Showrunners Sam Means & Robert Carlock talk to The Inside Reel about thematics, approach and structure in regards to the 2nd season of their animated series: "Mulligan" on Netflix.
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00:00So take it from our face, we know you're going to like this place.
00:24Could you sort of talk about looking at this series and the world exists in because it's with both of you guys, it's about the world. Could you talk about that with this series particularly going from the part one into part two now?
00:39Yeah, well, I, you know, in some ways it's sort of simple right you've seen it a million times in the disaster movie, the world is in is destroyed the world is in shambles, which might be more topical than we would like.
00:52But I so what we from an animation standpoint we kind of wanted to create a recognizable version, quote unquote realistic what what I grew up with this as sort of Saturday morning GI Joe kind of version of the world where human proportions are kind of what we expect them to be in geography is what you expect it to be.
01:11And then of course you know like from a writing and once you put yourself in that world creative standpoint is kind of this endless motor of putting everything back together, and maybe correcting mistakes maybe making new mistakes about about everything from, from the smallest to the biggest issues and, you know, we thought of it.
01:34And then how do you put an office comedy in the middle of this kind of extreme premise, because at the end of the day, it has to be about people relating with other people and having different points of view and and arguing about, are we going to do the solar power are we going to make lab, lab, lab meat.
01:53Are we going to, you know, just Saturday night live need to exist again.
02:22Welcome home. We missed you.
02:51But it also has to do with identity every single one of these characters from the alien all the way back to Mulligan himself it's all about you know how do we see ourselves and eat.
03:00Interestingly enough, as the second season before there's all this kind of reflection of what that means, what our humanity means to us.
03:08Can you talk about that it's a little more of a deeper sort of read on it but it is there. I mean, we're we going to do shallow deep, you know, coming from, you know, daily show and then weekend update and that kind of thing we love kind of being a goal and also kind of getting it, why do we, why do we behave the way we do and it was very much coming from a place of, oh it's it's if you have a 80 year old.
03:37South Carolina senator.
03:39And, you know, it's this Boston dumb dumb.
03:44There'll be a lot of overlap.
03:46And there'll be a lot of event diagram and there'll be a lot of disagreement, and you start to add in, you know, people with all different kinds of backgrounds and that's that really is the core of where we came from that's that office comedy.
03:59You know, what is human nature, how tied are we to these mistakes that we've made as a society as a, as a species, we've made these mistakes, I think we could all admit, as a, as a society and got to a place of division and issues with the world and the environment and conflict with each other.
04:20And if we had a chance to do it all over again if we could start from, you know, day one, would we be able even to work together to to overcome these differences, and to get it right this time that's kind of the question at the heart of this whole show.
04:34Yeah, Sam has a master's in philosophy so we just have to kind of avoid the pitfalls of his education.
04:43I need to track down Todd he's a military asset so the government.
04:47Wait, we've got a broken arrow Travolta Slater Mulligan with Samantha Madness Delroy Linda Frank Whaley Howie law, Mr President, this is urgent general Scott Paccio present.
05:00I want you to provide all of the resources for a hard target retrieval search mission with extreme prejudice now get off my plane.
05:08Okay, well I've triangulated Todd's tracking beacon.
05:11So he's alive, I'll bring my compass, I have a compass.
05:14No, his location hasn't changed all morning, which means he's definitely taking a real long bath after soccer, we tracked the signal to a shopping mall in Tacoma Park, Maryland.
05:24The one with the Lego store.
05:26You're the best our nation has to offer. I'm entrusting you with this mission.
05:31Wait, we need a cool name for the mission. Okay, what's cool.
05:35Operation Zach Morris cigarette operation glow in the dark break operation candle pin with Bella operation midnight bed time operation dad says I love you at WrestleMania operation dodgeball catch operation model.
05:46But you also have to look at you know because some of the, the physical comedy even in animation has to go to that but don't bump thing as like with sketch comedy, you know, but that also comes from the performers you have involved.
06:00I mean, I love that Dana's in there. I mean, that's great. But then, you know, contrasting that with Chrissy and then with Nat and how that works.
06:07You have those that sort of triple threat and then bringing Ratcliffe in, you know, could you talk about that because when you hear certain things you think certain things, but then the visual sort of transforms that because you talk about that.
06:19Yeah, it's an interesting thing like the the expectations you bring to to a voice right and there's an episode in the second season where Dana is both playing.
06:28It's a little bit of a spoiler but both playing, you know, Cartwright Lamar this this southern senator and playing his own mother who probably is alive she has to be like 115 years old maybe it might be a normal base it's it's unclear.
06:43But there was a sort of thing where we felt like as we were listening I mean even after he landed on what the voice was for Cartwright like we weren't hearing Dana anymore, you know, and then thing where he was doing also the old female version of that character.
06:59And that it really felt like two different two different things and and that's the beauty of working with people like that and and we you know we took a lot of pleasure and yeah I think Chrissy is mostly using her own voice although she also voices some like teenage boys and I think an alien somewhere and and is it's not what you expect from her.
07:21We had worked with her briefly on a TV show like this woman is funny and kind of quick and and we really wanted to bring her in and hopefully I think this is what you're saying like you start to you go that's Chrissy Teigen and oh but she's really living in this character and really being funny and you start to hear it differently.
07:51The feral kids are nice but they will give you lies.