Steve Gerben and John McKeever Talk ‘Tires’ Season 2

Tires season two rolled out on Netflix today, Thursday, June 5. Riding shotgun in the Shane Gillis-vehicle are his friends and creative partners for a decade, co-star/writer Steve Gerben and writer/director John McKeever. (For the sake of the analogy, picture a 1970s Chevy Bel Air front bench seat.)

Well, really, it is McKeever (who professionally goes by just “McKeever”) steering the car with Gerben navigating — or vice versa. The 6’3” Gillis is stretched out in the backseat — that’s where the celebrity goes — but he’s not merely along for the ride. We’ll stop forcing the metaphor immediately.

Gillis is a co-creator of the series and number one on its call sheet. He’s also the guy who paid out of pocket to build the Tires set.

Tires was originally shot as a 10-minute pilot for YouTube and sold as a series to Quibi. Unfortunately, Quibi lasted about as long as Gillis did at SNL. (OK, so Quibi made it six months; Gillis’ Saturday Night Live stint lasted five whole days, though he’s since hosted twice.)

Early on in the conception phase, the guys chose a body shop setting for the most pragmatic reason possible: because Steve’s dad owns one. Gillis, a successful standup comic and the co-host of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, put an addition onto the Gerben family business, a tire shop in Westchester, Pennsylvania. It’s where they still film today. (It’s also where they pull storylines: Gerben’s dad had some trouble with his suppliers over a plan to sell their tires at his cost, which comes to a head in Tires season two.)

So Netflix picked up Tires for the price of an oil change, basically. OK, now we’re done.

I liked the first season, but I loved the second. Would you agree that season two is even better than season one?

JM: I think the nature of the first season was— I would almost argue it was a long cold open, and really, our whole goal with that first season was to nail down the tone and the style of the show. We really just honed in on one storyline, and mostly because we didn’t have a ton of production, money, time, resources — stuff like that. So we really treated season two like a season one.

Season one was famously inexpensive to make…

JM: Outside of a found-footage documentary, I feel like this is about as cheap as it gets.

SG: As cheap as season one was to make, we’d be remiss not to say that Shane did spend all his own money to make it. This time around, it’s Netflix’s money.

At the time, did you guys view Shane’s near-instant firing from Saturday Night Live a bummer or a blessing?

JM: When he was auditioning for SNL, I talked to him after he auditioned, and I said, “You’re gonna get it, because they don’t have anyone like you.” [Shane’s] an archetype that hasn’t been around for a really long time. If I’m Lorne Michaels, I would see [Shane] and say, “God, I can do so much with him” — outside of just the fact that he’s mega-talented.

I think of him as like Adam Sandler. And I’ve always thought of Steve as like Jason Bateman. These two guys are very, very good in their lanes. And if we can find a way to mash them together, that’s incredible. But yeah, when, when Shane got SNL, I thought of it as like in Good Will Hunting, where Ben Affleck is like, “I hope I knock on your door one day and you’re not there.” It was that feeling where it’s like, I don’t want to see you go, but I’m happy you’re moving on. And then when he got fired, we definitely were like, sweet, we get to do our stuff again.

SG: One of the first things Shane did when he got SNL was ask Lorne Michaels if he could still do Tires, which is an insane thing to ask.

OK, so what’s up with the McKeever one name thing in the credits?

JM: I’m so glad you asked that, because I feel like people give me shit about it.

As they should.

JM: Yeah. It’s not the, it’s not really the Madonna angle of, like, “Ooh, mysterious.” It’s more that’s just what people call me. And because, you know, John is such a common name. My really close friends call me John, but most people refer to me as McKeever. And the other thing that I kind of realized when we started making Tires and when I started doing more behind-the-camera stuff and just writing, I just thought, you know, I have like, a three-second window in every episode for people to remember who I am. And I just feel like I should probably get rid of half of the stuff they have to remember. So if I can get them to get rid of “John,” which is probably the most forgettable name out there…and I think a lot of times when people read “John,” they almost don’t even read the second part.

My fear was like, it would be viewed as, like, “Who the fuck does this guy think?”

That’s definitely how I viewed it.

JM: I totally get it. But it was more like I have three seconds for people to remember who I am…

Steve, you just did Late Night with Seth Meyers…

SG: Shane wanted me to do Late Night and wouldn’t do it without me. Hats off to Seth for taking that risk. But anyway, I was telling Shane, like, “I’m very nervous.” And the way that this whole thing goes down, you know, it’s very like, bing, bang, boom. You’re in the green room, then hair and makeup, Seth’s doing the monologue, they bring you out, “They’re like, stand here, Steve you’re gonna sit there. Get together, take a picture.” And they go, “20 seconds.” And so then I’m just standing there…and I look at Shane and I go, “I’m having some pretty bad fight-or-flight right now, man.” And he just looks back and he goes, “fight.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard something that cool, that badass.

JM: It was so cool to see Steve be Steve, and now the world gets to see that. It is a true one-of-one. I think the nice thing about Tires is it’s a true Trojan Horse. Shane gets everybody in the door, and Steve falls out.

Shane plays “Shane” and Kilah Fox plays “Kilah” — most of the cast uses their real names — but Steve plays Will and Chris O’Connor plays Cal. When do you use real first names and when don’t you?

SG: Very early on I told Shane, “Do a different name, like Sean or something.” He’s like, “Just call me Shane.” I don’t know why we kept “Kilah”… but Shane was just like — he didn’t want to be bothered.

JM: It was honestly a nightmare when we wrote the first season, because I would write some scripts, and I put “Steve” because I couldn’t get used to the “Will” thing. Now it’s very easy.

SG: Shane does not like that I’m Will because he does not like that I’m acting. I wanted to act. I wanted, as small as it is, to separate from me the person.

How’s your dad’s shop doing? Has the show been good for business?

SG: No, he’s not doing, like, better. He’s not doing any worse. The [Tires shop and real shop] have different names, and— shops are just, they’re tough to run. It’s just really hard to hire right now, he’s just, like, chronically understaffed. You would think, next to this set [it would get a boost], but it hasn’t changed for much. But he’s fine.

Did you work at the shop?

SG: I was trying to work for him, I would work the counter, and I was awful. And so, for the past 16 years, I’ve been working for my brother. But yeah, I just wasn’t cut out for for [the shop] business, honestly.

What does your brother do?

SG: He is a trademark attorney.

Are you a attorney? A paralegal?

SG: Paralegal. (Laughs) But now, Tony, I’m an actor!

The show, especially season two, covers a lot of topics that can be dicey to approach comedically. This season, Shane brings a gun to work — and that’s just the first episode. Is it a purposeful choice to go hit on all of the subjects you’re not supposed to joke about in polite company?

SG: I’m going to take that one because John would be too modest to answer this. It’s John. He knows how to walk that line, and he will also— sometimes it’s very hard in the moment when everybody’s pitching, like, funny ideas or whatever, to be the bad guy and be like, “That’s too far.” And yet he makes those decisions. And it is John. That is a very specific thing where it’s like, he— Shane can walk a line too, we’ve all seen that. But insofar as the writing process, John is just so good at that.

JM: Steve and I, we spend a lot of time on that. There’s a few rules that we we follow and that we generally believe in. And one of them is like, “Is this funny or is this mean?” If it feels mean, it’s got to go. If it’s to make a point, you know, if it’s to make some lame political point — one way or the other — where you’re trying to get people watching, not to laugh, but to go, “Hmm, I agree with that.” Then that fucking sucks.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about, like, what we can and can’t say. And I think we can say anything. I think anything’s on the table, but it’s that whole thing of, “Are we making sure that the right person is the butt of the joke here?” And we are ingratiating our characters to the audience enough for them to grant us forgiveness. When we do those jokes, if you have a bunch of characters that are jerk offs and they’re sitting around like, “I can’t stand trans people,” it’s like well, your show’s gonna suck. If you set it up the right way, I think you can do anything.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.