Brooklyn Nine-Nine Gears Up for Season 2 [SET VISIT, INTERVIEWS, PHOTOS] 

Being booked and processed is no laughing matter. Unless you’re visiting the set of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, then it’s nearly impossible not to laugh. Last week, a swarm of press members stepped up for their mugshots before entering the precinct and sitting down with the show’s stars and creators to get all the scoop on the Golden Globe winning first season and what to expect for season 2.

With Andre Braugher‘s recent Emmy nom for playing stoic and straight-faced Captain Holt, it was a bit of a surprise to see him laughing and playing it up with the rest of the cast. And apparently we aren’t the only one who thinks Braugher’s performance is so phenomenal that it has to be true to life. When asked how fans react to him on the street, he admits that people are often shocked to see his softer side as well.

ANDRE BRAUGHER: People are a little amazed. As though I’m at home raging and raving…. People develop a relationship with your character and they feel as though they know you. And then you show up and you’re a surprise, I’m not what they think I am.

But not all the actors stray so far from their characters. In fact, Melissa Fumero told us that her first-day jitters came in handy when playing neurotic Amy Santiago.

MELISSA FUMERO: Honestly, I think one of the things that helped me is that I, Melissa, was extremely nervous when we did the pilot and when we first started and when I had to do scenes with Andre. I mean, I was sweating bullets. I was like “don’t f*ck this up. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Get it right.” Those are the things that [were going through my head] and I was like “Oh, those are basically the things that are going through Amy’s mind as well, just like dialed up to like a thousand.” So it helped me connect with her very quickly.

I don’t know about you, but I think Amy came a long way over the course of the season. Watching her cha-cha her way through the case and fake a sprained ankle to cause a diversion was something the old Amy would’ve never considered and I’m loving that Jake’s goofiness is rubbing off on her. Speaking of Jake, Amy wasn’t the only character to have changed by the finale. Andy Samberg acknowledged Jake’s baby-steps-to-maturity throughout the season, but assured us that a more mature Jake doesn’t mean any less laughs.

ANDY SAMBERG:  I mean, I think that for all my favorite shows, comedy or otherwise, you do watch your characters grow. And I think part of the joy of, for me, performing it last season was that Jake does mature slightly and does grow up a little due to circumstance, which, I think, everyone in this room can relate to. But at the core, he’s just a silly person and has that sort of zest for the job and for his life and sort of screwing around with the people that he’s near. So I think ‑‑ even if he does mature, I don’t see it as a direct conflict with the tone of what hopefully is making him funny.

Both the cast and creators were equally tight-lipped when it came to season 2, only telling us that there will be a time jump and that both of the season 1 romantic cliffhangers will be addressed when the show returns this fall. And of course, that led to questions about Jake’s romantic admission and where creator Mike Schur plans to go with Jake and Amy’s undeniable chemistry.

MIKE SCHUR: Well, every time there’s any kind of romance on TV nowadays, people ask you what playbook you are running…. And I think that our attitude about it was simply like, let’s see where this takes us instead of let’s run the Jim Pam playbook, or let’s run the whatever playbook…. It’s sort of like, as stories suggest themselves, we follow those stories. And we wouldn’t have done the cliffhanger that we did at the end of season 1 if we had no intention of, following that story into season 2 and perhaps beyond, but it’s not going to be the main focus of the show. It’s going to be a thing. It’s going to be one of the elements of the show that we are following as the year goes on.

Everyone loved the romance talk, but if there was one overriding theme for this visit, it was teamwork. And sports metaphors, lots and lots of sports metaphors. But as cheesy as it sounds, each and every cast-member credited their colleagues and the writers (especially the writers!) for the success of the show.

TERRY CREWS: For me when you take a role like Adam Sandler’s “Blended,” my job was to come in and steal, show up, be big, whatever. Here my job is to fit in and my job is much more I’m a part of the group. As opposed to come in, steal the show, be “White Chicks” guy, boom boom boom, be the macho, it’s really about now, the jokes work when I’m less big and  it’s really a great exercise with Andre and Andy and Chelsea, we’re like a team. It’s almost like getting an alley-oop from Chelsea on a joke and you slam dunk. And then the next time its a behind-the-back pass to Melissa then Joe’s rolling with it because the writing is so good.

Melissa may have been ready for the behind-the-back pass, but when asked if she had any hopes or ideas for Detective Santiago in the coming season, Melissa chose to stay on the bench, instead pointing to the writer’s superior work.

MELISSA FUMERO: I though a little bit about that on our hiatus during break and I realized that anything I could think of or dream up would never be anywhere as good as what our writers could come up with, honestly. And that’s not even a butt-kissing answer, that’s the ultimate truth. And I just get so obsessively crazy waiting for scripts because I can’t wait to read them and see what they came up with so I’ve just kind of let that all go and see what happens because it’s all going to be great.

But this isn’t a one-sided love affair. The creators also complemented the actors and their ability to hit a home run with anything that’s thrown their way.

MIKE SCHUR: If you look at this cast of people, in just going, like, “All right. We are a chef, and we are going to make a new recipe, and it’s got the following ingredients: Chelsea Peretti and Terry Crews and Joe Lo Truglio.” And then, you end up coming up with a really fun story. And we are at the point ‑‑ and we got to the point very quickly ‑‑ where you can take any two, three, four, five of these people and put them in a room together and it’s going to be fun. And that’s a real luxury from a writing standpoint. It makes our jobs a lot easier when that’s the case. We are never worried about comedy coming from any one of the people in the cast. They all have very strong comedic points of view and very strong characters, and whatever the combination of people, it makes it a lot easier to write.

Be sure to catch Brooklyn Nine-Nine when it returns on it’s new night, Sunday September 28th at 8:30/7:30c on Fox.