Check out some sneak peeks from tonight’s three episodes of “Community”. The episodes are airing at 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM and 9:30 PM on NBC!

Let’s hope you love long stretches of “Community.” In an effort to capitalize on the end of May sweeps, NBC is airing the final three episodes in one night Thursday, and it is set to detail the Greendale Six’s full-on efforts to assimilate themselves once again in the low-grade college world. Unfortunately, there is one problem that they are going to be running into first — stopping Ben Chang, who has replaced Dean Pelton with a fake and recruited a child army to help him out.

On Tuesday, we had a chance to chat with both the show’s awkwardly-fashionable Dean in Jim Rash along with Gillian Jacobs (Britta) about their work this season, along with the news that the show is taking off to Fridays in the fall.

Cartermatt.com – First of all, congratulations on the renewal! How do you guys feel about the news, along with your move to Fridays for the fall.

Jim Rash – First and foremost, we have to celebrate what has been a long sort of hopeful journey to what has been a season 4 with the help of the fans. We’ll have to start there and be grateful for the fact that we get to say that sentence.

… I think there’s always something exciting about a small change. Obviously, we’ve survived little changes and moves, and our fans seem to find us. So the hope is just that they find us again and I’m sure they will. They’re a very tenacious group.

Gillian Jacobs – Yes, I think we have to be so grateful for all the hard work [the fans] did to make sure that we came back from the hiatus and got the fourth season. We’re just excited to get to tell 13 more stories and more in the future — we’re the little show that could. You can never really count us out, so God only knows what’ll happen.

Jim, when it comes to what’s coming up, do you think the Dean finds it nice in some sort of strange way that the Greendale Six actually values him now, especially after he’s spent so much time trying to get all over them?

Jim (laughs) – Yes, he still wants to ‘get all over them’ — some more so than others.

Gillian – Maybe not Britta!

Jim – Yeah, he still hates that she was in that Christmas show. (Laughs.)

I think it’s funny that the theme of the allure of the study group was first played upon in last week’s [psychiatrist] episode [within] the clip show [portion of it]; what really is the funny device [used] is that I as the Dean only [at first] seemed to tell them about the huge things happening at the school, and it’s sort of just played on that idea.

I think what you will see in the finale is that it is the closest the Dean has come to [being in the study group], and there is a sort of study group plan to get back at their school — and of course, he is the reason that they have to. You know, hopefully they won’t remember that.

Gillian, what has it been like doing this whole sort of Britta / Troy story with Donald Glover this year?

Gillian – We have the sweetest hugs on TV — we’ve really cornered the market on loving looks and really sweet hugs. (Laughs.)

He’s obviously an incredible performer and we’ve so enjoyed getting to have these scenes together. There’s not a bad apple in this group, so I’m really lucky to get to work with this cast and really happy to get these scenes with Donald.

Jim – It was often between scenes that they would be rehearsing their hugs.

Gillian (laughs) – Yeah. There were some extensive rehearsals.

CarterMatt.com

NBC just released its schedule for the Fall 2012-2013 season. It shows that the network is moving “Community” to Friday nights at 8:30 PM after the series “Whitney”.

MONDAY
8-10 p.m. – “The Voice”
10-11 p.m. – “REVOLUTION”

TUESDAY
8-9 p.m. –“The Voice”
9-9:30 p.m. – “GO ON”
9:30-10 p.m. – “THE NEW NORMAL”
10-11 p.m. – “Parenthood”

WEDNESDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – “ANIMAL PRACTICE”
8:30-9 p.m. – “GUYS WITH KIDS”
9-10 p.m. – “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
10-11 p.m. – “CHICAGO FIRE”

THURSDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – “30 Rock”
8:30-9 p.m. – “Up All Night”
9-9:30 p.m. – “The Office”
9:30-10 p.m. – “Parks and Recreation”
10-11 p.m. – “Rock Center with Brian Williams”

FRIDAY
8-8:30 p.m. – “Whitney”
8:30-9 p.m. – “Community”
9-10 p.m. – “Grimm”
10-11 p.m. – “Dateline NBC”

SATURDAY
Encore programming

SUNDAY (Fall 2012)
7- 8:15 p.m. — “Football Night in America”
8:15-11:30 p.m. — “NBC Sunday Night Football”

SUNDAY (Post-football/Winter 2013)
7-8 p.m. – “Dateline NBC”
8-9 p.m. – “Fashion Star”
9-10 p.m. – “The Celebrity Apprentice”
10-11 p.m. – “DO NO HARM”

Worshippers of the Greendale Seven can breath a huge sigh of relief: NBC has renewed Community for a 13-episode fourth season.

Still no official word on the fate of fellow Thursday night comedies The Office and Parks and Recreation, but both are considered locks to return.

Community joins the already-picked up 30 Rock, Parenthood, Law & Order: SVU, Smash and Grimm.

tvline.com

NBC is looking to bring back its Thursday night comedy block — with some caveats.

The Peacock network is nearing a deal that would see 30 Rock return for a seventh and final season of 13 or 14 episodes, per our sister site Deadline.

Last month, Rock‘s creator and star Tina Fey told the ladies of The View that the end was “visible on the horizon… We can’t do this for 35 years.”

Meanwhile, Deadline reports that Community and Parks and Recreation are also expected to be picked up for an abbreviated fourth and fifth season, respectively.

tvline.com

No official word from NBC has been made about the status of the new season – we will post as soon as any new information is released!

NBC will air 3 all new episodes of “Community” on Thursday, May 17th so that the show can end its third season during May Sweeps. It will air episodes at 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM and 9:30 PM.

Community takes comedy where it’s never been before. Don’t miss this Law and Order style episode!

To ‘make it’ in Hollywood, young actors used to kick-start their careers in television, sharpening their skills and earning notoriety (and maybe an Emmy or two) before frolicking in the greener grass of feature films. Today, with the growing budgets, themes, and imaginations of series TV, episodes have almost become mini movies, inspiring a newer generation of stars to not only gravitate toward television, but maybe even stay there — even as their careers take off. Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs epitomize this trend, two actresses who earned their comedy stripes on NBC’s Community, a place where dreamatoriums come to life and paintball wars are aplenty. Meanwhile, the pair is also on the Tribeca Film Festival circuit this year — Jacobs with the dark indie comedy Revenge for Jolly! and Brie with tonight’s Tribeca opener, the buzzy hit-in-waiting The Five-Year Engagement.

While both actresses studied theater in college — Jacobs at Juilliard and Brie at CalArts — they began their respective careers on opposite ends of the spectrum. Jacobs spent years working on small indie films and TV roles, while Brie supported herself doing regional theater in Ventura County, never thinking twice about TV. “In my sort of young, idealistic mind, I was just like, ‘Well, it’s either theater or film for me, and that will be that!’” Brie explained. That changed after booking a surprising first TV role on Disney’s Hannah Montana, sparking an epiphany for Brie. “I realized that I love acting, no matter what I’m doing,” she said. “And it was a great time for good news, because I got Mad Men right after that, and that led to Community. I couldn’t be happier.”

Like her Community co-star Joel McHale, who also hosts E!’s weekly celeb-culture rundown The Soup, Brie still juggles two roles today: uppity, picture-perfect housewife Trudy Campbell on AMC’s Mad Men, and doe-eyed schoolgirl Annie Edison on Community. “I got lucky, and it’s amazing to be able to work on both shows and have them be so different in tone,” she said. “Working on one of the best dramas and one of the best comedies on TV has certainly opened a lot of doors for me in terms of being able to show some range and not get totally boxed into one thing [for films],” she added. “I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on Mad Men as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera.”

For Jacobs, Community allowed her to showcase a side of her that no one had seen before. “I had never done comedy before,” she told Movieline, “and I was desperate to break into it because it gets really tiring when you’re always playing prostitutes and strippers and rape victims.” And like Brie, Jacobs doesn’t take the opportunity or the experience for granted. “I joined a new club in the world of comedy,” she said. “And the fact that [Community] has turned into this sort of thing totally unto itself and unlike any other show on TV has just been an added bonus of the whole experience.”

Yet where contemporaries (and fellow TFF ’12 stars) like Adam Brody and Olivia Wilde only a few years ago aggressively sprung from a cult darling like The O.C. into movie careers of mixed results, neither Brie nor Jacobs feels comfortable choosing between television and film. “I feel like the kind of role that I’m getting to play on TV, I don’t know how often those come along in films,” Jacobs said. “I feel like I’ve been very fortunate in that I feel constantly creatively challenged and pushed on my show, and I don’t know if that would be the case if I were asked to play the same variation of one character in movies. No actor wants to choose — they just want all of the options available to them all the time; we tend to be pretty greedy.”

Meanwhile, Brie sounded even more resolute about the small(er) screen.

“While I love film and want to continue to pursue it 100 percent, my home is TV,” she said. “My mom and dad are Mad Men and Community, and it honestly feels like working on mini-movies every day. “The original transition was quite easy, because the caliber of writing, directing, and acting and the nuance of the performances on Mad Men are like shooting a dramatic film. I can say the same thing about Community, with our amazing writers and the caliber of acting that we’re working with in a comedic respect.”

Moreover, the unique qualities and style of the single-camera comedy have given both a leg up in the film world. “I felt like I’ve been doing three years of comedy boot camp, and when the opportunity came to do The Five-Year Engagement, I felt very prepared and confident in my comedic skills because of the training that I got on Community,” Brie told Movieline. “I also just worked on a film called Get a Job, and my character is odd — sort of inappropriately sexual and just weird — so Dylan Kidd, the director, gave me a lot of freedom to have fun and play around and try to say the weirdest things that I could come up with. I know that he is a fan of Community as well, so I think that it’s the work that I’ve done prior on the show that gave him the confidence to trust me with that kind of improvisation and input.”

Although there is some improvisation on Community, Brie noted that “you don’t have all the time in the world to improv and come up with ideas [on TV]; you’re on a much tighter schedule in terms of shooting episodes in five days or seven days.” When it comes to film, especially in Five-Year, there was a bit more leeway. “Because we have a lot of scenes where it’s like engagement party speeches or shower speeches — a lot of speeches going on! — you have the luxury of extra time to collaborate,” she said. “At one point [director Nicholas] Stoller even e-mailed us prior to the scene and was like, ‘Hey, everyone just think of funny, inappropriate speeches; just think of weird stuff to do!’ because we had all day to play with it.”

As Britta Perry on Community, the closest that Jacobs has been to putting on the red light was belting “Roxanne” in a recent episode. However, her role in Revenge for Jolly! (premiering Saturday at Tribeca) has her playing — drum roll, please — yet another prostitute.

“Filming that movie was a total return to form for me — shooting in a crappy hotel in Nyack, N.Y., dressed as a prostitute; it was down and dirty filmmaking at its finest,” she said with a laugh. “And basically, the two leads are going on a killing spree, so I think there’s a high likelihood that I’m going to get shot in that film, or die in some way!” Also on the way this summer is Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, led by Steve Carell and Keira Knightley. Jacobs described her role as “small and silly, playing a waitress high on ecstasy alongside T.J. Miller,” while also noting that “the nice thing so far is that I’ve been sort of able to balance between a bunch of different worlds: bigger movies, TV, and still smaller indie films as well.”

As for the future of TV and movies, and which is inevitably the dominant medium? “It’s kind of like what I think Joel [McHale] has said before: ‘It’s the best of times and it’s the worst of times of TV,’” Brie said. “There’s the lowest of the low in terms of reality TV, and then there’s also kind of some of the best of the best on television shows like Mad Men, Community, Breaking Bad and Girls — it feels like you’re watching movies!”

Movieline.com

Community star Gillian Jacobs has confessed she loves playing a “deeply strange” character.

The actress, who plays wannabe activist Britta in the TV comedy show, said she’d previously been typecast as strippers and drug addicts.

“This is a great part for me because I feel like it’s turned into a silly, goofy, weird character and it’s a lot of fun and not many times as an actor do you get to be deeply strange. So I’m very grateful for this part,” she said.

“I’m normally either a prostitute or a stripper, also a rape victim and normally a drug addict.”

Gillian also said the show – which airs in the UK on Sony Entertainment Television (Sky 157/Virgin 193) and also stars Joel McHale – owed its success to its loyal fans.

“We have a sci-fi level of fandom with our show, it’s the sort of thing that you would normally see at a sci-fi convention, which is why I think it’s so great, because it’s like a meeting of the two worlds.

“I’m really grateful for them. They have viewing parties and flash mobs for us where they come dressed as us from the show and they print out lyrics of songs from our show and sing them.”

BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

As any Human Being knows, the ever-brilliant and hilarious Community recently returned to NBC on Thursday night, after being benched initially when the network unveiled their midseason schedule.

A couple months ago, I visited the set of Community as the cast worked on the last few weeks of production on Season 3. I’ll have more material from this visit down the line, since there were several things occurring that I can’t go into detail on yet.

Set visit interviews are typically on the short side, as the cast are usually in the middle of filming and sometimes only available for a few minutes, due to production needs. But I was lucky enough to get a much longer conversation than is the norm on these occasions with Gillian Jacobs and Alison Brie.

We were still a couple of weeks from learning Community’s return date at this point, but Jacobs and Brie spoke about how much the fan support during their hiatus meant, what it’s like seeing various groups of “shippers” react to the show and much more, while giving a few hints about what’s to come – even as they both laughed about the fact that they were having trouble recalling everything they’d shot through the season. Oh, and you’ll see a reference to them wearing “crazy costumes” while we spoke, but what those costumes were has to remain quiet for the time being, I’m afraid!

IGN: What was it like hearing you guys weren’t going to be airing initially this year, but then seeing how the fans quickly mobilized and showed their love for this show?

Jacobs: Obviously it was disappointing to be pulled from the schedule, but I had kind of willfully forgotten about the fact that 30 Rock had to come back. So once they made the announcement I was like, “Oh, yeah.” Something was going to happen along those lines because there were one too many shows for Thursday. So it was disappointing, but I really think it was encouraging to us that they didn’t reduce our episode order.

And then the fans, they’re everything that we always hoped and dreamed they would be. They’re the best. They are so resourceful and organized and creative. They’re not just sending things to NBC. They’re tweeting our advertisers that aired during our final episodes [in 2011] and saying, “I saw your ad for Yoplait, and I really enjoyed it during Community. Thank you so much for supporting Community.” And they’re having flash mobs in New York and LA and around the country. They’re just the best. The number of “Save Community” Twitter accounts that have sprung up in the last couple months, it’s really incredible. It makes you want to keep fighting when you see how hard they’re fighting to keep the show on the air.

Alison Brie: I feel like it actually gave us a great boost, morale-wise, seeing the way the fans have stuck by the show and taken up… what am I trying to say?

Jacobs: The mantle!

Brie: Yes! With their flash mobs and their support online. I’m almost never felt prouder to be on the show because we’re suddenly so able to see the impact the show has had on people and how much they enjoy it and missed it being on. It’s really special.

IGN: You’re coming back on with a run of 12 new episodes. On one hand it’s like, “There’s been no Community on!” But then it’s like, “There’s so much to look forward to!”

Brie: It’ll be the equivalent to when you miss a show and you don’t catch it from the beginning so you rent it on DVD and watch them all in a row.

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