A spunky, overzealous sixth grader slumps through Latin’s hallways, when suddenly, he sees them, the wisecracking freshmen who coach one of the student-led basketball teams. As the two older boys make witty jabs at him and imitate his voice, he beams and laughs along, exhilarated to be included in their antics.
Now picture that sixth grader, more than 30 years later, smiling at that same comedy duo as he rehearses scenes for the high profile TV show the three of them have created.
A long way from the halls of Latin School, three Latin alumni—producer and screenwriter Ike Barinholtz ‘95, showrunner and screenwriter Dave Stassen ‘95, and actor Scott MacArthur ‘98—have brought their camaraderie and creativity to Hollywood, as they made the hit basketball-themed Netflix show “Running Point,” creating a labor of love, laughs, and, of course, Latin friendships. The story of these Romans spans decades, as they grew from school friends to budding comedians to Hollywood hitmakers.
“We’ve known each other for 40-plus years,” Mr. Stassen said. “I was in Latin from kindergarten to 12th grade, and Scotty’s older brother, [Hayes MacArthur ‘95], is and was one of our best friends, so I grew up around Scotty. And then in ninth grade, Ike joined us at Latin, and he and I quickly became best friends.”
A key connection among the trio happened on the basketball court, but unlike the court sets they would film “Running Point” on years later, this one had a Roman in the center. “When we were there, the fifth and sixth graders could play [basketball] in an after school program called Superstars, and the coaches of those teams were the high schoolers,” Mr. MacArthur said. “I remember playing against Ike and Dave’s team.”
During this time, Mr. MacArthur admired his older classmates’ humor, the same way he does today. “It was just so fun as a sixth grader, because you cut through those high school hallways and these guys were always laughing,” he said. “You always had a chance to either make them laugh, or you certainly knew they were going to laugh at you. It was amazing, and it really seeded the roots that we have.”
Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen took these hallway jokes onto the page, and these gags would propel them to become the screenwriters they are today. “We have to credit the Latin Forum as our first gig,” Mr. Stassen said. “Ike and I first started writing together for The Forum; we wrote a comedy column our senior year. That started our writing partnership.”
From Latin, Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen shared a stint at the famous Second City Theatre before moving to LA to start comedy writing. Throughout this time, getting their work off the ground proved a massive challenge. “We both had sort of service industry jobs, and we were doing some writing in our free time,” Mr. Stassen said. “And I also decided to go to grad school because I wanted a little more of a base to [support] what I knew about screenwriting.”
Mr. Stassen got a master’s at USC, while he and Mr. Barinholtz dreamed up scripts on the side. “I think each one got a little less bad, which is how screenwriting works,” Mr. Stassen said. “We wrote a movie that got us some meetings, and then we wrote another movie that got us some more meetings, and then we wrote a movie that eventually got sold.”
A few years later, the duo switched to writing for TV and began working on Mindy Kaling’s show, “The Mindy Project.” “That was a real big moment for us,” Mr. Stassen said. “People get to see your name every week, and that feels like a very legitimate thing in the industry.”
While Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen took Hollywood by storm, Mr. MacArthur was beginning to enter the industry as well. Mr. MacArthur had left Latin in eighth grade to attend Woodlands Academy. For college, he studied Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard before returning to Chicago and considering launching his career. “I was back in Chicago after college, and I called my brother, Hayes, and he was in the car in Los Angeles with Ike. And I told those guys that I thought I was going to move out to LA,” Mr. MacArthur said. “I remember the advice they both gave me was, ‘Well, don’t just come out here—unless you have something kind of going.’”
Mr. MacArthur immediately understood what his role models were telling him: Hollywood was a risk and a ton of work. He said, “I think a lot of people do come out here thinking things are just going to happen, and they don’t. You really do have to make it happen for yourself.”
Instead of immediately flying to California, Mr. MacArthur enrolled in an MFA program to build his skills, and he only moved after he graduated. Then, with his brother, Mr. Barinholtz, and Mr. Stassen already there, he jumped into comedy with a community built in.
Mr. MacArthur even owes his first television appearance to Mr. Barinholtz. “Ike was on [the sketch comedy show] ‘Mad TV,’ and he had asked me to come be an audience member and heckle him,” he said. “I think I’d only been living out here for two weeks!”
From there, Mr. MacArthur went on to many starring roles—notably Jimmy Shepard on “The Mick,” and the Devil on “Righteous Gemstones”—before Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen called on him to play a leading role for their newest collaboration with Mindy Kaling, “Running Point.”
A Netflix series centered around the siblings behind a basketball dynasty and heavily based on the life of LA Lakers President Jeanie Buss, “Running Point” has been a hit since its 2025 debut, when it garnered about 5.8 million viewers in its opening weekend. On April 23, the show dropped its second season, with similarly stellar results, and it was renewed for a third season on May 13.
Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen’s relationship with Mindy Kaling brought them onto this project, before the Romans knew that it would be a slam dunk. After a pitch phone call and many scheduling errors, the two sat down with the “Never Have I Ever” creator and dreamed up the show. “I think when Mindy and Dave and I get in a room, it’s very joyful—once we get past the stress of ordering lunch,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “We get very, very excited and start spitting out ideas.”
In that single lunch, the three television writers bounced ideas off of each other like they were basketballs. They brainstormed the elements they would draw from Jeanie Buss, the LA culture they wanted to incorporate, and the heartfelt and hilarious characters they wanted to create.
And Mr. MacArthur was cast as one of those characters: Ness Gordon, brother to main character Isla Gordon (played by Kate Hudson) and goofball with a heart of gold. “We knew we had a really, really funny character in Ness, and Dave and I really wanted Scotty to play it,” Mr. Barhinholtz said. “One of the reasons we hired Scott—we were so adamant—is not just that he’s a very, very funny actor. He’s very unpredictable as an actor, which I think is exciting for this kind of character.”
For Mr. MacArthur, stepping into his friends’ project ramped up the pressure for his acting. “It’s like the night before a big test or a big game or a big performance,” Mr. MacArthur said. “But then day one, when you show up to set and you see these two guys that you’ve known for 40 years, and you just drop in. That’s an incredible thing, when you feel grounded enough and safe enough to just go for it.”
And for Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen, their friendship with Mr. MacArthur makes writing his character, Ness, more fun—who wouldn’t want to force their friend to do comedy gags?
“We had a line last year where Isla tells him someone is embezzling from the company, and he confuses embezzlement with bedazzlement. That was very fun,” Mr. Stassen said.
Another favorite Ness moment among the trio involves a practical stunt in Season Two. “He’s running in the [elastic] band, and he crashes into the rack of balls,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “That was something I was excited to see, and it was as funny as I thought it would be.”
But even with all the teasing, the love for Mr. MacArthur shines through in his character’s writing. Mr. Barinholtz said, “You always end up writing little great details that you’ve learned about the actors into the characters, and it breathes life into it.”
Beyond Mr. MacArthur, one of the standout actors Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen have written for is “Running Point”’s leading lady, Kate Hudson. “The night I saw ‘Almost Famous,’ [I] was like, ‘Oh my God, that woman is the best actor.’ And when we first started talking about who could play Isla, her name came up,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “We were all like, ‘It’d be great to get Kate Hudson, but [that’s] not going to happen. She’s not going to work with us.’ And she read the script, and we talked to her, and she right away got it and was very excited about it.”
From her first days on “Running Point,” Hudson immediately connected with the trio and the “Running Point” team. “She’s the best person to work with. She’s so good and kind and funny,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “We have a call sheet in the business, and that kind of has the numbers that correspond to the actors, and she’s our number one. You couldn’t ask for a better number one.” Kate Hudson is not the only MVP on “Running Point”; every single cast member has stood out and made it an incredible experience for the three Romans. “The funniest people I know are the people that laugh the most themselves. They’re oftentimes the best audience, and that, I think we all identified that immediately when we got together,” Mr. MacArthur said. “Drew Tarver, Brenda [Song], Fabrizo Guido, any mix of those people in a room, and we’re all laughing, and it’s not always the same person making everyone laugh. It really bounces around, and it very much has that familial quality to it.”
That close connection between the cast and crew has translated into lasting memories on set.
“There was a moment this year, we were shooting inside a high rise in downtown Los Angeles. It was a hotel, apartment, combination type building, and the crew was going to change over the set. There was about an hour where we had to stand down, and Ike and Dave and myself and Kate and Brenda, we had lunch in the high rise, towards the top of the building,” Mr. MacArthur said. “And sitting there having lunch with these guys was like a real pinch-me moment. It really is incredible, and it’s not, it’s not taken for granted.”
To have these moments with his longtime friends means the world to Mr. MacArthur. “We’ve known each other for so long, and here we are, in this totally different city, in this totally different industry that none of our parents have worked in,” he said. “It was a grind, but now here we are.”
This playful energy on set only increased when the cast returned for Season Two. “In the second season of the show, you know the characters a lot better, and the actors know the characters a lot better,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “I think Season Two is a lot funnier than Season One. My favorite stuff on the show is watching the siblings interact. When you get all of them in a room, not just Scotty and Kate, but Drew Tarver, Justin [Theroux], and throw Brenda in there—I love watching all that chaos.”
Another favorite aspect of filming is the basketball scenes. As the characters run an NBA team, many episodes feature the Gordon siblings in their courtside seats, watching their players dribble and dunk. These scenes require intricate coordination, as the actors have to hit their athletic and theatrical cues. “It’s really fun as an actor in those scenes, because we’re just sitting there courtside watching, and I’m watching Ike and Dave behind the camera, put this whole thing together,” Mr. MacArthur said. “It takes so many moving pieces to move and sync it and to execute it. It’s really incredible.”
With these basketball scenes, Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen draw from their history, as Chicago basketball fans in the ‘90s, for inspiration. “There’s so much ‘90s Bulls lore ingrained in our show,” Mr. Stassen said. “We’re basketball fans, and the Bulls had such an important dynasty, [so] we were always using little snippets of those times and making them our own for the purposes of our stories.”
With this connection and shared history, the two writers can streamline the creative process. Mr. Barinholtz said, “Because we’ve known each other so long, and we go back to that era, there’s just a shorthand where, instead of me describing a older, kind of grizzled center who’s kind of grouchy, I could just say to Dave, ‘He’s like a Bill Cartwright, right?’”
But the “Running Point” team doesn’t only reference basketball legends—their own inside jokes have made it onto the screen, too. “I remember in Season Two, the episode where the cheerleaders go on strike, I wrote a line that goes something like, ‘Dad would fire the cheerleaders. Dad replaced them every couple years. He loved getting a fresh batch of fillies,’” Mr. Stassen said. He had taken that line directly from Mr. MacArthur’s father, a product of their decades’ long history.
As Mr. Barinholtz and Mr. Stassen write these inside moments into the show, they get to see them bring joy beyond their immediate circle. “To have a stranger in an airport or someone say to me, ‘Oh man, I love ‘Running Point. I love when that guy fell into the rack of balls,’ it really tickles me,” Mr. Barinholtz said. “To take our stupidity and get to share it with strangers is really special to me.”
Mr. MacArthur feels similarly and is especially grateful that he can work on a high-profile show like “Running Point.” “I don’t think any of us take it for granted that we get to do what we get to do, which ultimately—hopefully—entertain people, and at the end of their day, make them laugh before they go to bed,” he said.
But even with all this success, the trio are still the same people they were at the very beginning. Mr. MacArthur said, “The environment has really changed, but the core dynamic has been the same since Latin School.”
