Greg In Hollywood chats up the talented Josh Cooke, a star of the ABC comedy “Better With You”

I interviewed a lot of people during the 12 days of the just-ended TV Critics Assn. Summer Press Tour and one of my favorite chats was with Josh Cooke, one of the stars of the ABC fall comedy Better With You.

I’ve been a Josh groupie ever since the quirky and funny NBC sitcom Committed which only lasted half a season in 2005. Josh and leading lady Jennifer Finnegan had such great chemistry on that show so I was thrilled to see that they are playing a couple once again on Better.

Josh is so talented that he seems to never stop working whether it’s a funny TV guest spot like the one on last season of The Closer as a cop with a crush on the married Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) or a few short but funny scenes in the feature I Love You, Man where Andy Samberg (he played Paul Rudd’s gay brother) is trying to find his brother a bromance at the gym where Andy is a trainer. Andy shows his brother how easy it is to flirt with a straight guy and locks eyes with a cute guy doing the bench press. That cute guy is played by Josh.

After Committed, Josh starred in the NBC sitcom Four Kings then the ABC comedy Big Day neither of which lasted more than half a season. He also starred in some comedy pilots that didn’t go to series.

I wondered if, given that batting average, he was worried about whether or not Better With You would finally give him a big TV hit.

“I don’t ever really put any pressure on myself more than what we’re actually doing,” he said. “Committed I loved so much and the creators of that show created The Middle which is now our lead-in which is very strange and incestuous. But I really loved that show and when that one didn’t go I thought, ‘Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s really just kind of a crapshoot. I’m honestly just really thrilled to be doing multi-camera again because it is sop much fun. And you rehearse every single day and it changes and changes. I hope goes well but it’s a blast.”

So how did it come to be that he was re-teamed with Jennifer Finnegan who, post-Committed, starred for several seasons in the CBS drama Close to Home.

“I was just doing some little guest star thing in New Mexico and I get a text from her saying,’I just got cast in this role and I want you to play my boyfriend’ and I thought, ‘I don’t know if that’s going to work, I don’t know if they’re going to go for us again together.’ Then I realized it had been a few years. When I came back, she basically made me read it  then I went, ‘Yeah!’

“It was fun. It was just very natural and comfortable and I think they could see that. The comfortableness was there because we’d known each other for years which is nice. The comfort is there but watching the scenes [of us in Better With You] is so different than watching us in Committed because character-wise they’re so different. We both changed so much, both of us have been through a lot of changes. When we actually did go and do our first read together there was that feeling of, ‘Okay, this is good. It was just simple.”

So how difference is the experience this time around?

“Committed was my first big job and she had been working for years before. So we were sort of at different levels of career and understanding. I’ve calmed down a lot and she’s settled in very happily in her life. I think we’ve just matured a whole lot and we’re just able to be that comfortable couple.”