Martin Mull: ‘I’m getting the jobs Steve Martin & Chevy Chase don’t want’

TV veteran Martin Mull is convinced he’s picking up gigs in his 70s because Chevy Chase and Steve Martin don’t want them.
The former Roseanne regular, who also appeared in the films Jingle All the Way and Clue, will star in new U.S. TV comedy Cool Kids, which is set in a retirement community, this autumn (18), and he admits the role of Charlie came as he was considering retirement.
Now he realises that while funnymen Chevy and Steve are turning down parts, he’ll always have a job.
“Why am I working?” he asks. “All I can think of is that all of the people who would be cast, like me, have had the good sense to get out of this business. So it’s down to me, Steve Martin or Chevy.
“Producers are like, ‘Steve is busy playing the banjo and Chevy doesn’t want to do it, so let’s get Martin Mull’.
“I think about retiring, but when you’re handed a golden egg like this (Cool Kids) you’d be insane to say no.”
In the series, Mull stars alongside David Allen Grier, who he once bought a beer for in a club.
“I met him when I was playing in a band in Detroit,” he explains. “There was one kid in the audience, 17 years old, who was laughing in the right places. I said, ‘I like this guy, between sets I’m gonna buy him a beer’. Thirty years later he’s subbing for Greg Kinnear on a late night show and he reminded me we met.
“He said, ‘I’m the one you bought the beer for back in Detroit’. We have history and we hang out and it’s great.”