Casey Wilson & Andrew Rannells Go Inside ‘The Great American Baking Show’s Big Game Episode

If you need some inspiration for your Super Bowl spread on February 8, may we suggest The Great American Baking Show‘s “Big Game” special? It pairs wonderfully with Buffalo Chicken Dip and being in the dark about athletes.

“I knew not one,” laughs host Casey Wilson of The Roku Channel‘s jock-and-joke filled one-off that sends NFL Hall of Famer Antonio Gates, Super Bowl MVP Von Miller, three-time Super Bowl champ Julian Edelman, and sports analyst Mina Kimes out into the tent for a culinary face-off on the English countryside. “I didn’t know any of them but my husband [Happy Endings creator David Caspe] was very excited.”

We caught up with the ever-satisfying Wilson and her perfectly seasoned new GABS cohort Andrew Rannells (Big Mouth) this week at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s annual TVfest on their Atlanta campus, where the pair were able to go to the tape, as it were, and evaluate the “Big Game” outing which dropped on February 1.

Having overseen a handful of Baking iterations, including the ‘Celebrity Summer’ season that featured Rannells as a contestant, Wilson readily admits that “I have actually always liked the sports episodes the best.”

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for SCAD

“You had said that to me,” confirms Girls5Eva alum Rannells. “Because they follow the recipe and they follow the playbook.” And while their focus made it a “a little hard to chat with” them while they raced around to create three different treats, Rannells praises their hustle, especially since he himself fouled out during his run in the kitchen.

“They actually did better than most of the others,” he offers, adding with a smile that “[judge] Prue Leith said it very clearly that ‘All you have to do is follow the recipe.’ As a contestant, I didn’t follow the recipe.”

So, how did he go from kitchen cast-out to cohost? With the departure of previous sidekick Zach Cherry (Severance), “Casey, very sweetly, asked me to come along for this season,” recalls Rannells. “She was like, ‘Would you want to do this?’ And it sounded like so much fun. I don’t want to say like an easy job because there are challenges, but it’s just fun.”

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“You were happy you didn’t have to bake,” interjects Wilson before the two crackups confess that we should all be grateful they’re not serving any guests during Sunday’s showdown between the Patriots and the Seahawks. “It was Bread Week, and Casey and I thought ‘We could do this,'” says Rannells. “It was like a bread basket. You had to make an actual basket out of bread. But what we made was…it was hard and not edible.”

“It had structure!” defends Wilson. “But it was not good.”

Even though they may have dropped the ball, these two are still total chef’s kiss.