CBS has turned the 2011 Cameron Diaz movie Bad Teacher into a television show debuting tonight (Thursday, April 24th), and Nerdist had a chance to talk with Veronica Mars and Party Down favorite Ryan Hansen and newcomer Caitlin Kimball about the process.

While Caitlin Kimball may be new to Hollywood and being a part of a big TV show, she’s not new to performing. An alumni of Carnegie Mellon University, Kimball still can’t believe where she’s landed so quickly after moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career: “I am so pumped. It’s my first real show and I had the best experience [with] the coolest writing and actors. I could not have asked for a better first experience in showbiz… To go [from performing] in a grimy warehouse downtown on Skid Row to being on CBS is still blowing my mind. I’m trying to catch up. I’m very happy, to say the least.”

On Bad Teacher, it would appear that there was a lot of fun to be had by the actresses playing funny girls behaving badly, a sentiment echoed by star and producer Ari Graynor and co-star Sara Gilbert. How did Kimball find the experience? “It’s girl power to the extreme. I’m having a for-real Spice Girls moment every time I’m on set. Hilary [Winston], the show runner, is amazing the way that she writes these women because they’re brazen, they say everything that’s on their mind, they don’t apologize, whether its Meredith, who is living very out loud, or the characters that are kind of timid; They are still so fully produced and thought out, and I’m so lucky to be playing one of those.”

Veronica Mars and Party Down alum Ryan Hansen had equally wonderful things to say about his castmates and show runner Winston: “Hilary Winston! She’s a G. She is a G! She’s from Community and Happy Endings, and I’m obsessed with her, so I got a meeting to meet with her, because that’s what you do at a meeting, and she was so cool and I loved her script so much I had to be a part of it.” He continued, “I’m playing the straight guy. I don’t get to play a wacky weirdo, which is so fun to play, but it’s also really fun to sit back, be the cool dude and watch these weirdos, and the women on these shows are amazing. Ari is so good at this character. She’s so funny and so sexy-time, it’s amazing to work with them. Kristin Davis is amazing too, Sara Gilbert, it’s a lot of fun. I love it.”

And how does the series differ from the movie? Hansen replied, “[I]t’s our own thing, it’s its own world. Like Fargo! They’re doing they’re own thing so it’s like that, its just like Fargo. And Colin Hanks is in both.” (He’s not.)

I, of course, had to ask Hansen about the long-rumored Party Down movie. “It’s happening!,” he joked. “We just got greenlit right now, as we’re sitting here. I just got a text. On my watch. Can we make that happen though? Not the watch, but the movie.” So, if the movie isn’t already happening, why do cast members keep saying that it is happening? “I think that’s kind of like our defense mechanism because we all want it to happen so bad…. We’re not as successful individually as [the cast of] Arrested Development so I think we could try to make it happen. I mean, sure, people have done other stuff, [but] we’re not that successful.”

All kidding aside, what’s the latest on his Veronica Mars web spin-off show? “I think we’re going to do a spin-off of Veronica Mars. I’m going to play myself, Ryan Hansen, to bank on the success of the movie to get a Dick Casablancas spin-off of the spin-off. Metta World Peace! Just meta. I didn’t mean the ‘world peace’ part.”

Bad Teacher, the half hour series starring Ari Graynor, Ryan Hansen, Sara Gilbert, Kristin Davis, Caitlin Kimball, and David Alan Grier premieres tonight, Thursday, April 24th on CBS.