Agent Elvis Creators Talk Scatter, The King's Real-Life Drunk Chimp
Agent Elvis is now streaming on Netflix, presenting the king of rock and roll in a way that we've never before seen him. Played by Matthew McConaughey, Elvis encounters a number of real-life characters that were either present during this time period or had a direct part in the musician's life. Perhaps most surprisingly, the gun-toting, hard-drinking chimpanzee known as Scatter in the show was in fact a real-life ape and we talked with showrunners John Eddie and Mike Arnold about bringing in this strange primate.
Scatter is played by none other than Tom Kenny, who you might recognize most from his work as Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants. In Elvis' life, the king had come into contact with Scatter at a children's show in Memphis, Tennessee, and had adopted him after stating that he had grown to love the ape. During Elvis' career, he would routinely bring Scatter to film sets, with the chimpanzee ripping apart dressing rooms, and was known to actually drink alcohol during his life.
Scatter: Elvis' Real-Life Chimpanzee
Showrunner John Eddie discussed animating Scatter and how the inclusion of the chimpanzee definitely helped in the writer's room, "The sandbox that we got to play in was everything in Elvis' life along with everything else that was going on in the country at the time. We took something like Scatter, who Elvis had taken in from a children's show in real life in Memphis. We blew up the fact that he was an ex-NASA, coked-out, weapons expert and it's a much more fun show to watch than simply a drunk money in Elvis' house. It made the show so much more fun to watch and easier to write in that we had so many things to choose from."
Mike Arnold added his thoughts, stressing that while the series certainly took liberties with Elvis' life, the creators tried to amplify moments in the King's history, "We tried to do as much of that as possible. We knew that some fans would recognize that and all these different aspects of his life, we really tried to go for that because there was a part of our audience who would get what we were going for."
Will you be checking out Agent Elvis? What other real-life celebrity pets should be animated? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the king.