Your life is boring and would be dramatically improved by the addition of celebrities, or at least that’s the premise of a new show that NBC is developing for Ed Helms and Randall Park. According to Decider, the two of them will host a new show called True Story (based on an Australian series) where regular non-celebrities share “their most extraordinary and unbelievably true stories” and then sit back and watch as Helms and Park dramatically reenact comically heightened versions of those stories with “a cast of top comedians and actors.” It sounds like a fun setup, and given the premise, it would be very easy to bring in big-name stars for one episode where they could do something with real viral potential—like, “See Brad Pitt reenact some loser’s story about finding a parking spot on Black Friday.” Would you click on that? Somebody would, certainly.
Anyway, both Park and Helms put out nice statements about how they’re excited to do this and how they’re friends with each other. but it seems a little suspicious. “I can’t wait to bring True Story to American audiences with my buddy, Randall Park,” said Helms, while Park added that it combines his three favorite things: “Great stories from real people, my pal Ed Helms, and couches.” So, either these guys are definitely friends in real life or they’re trying very hard to make everyone think they are. Decider points out that Park was in an episode of The Office a long time ago, which would imply that they’ve met, but Helms wasn’t in that scene. How ironic, then, that the two hosts of a show called True Story seem to be lying about how well they know each other. Maybe the first True Story they decided to comedically embellish was the story about them being friends?