Good morning, PV Guide readers! This is part two of my interview with Jason Mantzoukas, the hilarious actor, podcaster, and comedian who recently starred on Taskmaster Series 19. You can read part one here, and you can watch the season on the Taskmaster YouTube channel.

Let’s jump right into it.

Yes, of course I have it. This painting that has been in my house, that I find so genuinely unsettling that I don't even hang it because it truly feels cursed in some way, I was like, oh, this will be a fun way to have this painting be seen by a lot of people, which will be, I think, very funny. And what an organic way for it to find a new home. The idea that I then win that episode and have to take that painting home is fucking nuts. It's downstairs right now.

Oh yes, absolutely. I just needed him to know what's up.

I play characters oftentimes who are chaos, who are maniacs and lunatics. I get cast a lot for high energy, high impact chaos characters. I feel like there is an element of that. I myself am not like that, but my comedic persona can often be like that. So there's very much a healthy amount of that in the show. Whenever I was given the opportunity to destroy something to really make a mark [I did it], even instances that I'm sure won't make the edits. There's a lot in which I destroy a thing that's not even part of the task, a thing that's just like ancillary.

There was one task where I had to do a thing and I had this big long thing, and I realized that I was trying to use this big long pole to reach something in the distance, that was the task. But I realized that the pole kept knocking against a bookshelf that was just full of stuff. And, in my mind, I was like, I have to stop doing the task and get this thing. I have to topple this bookcase. But I swear to God, they had bracketed the bookcase to the wall. I think they anticipated that I was going to try and destroy everything in the room. So I then wasted time trying to pull the bookcase down. Just absurd.

I felt bad because I would always leave a tremendous mess. The crew is incredible because they're also the people who are engineering the task themselves. So they're so smart and they're thinking through all these [eventualities]: if they choose this, this could happen. They've thought it out so much. So for me to then come in and just run roughshod over the whole thing, they were so sweet and so generous. I would demolish everything. If there was glass, I would break it and then they'd be like, Cut! OK, we got it. And I'd immediately be like, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry to the people that I knew were like, Oh fuck, now we got to clean all this up.

One that I think about all the time: There was a task in which I needed to find something in the shed, and I emptied the whole shed. I pulled everything out of the shed and I was like, Ooh, somebody's going to have to put all that stuff back. I felt just rotten. But I thought it was funny.

Greg was obsessed with this. It's like a pouch in my backpack that just lives there. It's got a little bit of duct tape. It's got any kind of little tool or thing you might need, a little screwdriver thing, a binder clip, a cord for an external battery to your phone, just stuff you would maybe need. But there's also a lock pick set. There's also a bunch of other little tools and pry bars and stuff. And just truly organically in one of the tasks it said, “Do something cool.” So in those instances where there were tasks that allowed for you to have some true creativity, you have to come up with a thing yourself. I just started running down, what do I have with me? What do I have available, what's here? And they will sometimes be like, just so you know, there's clothes and stuff in the shed. They'll let you know there's a full kitchen if you need kitchen implements. hey'll let you know if they have something that you can use. They want you to succeed. But I would also do that inventory for what I have in my bag.

To me, it's cool because I wanted a lock pick set because I saw Magnum, P.I. always using a lock pick set to get in and out of places. So since then, I was always like, whoa, lock picks. And so I got the picks, I got the practice locks, there's a million YouTube tutorials on how to pick just the basic stuff. But once I started the lock picks and then I had a very bright flashlight, it really piqued Greg’s curiosity. And he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's that? What's that? And then from then on, and also when Greg figured out that I wear the same clothes every day, he wanted to just talk to me about flashlights, pocket knives, camping gear, the staples.

They did have that Magnum, P.I. reboot years ago, and I tried [to get on it.] I said Will you reach out to them and find out if they’ll see me for any part? I mean, obviously I want to be Thomas Sullivan Magnum, but I'll be Rick, I'll be T.C. I want to exist in this world. And shockingly, it did not happen.

I have two. So there's one task in which I take, I think, an hour and a half, and I still don't solve it. I spend an hour and a half and I cannot get it. And it was brutal because it was hot. And so we were sitting out in the sun for an hour and a half, which was also terrible. But I really leaned into that. That was very fun. And I feel like Alex and I got a very funny bit out of it. So the longer that one went on, the longer that I was failing, the more funny it was. In other words, I think it got quite funny.

But the one that will haunt me, one of the things that I really couldn't figure out exactly was jet lag, because the shooting days for the tasks are incredibly long, very physical and exhausting. And so the task where we have to wear a cape and we have to carry pillows in that park, I can really feel how angry I was with myself because I do think, you see me think, oh, I can just go around the back of this whole thing. And that was the trick! That was the lateral thinking, here's how to solve the puzzle. If you just go out of bounds, what you think might be out of bounds, you can solve the puzzle. And this was at the end of a day that I was so jet lagged. I don't remember doing this task. You can see me in the middle of the task, just give up. You see me just brain fart out of the task. And that one is infuriating. That one's absolutely infuriating to me. I knew I had the right move. Those are the things that I love about Taskmaster. Why do I care about this? This is so stupid. But I was so close!

I forget so much of it. I'm excited to watch it as it's coming out now because I want to be reminded of all this stuff. You crammed so much into such a brief time that even when we were watching them play back during the studio, I was like, oh, right. I didn't even remember this thing about lock boxes and this and that. Because some of them, you only do briefly. A lot of them, they're like, This will take about 20 minutes, half an hour, depending. But a lot of them, they're like, This is maybe going to take under five minutes. And you're like, oh, whoa. OK. And those ones I find very difficult. They're just not sticky.

Oh man. What a great group. I feel like everybody in that group made me laugh. Fatiha El-Ghorri is absolutely one of the most outrageously funny people. I really felt like, OK, I'm going to be the brash, outrageous, bluff and bluster kind of character in the ensemble. And boy, straight out of the gate, she was like, hold my beer. Just incredible, relentless and so funny. Just had so many great games that she was playing with Greg, with Alex, she was great. I loved her. And having her next to me was an absolute delight.

But I mean, sweet Matt Baynton. I think he’s just the best, and the harrowing nature of him having to watch himself on screen as his balls fall out of his shorts repeatedly was just absolutely one of the funniest things I've ever been part of. So funny. Rosie Ramsey. So hilarious. And then Stevie Martin, I think, is just some sort of incredible genius. I found her to be hysterical. So everybody. I think everybody has their moments, and it's such a good ensemble. Everybody plays well together and there’s a balance. Nobody overlaps with their comedy point of view or comedy persona. Everybody got to score and everybody got to work in their way and be supported by everybody else, which I thought was fantastic.

Have you kept in touch?

Yeah. We have a WhatsApp chain. It's great, because for the studio days, you shoot two shows a day for the week. So it's two three-and-a-half hour shows a day, with a break in the middle for lunch. And we started having lunch together, the five of us sitting in one of the common areas, we would just have lunch and bullshit around. And I remember Alex came up at one point, skeptically looking at us, and he was like, No cast has ever eaten before together. No cast has ever gotten along this well. So yeah, we have a very active text chain, and they are all the best.

You’re bringing forth international diplomacy.

Oh, yes. I’m fixing all the problems. Taskmaster Series 19 will undo Brexit and undo the 2024 US election.