Robot Chicken has been blasting pop culture through the zaniest kaleidoscope imaginable for more than 20 years.
Now, the seminal Adult Swim stop-motion series takes loving aim at the network that bore it in the upcoming Robot Chicken Adult Swim Special, which premieres on Adult Swim this Sunday, Aug. 30, at midnight ET.
The uproarious celebration of Adult Swim's past, present and possibly future takes all the characters you know, love and might've forgotten about on a cruise to remember, with everyone from Harvey Birdman and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Joe Pera and the Smiling Friends popping up.
As hard as it is to believe that Adult Swim has been around for 25 years, it's great to look back through the delightfully warped lens of one of the network's
best-ever programs.
We chatted with Robot Chicken co-creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich to discuss this milestone special and how Adult Swim and their show have evolved over the years.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Tell me how the special came about. What was the impetus for Adult Swim having you guys do this big celebration special, if you will?
Seth Green: We had been talking for a while about what another half-hour Robot Chicken special would be, and it occurred to everybody that this anniversary was coming up, and so, it seemed no better a subject than Adult Swim itself. For us, the opportunity to get a bunch of writers together and get a bunch of artists together and make something that we felt both celebrates and memorializes the feelings of Adult Swim, we made this and cannot wait to share it with you.
Matthew Senreich: The only thing I'll add is the best part about Adult Swim, to me, is that this is one of the only, if not the only, network where all the creators know all the creators of the other show. That's one thing that Adult Swim did very well. So, it also was fantastic to be able to reach out to a lot of the people who play these characters to come in and goof around with us.
As you were going through the annals of Adult Swim history and figuring out what you wanted to focus on, what you felt like would just be good for a quick appearance? What was the process like of trying to find the best way of centering these characters all together?
SG: Right. Yeah, it was a big whiteboard with literally every property and person written on it. Then, we just went through and pitched jokes on all of it until it started to take a shape. The shape that it took, I'm really, really pleased with. It's not a spoiler to say that Adult Swim in our premise has put together a 25th anniversary cruise, and all of the characters that have existed on Adult Swim are on the boat. Obviously, we couldn't have literally everybody, but you'll see it very well-represented from Tim Heidecker and [Harvey Birdman voice actor] Gary Cole to Mike [expletive] Tyson. So, that was the process.
MS: The hardest part for us was being able to, within the budget, being able to afford as many of the actors as we could. So, we had to unfortunately not have everybody, but we got as many as we could.
Was there a certain show or character that might not be banner Adult Swim history, but you guys were determined to get in there somehow?
SG: There were like 10 people in the room, and each one of us were like, "Well, we got to get this one in there." So, there's a lot of [expletive] in there that's going to make people very happy.
MS: Yeah. Even if they're just small moments, we try to just hide them in there.
I remember sneaking around watching Robot Chicken when my mom went to bed when I was in middle school, and it was just mind-blowing. That was the first Adult Swim show that I really fell in love with.
I remember, right before we went to Disney World when I was in middle school, I watched the episode where the Electric Mayhem Behind the Music thing comes up. I remember very vividly right before that being like, "Okay, that's a little different from Muppet*Vision 3D, but I'll take it."
SG: I remember watching our output of that when we put Animal down and just thinking, Janice is crying, everybody's crying. I remember saying, I can't remember if I said it out loud. we were in the mix, but there was a couple times, and this was maybe the first time I go, "What are we making? What is this? What are we doing here?" So many times where you're just like, "Is this going to stand? What's happened? Is this okay?" So funny.
One of my favorite parts of the special was just the Joe Pera element of it, because his show [Joe Pera Talks with You] is very special. Were you guys big Joe Perra fans? How did that all come about?
MS: Huge Joe Perra fan. The episode, I think it was episode seven where [Pera discovers] "Baba O'Reilly." [That episode] changed my life in every way. I got to meet him over the course of time, and every time I met him, I was so captivated just by him, talking to him. ... He was the actual very first person we got to record, which also led the way. He set the tone for all of it, and letting him be in that booth and improv himself was fantastic.
SG: Well, listen, we love Joe Pera, and his show is undeniably unique and special and super-contributive to the actual fabric of the tone of Adult Swim because Adult Swim is not just irreverent humor. It is not just violent, self-aware, deconstruction of your most sincere loves. It isn't. It's all these things. Adult Swim is a safe space for people who like this kind of comedy, like this kind of entertainment, and want to share it with other people. That's what Adult Swim has always been to us. Joe Pera was such a, not latecomer, but just such a critical cog to make this whole network feel like we're offering the coolest stuff out there.
We got to meet him [at an event]... A lot of times you meet artists that run a show like that, and it's a game. You know what I mean? It's a shtick. Joe is just achingly sincere. That, to me, was the thing that made me love him the most. It's like, oh, this is this guy. These are his messages. We want this guy at the centerpoint of our story. He's the perfect storyteller. He's the perfect narrator for it.
What's been one of the coolest things about the way Adult Swim has evolved to you guys while maintaining its ethos throughout?
MS: Oh, gosh. I mean, I always go back. I'm a comic book guy, so I kind of equate it to that. There was the golden era, which was kind of like Space Ghost and Brak and what it started. I equate us to this silver age, if you will, which was us, Venture Brothers, Tim and Eric. It all kind of came in at the same time, and you just watch the generations as they go on. The one thing that it does so well as these generations grow is every time it's something slightly different, 90 degrees from what you expect to be the most popular, but yet still popular.
SG: The network continues to invest in ideas and artists that have an incredible mass appeal, especially to a young generation that is making their own voice and defining their own identity. Adult Swim has always been a siren song to the misunderstood, the somewhat askew artists of the world who need a safe haven and some shared content to laugh at.
MS: I still find myself watching it all the time, from Smiling Friends to Common Side Effects. It's like there's always those things that you want to be watching that are.
SG: There's always new voices that it's really exciting to have in the fold.
MS: Again, it becomes a family. Comic Con, I come back to, hanging out with the Common Side Effects guys. It was a blast, just getting to know those guys.
What do you think has helped you guys maintain the signature Robot Chicken spirit after all these years?
SG: It's writers. It's new writers. It's bringing in young talent. It's hearing what they think we were saying or what they think are Robot Chicken sketches. Then, we can get a sense because comedy evolves. It was evolving pretty steeply when we started making this show. Matt and I even joked about in the early days of it that how much we were contributing to the abbreviation of the attention span because we were sort of proving the idea that the audience didn't need a laborious set-up. The audience is so far ahead of you. They've already been spoon-fed a lot of superhero mythology, and this predates... It's post-Scream coming out, but before Cabin in the Woods. So, the audience is at different levels of "in on it," and that's what we really noticed in our first season. So, how we keep it fresh is just paying close attention to where the audience is, what kind of jokes they're able to receive.
Then, we bring in new writers all the time and say, "What are you thinking about? What is funny to you?" Then, what Matt and I try to do is just shape that across all this time, because from the very beginning, why the show has worked is because of the shared opinions of our core group, me and Senreich and Doug Goldstein and Tom Root, Mike Fasolo. It's really been us agreeing that this is or is not the voice of the show. We'll push it all the time. We'll push stuff where we're like, "I don't know how I feel about this." Sometimes it's like, four-to-one or, you know what I mean? Three-to-two. That's how we keep it fresh. That's how we keep it on-model is that we try to never lose sight of what we think on-model is.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Q&A: Seth Green & Matthew Senreich discuss the 'Robot Chicken' Adult Swim special
