‘Troop Zero’ Star Jim Gaffigan on Why We Are Desperate For More Hopeful Stories of Community

Troop Zero premiered earlier this year and with it came a nostalgia for a period of pop culture history that audiences are hungry for. The film features a young, quirky group of outsiders fighting for their place in a world where they are dismissed by everyone around them.

It’s the kind of story that kids of the 80s and 90s were raised on. Think The Sandlot or The Breakfast Club or even The Goonies. So why is a story like that resonating so strongly with audiences in 2020? Star Jim Gaffigan credits the film’s relevancy to its sense of hope in a world absorbed with cynicism.

Speaking with Awards Daily, Gaffigan touches on why that sense of hope inspires a sense of community, especially in trying times like these. The Grammy-nominated comedian also fills us in on how he has been keeping himself busy in quarantine while homeschooling his kids and finding ways to keep himself creatively busy.

Awards Daily: How have you been holding up while the country is self-isolating? I noticed that you’ve been keeping yourself busy by channeling your creative energy into making videos for the CBS morning news and various streaming projects!

Jim Gaffigan: I’m here with five kids in our New York City apartment and my wife is high risk so we’re on this double-secret quarantine. It’s pretty intense with distance learning so there’s not a lot of free time. I’ve been doing a weekly segment on CBS Sunday Morning and every night at 6PM we have dinner with the Gaffigans live on Youtube to raise money to get nice warm meals to those working in hospitals. That’s how we’ve been spending our time.

AD: Jumping into Troop Zero, what initially drew you to the film?

JG: I had read the script and responded to the opportunity to play this guy who was from a different era, the 70s. He was a man trying to be the best kind of dad he could be. He knew he could be a good guy but was just kind of plowing along. The script was interesting, and I knew there was something ambitious about this story. Ramsey is someone who I might not be, but I could be, and that is how I was able to find those parts of him in me.

Obviously working with the likes of Viola Davis, Allison Janney, and McKenna Grace was a very appealing element too. The script was interesting.

AD: The film first became widely available to audiences on Amazon Prime back in January. What kind of reactions have you heard from fans?

JG: It’s interesting the comments I get on social media. I have received so many comments like, “Wow. I never thought I would see you do something like that.” I think we live in this age of cynicism and they look for a film like this because it’s a hopeful movie. There’s hope for all of the characters in this communal sense because life is hard. Crisis creates community.

AD: There was something about Troop Zero that made me nostalgic for the stories I consumed as child – films like The Sandlot or even Fried Green Tomatoes. Films with a homegrown, underdog sense of community. Was that something that drew you to the film and why don’t you think we see those stories quite as often anymore?

JG: I think there’s something about Troop Zero that is uncynical. There is something about it that is ambitious. The movie is littered with these almost tragic things that have happened to these people, but there is a hopeful promise that is aspirational and at times almost saccharine.

One of the things I realized while shooting was that this was almost in the same vein as John Hughes although he dealt more with teenagers as opposed to kids. It looked at class as opposed to race. Ramsey and Miss Rayleen (Viola Davis) were the victims of class. It was about not letting society define who you are. That’s a compliment to the directors [Bert & Bertie] because that’s a very nimble thing and you don’t want to be too flatfooted about it. I think that the oddball as the hero is something that is so universally adored that it is hard for us to grow tired of it.

AD: Your character, Ramsey, has a very interesting bond with his daughter Christmas (played by McKenna Grace). What was it like creating that onscreen bond with McKenna?

JG: She is a special kid. Being an actor is a strange, lonely, awkward journey, so whenever I work with another actor I feel an empathy because I understand the journey they’ve gone through. There is a resilience you have to deal with. I always think that acting is so interesting because there is nothing glamorous about it, but it is always portrayed as such. Even when you go to a movie premiere and you’re waiting to be brought into the theatre, you aren’t hanging out in a palace but instead in some cramped room where they store the popcorn. Then you are escorted into the same theatre where people would have been watching Trolls the day before. It’s all made up. There is so much rejection that’s encountered throughout the entertainment industry so there’s an immediate empathy you feel for participants. But McKenna is somebody who has this perspective that I see in my own kids and family. It’s not something foreign to me. With kids you have to communicate that it’s safe to be a kid.

AD: Speaking of the father-daughter relationship between Ramsey and Christmas, this is a story that completely subverts gender roles, especially what it means to be a father in the 70s. What was that like to play with especially since you yourself are a father?

JG: These cultural roles that get placed on us are relatively random. Not being caught up in letting other people define your path is what I think this movie is about. Not letting the man or society or class structure or expectations keep you down is a consistent theme. For Ramsey, one of the things I was mindful of is that his ability to articulate his emotions are standard male fare, but he was much more of a good guy. Even in his failings he had this appealing nature; obviously, he was not an ideal father, but his heart was in the right place. He bucked the system every day so you can see why his daughter was challenging the system. Whether he was successful or not how he approached each law case was very much like trying to communicate with aliens, absolute long shots.

AD: At the core of this film is a rag-tag group of kids who come together in large part because of the way the rest of society has bullied them. You are a father of five kids, do you think this film’s take on bullying rings true today even though this was a story taking place in the 70s?

JG: As a society we have been dealing with bullying and online bullying, but this movie deals with societal and class bullying. When people are bullied online or at a playground, I think it’s good for kids to see other examples of how to stand up. It’s never one example whether it be physical aggression or enforcement of gender roles, it is something that half of the participants aren’t even aware of what they’re doing. All of these characters in this film grow and learn and obviously as an actor you want this complexity but as a viewer it’s also great to see. I’m 53, so I grew up in this time and at the time there was an adherence to this that was absurd. It’s great to see now because it’s holding a mirror up to us and the same thing will be happening to us in ten years where we look back at some of the naive things we’ve done.

Troop Zero is available to stream on Amazon Prime.