen some career movement in the time between seasons two and three:

“As far as I know, I’m still in show business, and I do still enjoy doing it. Yeah, it’s a very different circumstance than Henry, which is funny, because when we started Party Down…I had a lot in common with Henry. I had been kicking around then for ten, fifteen years and was still treading water and hadn’t really gotten any real traction. I think we all related pretty directly with these characters, and I certainly did with Henry, with the frustration with the barriers in front of us.”

On shooting that season finale surprise and how much of a heads-up he had:

“We definitely knew. It was something we wanted to do the whole time. It was just a matter of the logistics of getting a skeleton crew out to New York to shoot it. It was just Ken, me, Dan, and Jon Enbom, I believe that’s it, came out and just, in an afternoon, shot the scene with Lizzy. It took most of the day, maybe half a day, because then they shot some other stuff we didn’t end up using. It was very top-secret. We didn’t want anyone to know, obviously, and kept the screener back from critics. We wanted it to be a surprise. Happily, it did surprise people, which is always fun.”

Watch the full conversation below.

Seasons one through three of Party Down are streaming on Starz.