Many have tried to crack the Gen Z young-adult sitcom, but, much like Penelope’s suitors' failure to string Odysseus’s bow, it’s a deceptively difficult task.

Friends was the product of a simpler, happier time that our present-day dysphoria could never hope to brush. If How I Met Your Mother premiered in 2026, Ted would be cancelled by TikTok for being a sad-boy pick-me. If a show is too nice, it feels sterile and sanitized, like you can almost see the actors’ modesty garments outlined through their jeans. If it’s too “edgy,” the characters sound like skibidi toilet Claude on cocaine.

The pilot episode of Adults begins with Issa (Amita Rao) in an unblinking stare-down jerk-off-off with an unsavory public masturbator on the subway. It’s a shock-value play that earns your initial attention, but the easy connection between the floundering roommates, who all share a house in Queens, keeps it.

The comedy cleared the first-season hurdle, evading the why-didn’t-this-go-viral-overnight cancellation curse, with its sophomore season now streaming on FX and Hulu. Ahead of the drop, I caught up with the Adults newlyweds, Jack Innanen and Owen Thiele, whose characters Paul Baker and Anton got green-card-married in the season one finale.

“I get really nervous for these,” Thiele, one of the most charismatic individuals I’ve ever met, offers as we’re about to get started.

“He’s fibbing,” Innanen quickly counters, and I’m much more inclined to believe him.

Betches: Season 1 of Adults came out a little over a year ago, so you were probably on a very similar press circuit around this time in 2025. How is it different this time around?

Innanen: The one word that comes to mind is “playful.” It feels like going into grade 10. You’re not scared of high school anymore or needing to make friends or not knowing who the teachers are. It feels like we’re back in our groove. We’re so in the pocket. Season one was a blast on set, but season two was like, “Oh, we can fuck around.”

Thiele: It was absolutely a horrible experience. It was an abusive set. No, I really feel that because we established these relationships outside of work, it was so much easier to play the characters. I never went to college, but I assume it’s what college feels like.

Innanen: Yeah, I actually dropped out, too, but that’s a bar.

Betches: In the Season 1 finale, Anton and Paul get green-card married. It’s heavily implied that even though Paul is with Issa, there’s a spark that’s more than platonic with Anton. Can you give us a peek into what’s going on in your characters’ heads?

Thiele: The tensions are high when season two picks up because, obviously, Anton and Paul Baker have had this romantic kiss, and it feels like both of them might have unspoken feelings. Will they speak them? Who knows! You should find out by watching the television show.

Innanen: The season explores what love means in all of its capacities.

Thiele: That was gorgeous. That should be the tagline of the show.

Betches: In the Season 2 premiere, there is a large discussion around scrubbing embarrassing or downright problematic posts from one’s social media. Is there anything you’re glad you removed from the internet before you got famous?

Innanen: So many things immediately come to mind that I don’t even want to name in case you put it in the article and it hasn’t been properly scrubbed.

Thiele: Here’s the deal. I don’t scrub. I am an open book. I’m noticing that people are going down on my Instagram and commenting, “What is this?” And I’m like, “Leave it. I don’t care.” I think we’re all who we are, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of our past unless we’ve done something absolutely horrifying.

Innanen: At the end of that episode, there are real clips of us as teenagers. For me, they used the cringiest YouTube videos you can imagine that I made at 14 or 15. That made my stomach hurt.

Thiele: When it played at the premiere last night, I was sitting next to Jack, and when his video came on, he started screaming at the top of his lungs so that people in the audience wouldn’t hear. And I’m like, “My love, this is going on screens across the world. You’re not going to be able to scream in everyone’s living room.”

Innanen: I’m gonna tell them to cut it.

Betches: Speaking of internet lore, you both kickstarted your careers on the internet. Are there any emerging creators who you love right now that remind you of where you were a few years ago?

Inannen: Oh, what a nice question, and I’m blanking immediately. Can I look at my phone really quick?

Thiele: Emma Chamberlain is an emerging creator I really love. I think she’s really special and has something really unique there.

Innanen: There’s this guy, Jony Brony; I think he’s hilarious. Simon Mayer is hilarious. There are a lot of people who are keeping TikTok sketch comedy from 2019, 2020 alive, and I’m like, they’re the last bastion.

Thiele: I think Lisa Gilroy is so brilliant. She’s not an emerging creator; she’s been on every television show that ever existed. And of course, Jake Shane. Super emerging. Really working his way up.

Betches: Both of your characters have a bit of a fixation on being likable – Anton needs every stranger to fall in love with him, and we learn this season that Paul Baker molds his personality to be a perfect fit for his surroundings. Is that something either of you can relate to personally?

Innanen: That’s a really good question. It was honestly therapeutic to play that out in a simulation and then see what that actually means for me in my real life. I recognized through doing that episode that there’s shame associated with using a joke with Friend Group A that you wouldn’t use with Friend Group B.

I definitely have a bro side to me. But then I can meet my friend’s mom and be like, “Oh my god, how are you?”

Thiele: Jack will be with me looking at hot men’s bodies being like, “Gorgeous,” and then I see him with the bros, and I’m like, “What does this mean?” You become a different person.

Innanen: I contain multitudes.

Thiele: I’m a friend slut through and through, and I didn’t have to search much for that. I have a lot of people’s numbers in my phone that I don’t know. It was fun to play that [on the show] because I was realizing, “God, I got to shape up. I got to be different. I have to ultimately stop this habit.”

Betches: A major theme on Adults has been the young adult challenge of balancing finding your passion with having a job that pays the bills. If you guys weren’t in entertainment, what type of sad, eating-Cava-at-your-desk email job do you think you would have?

Thiele: Wait, that sounds amazing. I love Cava.

Innanen: I went to school for this STEM program, and on my first day they showed us this pie chart and said: “50% of you are going to go into academia, and 50% of you are going to go into military technology.” And I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to do either of those actually.” So I guess I’d probably be a research assistant for a comm satellite and be pulling up data.

Thiele: I don’t know one word you just said. Genuinely. Not one word. What comm? What satellites?

Inannen: Just like, GPS satellites. I’d be the guy who’s like, “Yup, it’s still up.” That’d be me all day.

Thiele: You know what I’d love to do? Go through people’s bags at TSA.

Inannen: Just because you’re nosy.

Thiele: I’m like, “Can I see your passport? Okay, show me your fake too. Lemme just see it, girl. Is it a good pic or what?”