Here at Gentlemen’s Quarterly, we love to celebrate a gentle man, quarterly. They can be real (Adrian Chiles, Rick Steves, Ronald Gladden) or fictional (Sweet Keefe from The Righteous Gemstones). What they have in common is their buoyant demeanors, their off-the-charts chill, and their generally positive expressions of masculinity.
And with The Other Two season three premiering on HBO Max this week—the funniest show you should be watching—we need to give credit where credit is due. Lance Arroyo, played brilliantly by Josh Segarra, is one of these guys—and, unsurprisingly, the show’s MVP.
The Other Two is, as is the case with most good TV, about some of the worst people you can possibly imagine. A biting satire of showbiz, the title refers to Cary Dubek (Drew Tarver) and Brooke Dubek (Heléne Yorke), the two older failsiblings of ChaseDreams (Case Walker), a Bieber-esque phenom who catapults to stardom with his hit song “Marry U At Recess.”
Lance is Brooke’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. He’s introduced in the pilot dabbing in his Foot Locker uniform, though he has big dreams of becoming a fashion designer, with forward-thinking ideas such as “shoes, but invisible” and “edible shoes.” In a show filled with egomaniacs, Lance is nothing but kind and supportive. He always has a massive smile on his face, and a heart as big as his brain is smooth. Go ahead and crown him television’s scene-stealing himbo king.
“I would describe Lance as all heart,” Josh Segarra tells me, when I ask what makes his Lance so charming. “He’s compassionate, he’s loyal, he’s always going to have your back. He’s ride or die and he’s always cup half-full.”
In watching Lance stay positive, centered, encouraging, and uneaten by the ambition monster, it’s impossible to watch The Other Two without thinking: do I want a friend like Lance … or do I want to be Lance? (Both, honestly.)
Season two ends after Lance finally realizes his design dreams by staging a fashion show mostly consisting of high-concept, entirely non-functional plastic-paneled clothing. By the start of season three, which meets up with the characters post-pandemic, Lance and Brooke are officially engaged. Lance has also assessed his life choices and decided to become even more of a nice guy. He’s now employed as a nurse, which drives Brooke a little crazy, seeing as he’s now celebrated as a hero by everyone he meets. Lance, despite his medical training, is still all pure Lance, delivering declarations such as “nursing school’s hard, yo!” with that same million-watt smile on his face.
Lance almost had an entirely different path altogether. When Segarra first made an audition tape for the character, he was meant to be working at Medieval Times. “I grew up in Orlando. There is a Medieval Times in Orlando, Florida. I am a product of the Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Chili’s, Medieval Times, Universal Orlando, Disney World. These are the things that made me,” Segarra says. By the time he got the role, Lance had been rewritten as a Foot Locker employee, which Segarra was equally game for.
“I used to work at a place called Just for Feet back in Orlando,” he explains.
Segarra channels his real-life brother for Lance’s positivity, though it’s not hard to see what he personally has in common with Lance too. “People that I love, I love really, really hard and I love with my whole mind, heart, and body,” Segarra says, before enthusiastically praising literally every single person close to him.
He does occasionally get recognized and praised for his role as Lance on the street. Though, if you see him, he does have one request: “I wish people would come up to me and dab more.”
Gabriella Paiella
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