Ten years is a long time in television years. Long enough for prestige dramas to curdle, for reboots to embarrass themselves, for beloved comedies to return with the haunted eyes of people who know the rent is due. And then there’s Party Down, which came back after a decade and immediately reminded everyone why absence sometimes just sharpens the knife.
Ken Marino hadn’t seen most of the new season when he said it, but the confidence was there anyway. He’d only watched the episode he directed, which somehow made his reaction even better. Hearing that the show was still landing, still wrecking people, felt like permission to exhale. “I’m gonna go home feeling great,” he said, genuinely pleased, like someone who just found out their favorite dive bar somehow survived a condo boom.
Marino slipping back into Ron Donald didn’t require excavation. “Ron has never fully left me,” he admitted. “He’s always been sitting in the back of my head waiting to come out again.” The comparison that followed was… illustrative. “Much like when a serial killer takes a little time off.” He immediately bailed out of that analogy, but the damage was done. Ron Donald as a dormant psychological condition makes a weird amount of sense.
Getting the band back together had been a near-miss for years, a parade of false starts and logistical dead ends, until Starz finally said yes. When it happened, Marino didn’t overthink the character’s re-entry. Ron didn’t need reinvention. He needed the same doomed ambition, just with a louder ticking clock. “Ron is the type of guy whose goals are very singular,” Marino explained. “He wants to own a business. He wants to get into the ownership class. That’s never changed.”
What did change is the math. “He probably took one or two steps forward and 22 steps back,” Marino said. But Ron never adjusts the dream—he just doubles down on it. Triples down. Quadruples down. “He never stops believing,” Marino said, which might be the most generous thing anyone’s ever said about Ron Donald. It’s also the key to why the character still works. He’s delusional, yes, but he’s delusional with heart. “You see where it’s all coming from,” Marino said. “As distorted as it is, it’s coming from a good place.”
That tension—between belief and embarrassment—is where Marino lives best. His physical comedy has always been the secret weapon, whether he’s flailing, collapsing, or committing fully to a bad idea with his whole body. It didn’t come from nowhere. “It goes back to The State days, and even before that,” he said, tracing it to the comedians he loved growing up and the freedom of sketch comedy. “I liked doing bigger physical things. Visual things. That style is just in my DNA.”
You can see it in Party Down now as clearly as you could in Viva Variety or any number of Marino’s roles since. The body moves first, the ego follows, and the punchline lands somewhere between humiliation and joy. Physical comedy isn’t garnish for Marino—it’s structure. “If you can layer that into a scene in an organic way,” he said, “it gives it a little extra something.” That “something” is usually the sound of an audience losing it.
Then there’s the hair. Ron’s haircut is a character in its own right, a rigid monument to bad choices. Marino was game to bring it back. “I like cutting my hair short from time to time,” he shrugged. “Especially when I’m getting paid to do it.” He’s worn enough hairstyles over the years that Ron’s isn’t even extreme anymore. “When I’m not Ron, I can push it over a little,” he said, generously suggesting that almost anyone could fake a Ron cut if desperation—or cash—required it.
Marino didn’t just act this season; he directed the luau episode, toggling between performer and ringmaster without blinking. He described the experience as a blur, which felt right. “The way I like to direct—especially when I’m in something—is to just keep moving,” he said. Generate material. Keep momentum. Get everything on film that might work. He’s not intimidated by directing himself. If anything, he leans into it. “I encourage it,” he said. “I want to experience that.”
That restlessness mirrors the show itself. Party Down didn’t come back to demonstrate growth or maturity. It came back to check in on people who promised themselves everything would be different by now and then… didn’t quite get there. The desperation is intact. The rhythms are sharper. The jokes land harder. And Ron Donald, somehow, is still sprinting toward the same impossible finish line, arms pumping, haircut locked in place.
When Marino talked about the future, he didn’t get cute about it. More seasons? “From your lips to Starz’s ears,” he said, correcting himself mid-sentence like a man who knows exactly where hope needs to be directed.
Ron would approve.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
