YOLO: Silver Destiny Creator Michael Cusack Talks Returning for Season 2, New Title and More

Michael Cusack is currently in the midst of several major projects now currently in the midst of production. This year has not already seen the creator hit Hulu with Koala Man, but this weekend will see Cusack returning for a second season of his original animated series with Adult Swim, YOLO. Sporting a much different title than from the first go around, YOLO: Silver Destiny is bringing back Sarah and Rachel for a new kind of adventure that will test the limits of whether or not their friendship is actually good for either of them. It’s a pretty big deal! 

Leading into the premiere of Season 2 with Adult Swim, ComicBook.com got the chance to speak with Cusack about how the creator felt about returning for a second season of YOLO, telling more of a connected narrative with Silver Destiny, the changing dynamic between Sarah and Rachel, Rachel’s new dream, and more! We even got to ask the Smiling Friends co-creator a bit about that massive series now in production for new episodes as well! 

Read on for our full conversation with YOLO: Silver Destiny creator Michael Cusack, and let us know what you’re hoping to see for Season 2 in the comments! 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!

Coming Back for Season 2

NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK.COM: So how’s it feel coming back for season two of YOLO?

MICHAEL CUSACK: It feels great. It feels amazing. We’ve got a little family that works on YOLO now. So [Todor Manojlovic] who does the voice of Rachel, I grew up with him, he’s one of my best friends. I went to high school with him. A lot of the crew formed great relationships with him working on season one. And yeah, [Sarah Bishop], voicing Sarah is great. It’s just a great team. 

Coming back it was very much like a continuation of what we’re doing on season one, but it was great that we’d already done season one because a lot of the foundations were laid out so we had something to go off. So a lot of the heavy lifting work had already been done by our previous selves, our past selves. It was much more of a joy to work on this season. It was fantastic to come back.

Why Does YOLO Have a New Title?

Is that why we have a new title for YOLO Season 2 with Silver Destiny? 

I think so because our thing is we love to keep it fresh. We love to keep ourselves kind of interested in the show, and it just felt like it was a fun thing to mess with it. Adult Swim have been historically so kind and accommodating to weird ideas, and we just thought it’d be kind of cool to give it a bit of an anime feeling, even though the show’s not an anime at all really. It almost, in a fake kind of pretentious way, it makes it seem more important when it’s not really. It makes it seem like it’s had this more thought behind it, but it’s not really. It’s just we like the aesthetics of coming up with strange new titles.

Telling More of a Story in Silver Destiny

So speaking to that actually, there’s a joke in the opening where it says it’s the same show with new name, but I don’t know if that’s true. There’s the Bushworld two-parter in the first season, but there’s more of a connecting narrative thread now. Was that an intentional thing with season two? Throwing in a narrative for Sarah, Rachel and Lucas? 

I think it wasn’t maybe a conscious decision until we got into the writer’s room. I think we had more episodes this season than season one, it was 10 instead of eight. And it’s such a fun show to just do creative, weird, experimental stuff. But also that duo between Sarah and Rachel, it’s kind of like a relatable friendship. I feel like I myself have experienced that in the past and other writers, they had lots of stories about being in toxic friendships. We kept coming back to the question of why would someone stay in a relationship like this and what are the benefits of it? And what has Rachel see in Sarah and what does Sarah see in Rachel?

From the get go, it was kind of fun to do a light serialization in a sense that their friendship has a bit of friction in it when they both have different goals and that’s clearly set out in the first episode when their destinies are given to them and they’re both very polar opposite. It was just a fun thing to see, just in a way that makes sense for this show, add a little bit of conflict between them and see how their friendship can be tested and grow from that. It’s also a writing challenge because I’m not the greatest writer and that’s real writing. That’s real TV writing stuff. So it’s fun to also get into that world of stuff like by episode six we hit this beat with the friendship and then it should resolve here in this episode at this point. And that was all new for me.

Changes Under the Hood for Silver Destiny

So I’m not an animation expert by any means, but I’ve noticed there’s an upgrade in how season two looks in terms of fluidity and motion, even smaller bits, like Sarah’s dad pulling the nail out. And is that something that going into season two, you reflected on season one and kind of tweaked a bit?

Yeah. Because I’m a fan of animation myself too, and it’s always fun to get really talented animators on board on these projects and let their talent be shown on screen. I’m getting more into the animation directing role these days where it’s less me actually doing the drawings and more getting really talented people to do what they feel is right. 

So season one was pretty crafty and I think it added it a lot to the tone of the show. But season two we had a bit more chance to try to keep true to the craftiness but expand on it in ways where we can do more interesting animated sequences. And it doesn’t mean now the show is a Disney animated frame by frame show, but definitely I think we consciously tried to make it a little bit more of an upgrade in terms of the animation.

Big Goals for Season 2

So speaking to that too, was there something that you weren’t able to do in season one that you were, I don’t know how much of this you can actually tease, but that you were able to do with season two?

Season one, we didn’t really have any pushback or anything at all. We pretty much could do whatever we came up with because if we came up with a very ambitious idea, we basically just stripped back the animation and the technicalities a bit more so it was a bit more craftier. But I feel like in season two we do stuff that we probably couldn’t have done in season one just because writing for a season two and on any show, you’re trying to up yourself, you’re trying to outdo yourself and not make it so it’s… You want to make it a continuation but not just an exact repeat of what we’ve already seen. So yeah, we try to do some weird form breaking stuff for sure in season two that probably wouldn’t have been able to be done in season one.

From Gremlin to Empress

One of the things you did mention was the changing Rachel and Sarah dynamic. Rachel’s going full on empress mode. And so I just want to know, what was the inspiration behind taking Rachel to such an extent, from gremlin to empress basically?

I think it was interesting with her because she doesn’t seem like she’s got many goals in season one and I thought it’d be fun to give her a purpose to strive for, in fact, both characters, Sarah and Rachel. And the way that came about is the kind of opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of desires. Sometimes depending on anyone’s mood, you either want to retire and chill out and do nothing, which can be related to growing a garden or doing something very one with nature or you want to overachieve and do something and make something of yourself. 

If you push that to the most exaggerated thing, that is being a conqueror and ruling and being in charge. And that those two things are nice to conflict with each other in a friendship and tests the friendship. So yeah, that was the main reason that came about and it gives them both purpose in this season.

The Response to Smiling Friends

Speaking of friendships, I do have to ask about the big one. Smiling Friends’ first season had a huge reaction from fans. And so I wanted to know as a creator, what was your response to seeing the way it’s been received online?

It’s been amazing. Seeing the fan art, I get such a kick out of that. The fact that Zach [Hadel] 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. 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.

Smiling Friends Season 2?

I do have to ask you Smiling Friends Season 2. It’s currently in the works, so I was just wondering if you had any kind of update on how it’s been shaping up so far?

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.

Oh, so actually one final question kind of just for me. So the Brazil special, why was Pim in charge of both the hotel and play tickets? It was a lot of responsibility! 

I think it was because they kind of left it up to Pim because he’s the organized one so to speak. But Pim, has faults too. When he screws up the vision thing with his eyes on the [worms]. He’s got bad eyesight for the address he’s supposed to go to. It’s funny when we do Pim making mistakes when he is supposed to be the most put together one and the most organized and you kind of rely on him. It just seemed to be funny, that contrast.

YOLO: Silver Destiny premieres on Sunday, January 22nd at midnight on Adult Swim.