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Reba McEntire asked everyone to “listen and be nice” as her boyfriend and Happy’s Place co-star Rex Linn teased the second season of the NBC sitcom on Thursday morning (July 31).
Happy’s Place made its debut in October 2024. The show follows McEntire’s character, Bobbie, who “inherits a restaurant from her late father, then learns she must share ownership with a newly discovered half-sister, creating awkward tension between the two,” the show’s description reads. Happy’s Place also stars Belissa Escobedo, Pablo Castelblanco, Tokala Black Elk, McEntire’s fellow Reba star Melissa Peterman, and Linn, who plays Emmett. The show was created by Julie Abbott and Kevin Abbott.
McEntire and the Happy’s Place cast recently announced the second season will premiere on November 7. The legendary country artist shared a clip Linn teasing the second season on Instagram, and Linn hinted that there might be a budding romance between Emmett and Bobbie. A relationship between the two characters would mirror the couple’s real-life relationship, which began in 2020. The pair met for the first time on the set of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw in 1991. They reconnected while working on Young Sheldon in early 2020. Linn and McEntire made dinner plans — and came up with tater tot-inspired nicknames for one another — and have “been together ever since,” McEntire said in a precious appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show.
Linn said in the clip shared on Instagram on Thursday that “there’s rumors that maybe Emmett and Bobbie get together. I mean, we don’t know that for a fact. But it would be great for Bobbie, I mean, if she was with Emmett. I mean, that’s how I look at it. You gotta stay tuned.”
McEntire caught up with iHeartCountry to talk about her work in sitcoms earlier this year. She said at that time that the No. 1 secret to a successful comedy is “the writing. If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage.” She credited her showrunner and head writer with telling stories in “a great voice of comedy and heart. …That’s what I love so much about the Andy Griffith Show, (for example), how he raised Opie – I used that raising my son – but it is very important to have heart in there. You gotta laugh, but you gotta cry. You’ve got to hit all of those emotions.
“It connects people to the story, the experience, whatever’s happened, hopefully you learn something from it (and) you can use it in your own life,” she added later. “Kevin Abbott, our showrunner, is so thoughtful that he will come in after we’ve done three takes of one scene, and he’ll give us new lines for the audience,” McEntire said of the mutual kinship between the cast and the viewers. “And some of those might take and is the one they take for the episode you see on television. But if not, it’s something just to entertain the audience. He’s there for everybody. And it entertains us, too.”
McEntire announced earlier this week that Happy’s Place will return to NBC and Peacock on November 7. She also teamed up with fellow coaches Niall Horan, Snoop Dogg and Michael Bublé to reveal the upcoming 28th season of The Voice will premiere on September 22.
“I’ve got to listen to the arc of the second season, and it’s gonna be good,” McEntire teased in her interview with iHeartCountry. “And all of the characters – and I do call us ‘characters,’ the actors, we are characters in our own right. We’re so diversified that we bring to the table something in real life that I think comes through on the screen. …We love each other. We respect each other’s opinion on things, their individual lifestyle, their background, their heritage. It’s a fun family.”