Overlooked Calif. university is the background for Steve Carell's new HBO show |
In one of the most memorable scenes in the new HBO series “Rooster,” Steve Carell’s character, Greg, climbs up the side of a building at the fictitious Ludlow College to steal a weathervane, a campus tradition that results in a day off for the students.
It turns out that building was in Stockton — specifically, University of the Pacific’s McCaffrey Center, or at least a makeshift roof set built onto its second story.
“Steve Carell was having to do some almost acrobatic type of climbing around on a rooftop,” Ashley Williams, the university’s director of strategic initiatives, said of the shoot. “So he was right outside our window, and they’re having a wind machine, so wind’s coming at him ... That was pretty entertaining to watch close up.”
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With exteriors filmed almost entirely at the university over two weeks in June 2025, “Rooster” follows beach read author Greg Russo as he becomes a visiting professor at Ludlow in an attempt to spend more time with his daughter (Charly Clive), who is an adjunct professor there. She’s in the midst of a hard breakup with another professor, played by “Ted Lasso” alum Phil Dunster. Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”), John C. McGinley (“Scrubs”) and Lauren Tsai (“Legion”) round out the rest of the cast.
Charly Clive and Phil Dunster in “Rooster.”
The series was created by Bill Lawrence (“Spin City,” “Ted Lasso”) and his collaborator on “Scrubs,” Matt Tarses. The genesis came from a meeting among Lawrence, Tarses and Carell where they realized they were all at a specific stage of parenthood.
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“One thing the three of us had in common was we all had daughters in their early 20s who were kind of burgeoning into adulthood and didn’t need their fathers anymore, especially for three men that didn’t mind being fairly intrusive in their lives and wanting to overprotect them,” Lawrence told SFGATE.
Burns Tower at University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif.
Tarses, an alum of Williams College in Massachusetts,........