The Community movie announcement came together at the last minute, according to Danny Pudi

Although it’s been years in the making, when the time finally came to announce the long-awaited Community film, everything was pulled together at the eleventh hour. Danny Pudi shares that co-star Joel McHale texted him the night before the film’s official announcement, sharing that it would become public knowledge sooner rather than later.

“Joel McHale started it, texted me. But it was truly so last minute. Everything is last minute. I get a text from my agents saying, ‘It’s going to be announced tomorrow morning,’ Pudi says in a new interview with GQ. “Then I’m talking to Joel and we’re figuring it out, and he’s telling me what time he’s going to post. But it was so exciting because this is something we’ve been talking about and waiting for and hoping that this would actually take place. And turns out the prophecy has come true.”

With McHale’s tweet, there was just one error—albeit a potentially intentional one. Instead of tagging Community series star Gillian Jacobs, McHale instead tagged Emmy-winning actor Gillian Anderson.

“I think [Anderson] was excited about it, too,” Pudi says of the switch-up. “All the different fandoms collided for a moment in time. I think a lot of people thought it was a mistake. Who knows? I don’t know even know what happened. But that’s classic Joel. So I thought it was awesome.”

When it comes to stepping back into the role of the imaginative yet obsessive Abed Nadir after seven years, Pudi says it will “take some preparation.”

“It’s been a while. But I will say, much like this show, it starts with the writing,” Pudi says. “So when I get a Mythic Quest script, I’ll think about it and I’ll sit with it, and then I’ll kind of just sit with that world for a little bit. And that’s what I would do with Community as well. We get a script and we sit with it and think about how’s Abed feeling about all these things, and how’s Abed navigating that? Is he a pillow or is he a blanket guy? I’ll think about those things for a little while. I do imagine it’s going to take a little bit of time to get back into that head space. But I’m excited to get that script and dive back into it.”

The Community film is currently in the works over at Peacock.