‘True Story With Ed & Randall’s Ed Helms And Randall Park Help Guests Reveal Their Greatest Tales – Contenders TV: Docs + Unscripted

A die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan jumps the wall at the 1979 Super Bowl to watch his favorite team, a Muslim teen girl (comedian-attorney Yasmin Elhady) conquers 9/11 adversity and wins over students at an Alabama high school to become class president, and a working-class guy is slowed down by the cops in his blitz to get his pregnant girlfriend her ideal dessert (a Maple Butter Blondie) from Applebee’s.

Such are the tales, all true, on Warner Horizon TV and Peacock’s True Story With Ed & Randall, on which hosts and executive producers Ed Helms and Randall Park sit down with a guest (sometimes two) and hear them tell outrageous, but oh-so-true stories from their lives.

Contenders TV Docs + Unscripted — Deadline’s Complete Coverage

Part of the conceit of the show, which is based on an Australian format, is that Helms and Park haven’t heard their guests’ great yarns before. “Ed and I were in the dark,” Park said during Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event about how the True Story producers keep a lid on their guests and their stories before each sit-down.

“What you see on screen is our honest, initial reactions to these stories,” he added.

Reminiscent of Comedy Central’s Drunk History, as each guest recounts their grand memory on True Story, they’re re-enacted by a string of comedic character actors, i.e., Adam Pally as Steelers fan Rick Steigerwood, Matt Walsh as the Alabama principal at Elhady’s school, and Marc Evan Jackson as an episodic narrator.

While Daily Show sit-downs, and even NBC’s 1980s reality show Real People, often took an angle on the kookiness of regular folk, a string running throughout the stories in True Story is that they’re tales of triumph and optimism.

“The empathy of the tone was so appealing, and having the most genuine, real interaction with these storytellers,” Helms said about what drew him to the docuseries. “They’re really being vulnerable telling these stories from their lives.”

“We really set out to create a warm and safe environment in that studio, so that these storytellers would really share and open up to us.”

Elhady’s tale in Episode 2 about her emigration from Egypt to Alabama, where she became class president down to getting the cheerleaders on her side, is one of hope.

Said Helms, “There’s some pretty intense themes in that story from being an immigrant family dealing with racism, and just overcoming so many obstacles, there’s some heavy things.”

He adds, “We were caught off-guard about the intensity of that story, in part because she’s a bubbly personality.”

Check out Monday for the panel video.