SUPER FUN NIGHT celebrates their first Christmas episode tonight with one that finds the gang stranded in the woods when they run out of gas looking for a Christmas tree.  I spent some time chatting with series star Kevin Bishop about what’s coming up tonight and beyond – for Richard, for Richard and Kimmie as friends and possibly something more, and what happens when Richard finally spends some time with Kimmie’s friends!

It looks like you’re having such a good time on set – you can tell how it’s filmed.  Is it something where you laugh all day long?
It’s one of those jobs that you do that you just feel that everyone, we’re such good friends, we’re just really lucky to have a cast that everyone gets on so well. I knew Rebel a couple years ago so that helped with our chemistry.  We made a film together a few years ago called A FEW BEST MEN.  So we had a good chemistry before we started SUPER FUN NIGHT. As for everyone else – Rebel is very clever in how she’s picking her cast.  She knows who is funny, she can tell immediately.  There are no egos on set; everyone seems to get on very well.  It feels like I’m back at school.

That’s the dream isn’t it – to go to work and not feel like you’re working at all?
Oh it’s amazing.  Literally, we’re on hiatus at the moment, and I literally cannot wait to get back to work. [laughs]

Coming up, it sounds like we have a good Christmas Eve episode – talk a little bit about [tonight’s] episode where it sounds like you end up out of gas in a cabin?
Basically, Richard has lost a bet to Kimmie in a hot dog eating contest.  He thought that he might be able to beat her, and he lost.  The deal was that he had to drive Kimmie wherever and whenever she wants, all the way up to Christmas.  He is the only one out of Kimmie and Richard who has a car.  He ends up driving her to a Christmas tree farm somewhere in upstate New York and it turns out to be somewhat of a disaster and hilarity ensues, obviously.

We’ve seen a lot of Richard and Kendall’s relationship, a lot of Richard and Kimmie, but it sounds like this episode brings you together with Helen-Alice and Marika, too – what’s that been like working as a group?
It’s an interesting thing to do.  Up until this point, it’s all been about Kimmie and Richard, or Kimmie and Kendall, or Kimmie and her friends back in the house, with Helen-Alice and Marika.  We hadn’t really crossed the streams between Richard and her and Marika – they’d met before but they haven’t spent a lot of time together, and we just wanted to play with that.  We went to the middle of nowhere with them, and believe or not, they don’t get along as well as you think [laughs].  For some reason, Marika seems to really get up Richard’s nose.  In the Christmas episode, you see a very different side to Richard. You see him get very irritable.  All the way through the episode, he seems to be very cross and very angry, probably because of what’s going on in his personal life with Kendall, but yeah, he seems to be quite agitated throughout the episode.  It’s great because when people get agitated, they tend to get even funnier!

I love the relationships – you mention the personal issues with Kendall – what will we continue to see with that triangle?  Will Richard and Kimmie go forward with something?
In all honesty, I don’t know.  They tell me as little as they can possibly can until the very last minute! [laughs]  It’s quite an interesting dynamic – all I can speak of from my own personal point of view, I think it would be interesting to see what happens with Kimmie and Richard, and the new addition of James, Kimmie’s sort of new love interest.  And also the fact that he’s a friend of Richard’s, things could get pretty interesting as time goes by, and I for one would like to see how that story plays out.

Even at the base of the relationship, there’s a really good friendship, that I enjoy.  We don’t see a lot of guy/girl friendships explored.
It’s that old one – “oh you can’t have a friend and it be platonic.” I think that’s nonsense, and I think that’s a stigma to keep that thing going.  Most guys, to be honest, have had a friend, throughout their life, that was completely platonic, that was a woman.  And they were just really good friends, platonic, and had a really good laugh, and never really took it anywhere other than that place.  Maybe as they that older and looked back, they thought, oh jeez, she was the one for me, I should have stuck with that girl!  I don’t know, but I think everyone can identify with that situation.  Also, I think when guys have that kind of relationship with a woman, they tend to tell them things they would tell other guys, so I think they become more intimate with that person than they do with their own partners.

You mentioned that you don’t hear about what’s coming until you are on set or until you have the script – does that inform your character in a different way?
They give me some notice – we’re going in today to read our next episode when we film after hiatus.  I’m going in today [Friday] to read what we’re going to shoot on Monday.  So though I have a bit of time, I don’t have huge amount of time to really change the course or trajectory of what I’m doing, which I like, to be honest with you.  It keeps it fresh, and you feel like you’re involved in the storyline, instead of guiding it in some way.  I must admit, I enjoy that.

Why do you think people should tune into SUPER FUN NIGHT?
What I love about SUPER FUN NIGHT, especially on a network like ABC – there’s lots of family comedies on ABC, and one of the wonderful things about SUPER FUN NIGHT is that it talks about being single.  It talks about being single and trying to find love in the world.  I think that a lot of people struggle to find that sometimes.  What Rebel has is a voice for larger women.  Bigger women are often portrayed as if they’re having a ball, having the best time of their life, and everything is great.  People don’t understand the reality, maybe suffering a bit, and I think Rebel speaks completely from the heart and with a true heart.  I think that’s something that for me in comedy is essential.  It’s not just something you can do or you can’t. If you’re going to do comedy, it has to be honest, it has to be true, and I think Rebel is playing this 100% from the bottom of her heart, and to me that’s why it’s hilarious, and why it’s touching!

For more info about SUPER FUN NIGHT, head to ABC.com! “Merry Super Fun Night Christmas” airs Wednesday at 9:30/8:30c following a great new MODERN FAMILY!