Disenchantment: Interview with Showrunner Josh Weinstein Part Two
Disenchantment is the third TV series produced under the pencil of Matt Groening. Whilst his piles of sketchbooks have created the characters, fleshing out the world and running the show is down to Groening’s close ally Josh Weinstein, a familiar in the world of cartoony overbites, having served on both The Simpson’s and Futurama. The series is a welcome addition to the changing world of television, parodying big budget fantasy shows and fitting perfectly into anyone binge watch schedule as Bean, Elfo and Luci explore the mirthy, magical world that surrounds them and delve deep into unfurling mysteries and strange, foreign lands as the series expands in it’s third season.
In part one of our interview we covered behind the scenes vocal talent and fleshing out the fantasy world with binge-worthy complex story arcs. In part two of our interview we find out more about the show which is streaming now on Netflix.
So pull up a bar stool, get comfy and be sure to dodge flying sceptres as we talk about juggling writing an episode whilst running a series, influences from both science fiction and fantasy, the hopeful return of a cult classic show and the beauty of a long time writing partnership with Josh Weinstein.
DISENCHANTMENT (L to R) Eric André as Luci, Abbi Jacobson as Bean and Nat Faxon as Elfo in episode 8 of DISENCHANTMENT. Cr. NETFLIX © 2020
How would you usually go about communicating with the other writers and ensuring that everything’s fluid when all the episodes are serialised?
Yeah, well, it’s a much deeper, more complicated process than we went through on The Simpsons or Futurama, because of the serialised art element. So for months before we even start with the writers, Matt, and I map out an overall arc for the series and the characters for the season, then we get together with the writers and we pitch out each specific episode. So all the episodes are pitched out in a group with all the writers. What we normally do then is we have a story pass and then a joke pass. So we’ll pitch it out with the writers first to make sure the story is sound and come up with any new developments or twists, then the writers will usually go off in a smaller groups just to do a joke pass and just to collect as many good jokes as they can in a day, then they’ll go off and spend about two weeks writing a draft. I’ll give notes, and then they’ll go off and do a final-final first draft. And then, because there’s so much serialised elements in the show, both Matt and I then take our individual passes at that script before it’s recorded.
Because there’s just no way that no matter how good the writers are, there’s so much stuff that like Matt and I have in our heads that needs to be accomplished and we have a bigger picture of everything that’s going to happen. So we’d normally do a fairly decent pass on every script, and then it’s recorded, but before it’s recorded we’ll do one more pass of the writers just to punch up a bunch of jokes and stuff. If I write an episode like I have with Episode Five, I’ll write a ‘glue’ episode that’s holding together the different parts of the series before and after, so that was one that seemed easier for me to write – also because I know more about freak shows, as well! And there has to be like a certain specific tone to doing an animated freak show I think. And also, I love old timey carnivals and that sort of thing. So I was like, all right, that episode is mine!
There’s a lot of details in the background, I always find myself pausing to take them all in.
That’s a thing, throughout the show we love to layer and put a lot of details in the background.
Oh! In Episode Five, there is something in the background that I don’t know if people have noticed. There’s a cage that says ‘The Pig Man of Bentwood’, which is obviously Merkimer’s (The Talking Pig voiced by Matt Berry) human body that we haven’t seen in two seasons, in Episode Two (season one), when he switched bodies with a pig, his human body runs off and we don’t know what happens to it so this is the first appearance of it in Episode Five of season three in that cage, but it’s just in the background, then you’ll see in Episode Eight of the season they hook up with the human body of Merkimer again.
That was that was our chance to do a big Matt Berry episode, where it’s Matt Berry talking to Matt Berry, because it’s pig Merkimer talking to human Merkimer. We just we love Matt Berry so much so we did a Matt Berry bonanza!
DISENCHANTMENT (L to R) Eric André as Luci, Abbi Jacobson as Bean, Matt Berry as Prince Merkimer and Nat Faxon as Elfo in episode 8 of DISENCHANTMENT. Cr. NETFLIX © 2020
Matt Berry can steal any show with delivery of a single line. What’s his line in one of the episodes, something like, ‘remember the Wankers’?
That’s my line! I’m so pleased to have come up with that.
Is fantasy fiction something that you were a huge fan of growing up? Did you play Dungeons and Dragons or read The Lord of the Rings?
I don’t have the capacity to understand D&D! I love history and I was really into medieval history.
I think I’m much more into the Harry Potter fandom than The Hobbit fandom. We tried to have writers who were super into D&D and stuff, so we don’t dishonour fans of that type of work. But I’m much more into historical, medieval style fantasy and obviously we want to have ogres and elves and all those different types of beings and obviously the show also has magic, as well.
Here’s another aspect of what the show allows us to do, we didn’t want to just do typical magic where anything can happen. Here’s a spoiler, a big spoiler, and I won’t give away what it is, but there is an explanation for magic in our universe that makes sense. I won’t go any I won’t go any further. In this series we get to do Steamland, magic versus science and what that means. As Alva Gunderson says “You call it “magic,” but really, it’s simply natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.”
I was much more into Ray Bradbury or Philip K. Dick growing up, I like that type of science fiction.
DISENCHANTMENT (L to R) Nat Faxon as Elfo and Abbi Jacobson as Bean in DISENCHANTMENT. Cr. NETFLIX © 2020
You’re clearly a fan of the Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang Metropolis looks to have been a massive influence on Steamland as well. Anything with rivets in it I suppose?
Both Matt and I are huge fans of old, old movies. And the old, old animation, you know, from the beginning.
I get the impression that Matt Groening is very heavily involved in this and, the wider Groening family – his son Abe Groening wrote an episode this season.
Yeah, he is fantastic, I remember when he was just a little kid. He started out as a writer’s assistant, on our show in the first season, along with the other writers assistant, Michael Seiken and we promoted them both to staff writers for this last season. But yeah, it’s been it’s a family affair.
The idea for Disenchantment was in Matt’s head for over ten years. The way he develops the show before even bring someone else in, like myself, or David Cohen, is he has notebooks that are filled with just sketches and random doodles, but also lists of characters and world’s he wants to visit and ideas. I think this had been percolating in his head from back when he was still thinking about Futurama. So he’s very much very heavily involved.
Are there things percolating in your mind whilst working on Disenchantment? It’s been reported that Mission Hill is returning?
Hopefully, Bill (Oakley, long time writing partner) and I still have to sell it again. Mission Hill developed such a fan base as a cult show, over the last 20 years and Bill and I always felt like it was kind of cut short, because we only did 13 episodes. So that’s a show that we’ve been dying to bring back. And there’s enough fan support and support from Warner Brothers who own the show. So Bill and I came up with kind of a spin off of it that focuses on Gus and Wally, the old guys who live in the apartment, but still has all the other characters as well.
It’s kind of going to be a history. Just it’s like The Simpsons was a satire of mainstream America this new spin off will be a history of Alterna America through the eyes of Gus and Wally and through Mission Hill. We’re hoping to sell it to somewhere in the next couple of months. Because I’ll be so busy with Disenchantment Bill would be running the show, and I would just be helping out, but we’re incredibly excited to have the chance that Mission Hill could come back.
Wally and Gus from Mission Hill (Warner Bros)
Bill Oakley is a longtime collaborator of yours. You’ve produced some amazing work together. What’s the secret to finding a good writing partner? You must be telepathic at this point?
We started writing together when we were teenagers, and started a humour magazine in our high school and just kind of knew that’s what we wanted to do. And I think our taste in comedy sort of developed together, like one hive minded being made of two people. We really developed together and because we started writing together, you know, we would complete each other’s sentences, both in real life and while writing.
We definitely also went through rocky times to that, like any partnership has, but then luckily, we resolved that and got back together, because with an intensive thing like an animated show. It’s always better to have a partner.
Read Part One of our interview here All three seasons of Disenchantment are available to stream on Netflix now.