Smiling Friends Co-Creator Reveals Reaction to Season One’s Fan Acclaim (Exclusive)

Smiling Friends really took over the world when the first season of the animated series made its surprise premiere with Adult Swim last year over the course of a single evening, and one of the creators behind it all opened up about how they felt about the response from fans to the episodes seen so far! The original Smiling Friends pilot was one of the most successful new releases for Adult Swim in some time, so it was no surprise to see the series was picked up for a full season. But what ended up being a surprise was just how much bigger it was going to get. 

What wasn’t a surprise, however, was finding out that Smiling Friends will be coming back for a second season too. Speaking to ComicBook.com ahead of YOLO: Silver Destiny’s premiere this weekend, Smiling Friends co-creator Michael Cusack opened up about how he felt to the response to that first season and noted it’s been “extremely satisfying” for he and fellow co-creator Zach Hadel to see the fans inspired by everything that went down. 

How Michael Cusack Feels About Smiling Friends Season One

“It’s been amazing,” Cusack began when talking about the response to Smiling Friends‘ first season. “Seeing the fan art, I get such a kick out of that. The fact that Zach and I had a vision from the very start that we could make something pretty unique and get a bunch of our friends and Newgrounds people from the old days of online animation together and make something that hadn’t been seen on TV before, that was a vision we had very early on.”

Continuing further, Cusack noted, “Being able to go through that and actually get it done and have the fans react to the way they’ve has been very extremely satisfying. It’s just so fun to be able to work with Zach and all these other animators that I grew up really being inspired by as well. I grew up watching these people’s animations online. So yeah, it’s hugely gratifying.”

When asked about the now in the works second season, Cusack couldn’t mention much but teased it’s going well, “I don’t think I can say much. But I can answer that it’s going very well. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I think people will be pleasantly surprised because the train is steadily on the tracks. It’s going well, the show is going well.”

What did you think of Smiling Friends‘ first season? What are you hoping to see from Season 2? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!