“Rooster” Showrunners Know How They Want Series to End 'If We're Lucky Enough to Tell That Story' (Exclusive)

The HBO comedy starring Steve Carell has been renewed for a second season

NEED TO KNOW

• Rooster co-creators Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses explain that they have a “beginning, middle and end” in mind for the series
• Lawrence tells PEOPLE that he pitched the series — which was recently renewed for a second season — the same way he pitched Ted Lasso and Shrinking
• “If we’re lucky enough to tell that story, we know what it is,” he says

Rooster's second season is still on the horizon, but its showrunners already have Greg Russo's story mapped out.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the comedy's premiere in March (before it secured a season-two renewal last month), Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses shared that they already had plans for more of Steve Carell's on-campus hijinks when they pitched the show to HBO.

"One of the cool things about streaming, we did it with Ted Lasso, we did with Shrinking, is we pitched the beginning, middle and end of this show," Lawrence, 57, says.

"If we're lucky enough to tell that story, we know what it is," he adds. "Just for us, the real issue is it's so much fun. The cast is so lovely. I think we'd both do it forever. Matt would probably only do it forever if I agreed to leave, but it's just too much."

Tarses, 59, joked in response: "You can stay for one more year."

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Rooster, which airs its season finale on Sunday, May 10, has already been renewed for that second run. Lawrence said in a statement that he was "so grateful to Warner Bros. Television and HBO for being such great partners," calling the project "a career highlight for both of us, but more for Matt than me" as it approaches its second season.

The comedy also stars Charly Clive, Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley, and Lauren Tsai. It follows Carell's author character as he extends a stay on a college campus to spend more time with his professor daughter (Clive).

During a press conference on Tuesday, March 3 in New York City, Carell, 63, explained why boarding the show "felt like a true ensemble."

"You don’t know what the energy’s going to be like, you don’t know what each of them are going to be like as people. But there was just such a pervasive kindness and generosity. And, honestly, it reminds me of my experience on The Office in terms of that," he said.

"We were an ensemble and we shared — and that includes cast, crew, writers, producers, everybody. It was like, we just wanted it to be good," he added of his time on the NBC comedy.

As for Rooster, Tarses and Lawrence previously told PEOPLE that the series finds Carell being "really funny again and doing a straight comedy." As Lawrence explained, as a comedy writer, "there's none of us that weren't drastically affected by the way that Steve does comedy, and I hadn't seen him do a big comedy-forward project in a long time."

Rooster's season 1 finale airs Sunday, May 10 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

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