How One Episode of BoJack Horseman Inspired Amazon’s Undone

Undone, which debuted on Amazon Prime over the weekend, arguably is a visual and narrative experience unlike anything else in animation. For series creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the reality-bending nature of the show has a unique relationship to their previous work on Netflix's BoJack Horseman. ComicBook.com got to chat with Purdy and Bob-Waksberg, as well as series star Rosa Salazar, at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this summer, where they revealed that Undone spun out of an idea from one of BoJack's earliest dips into the cerebral.

"Well, I worked with Raphael on BoJack Horseman, and [it] was a fantastic show." Purdy explained in our interview, which you can check out above. "And I wrote an episode that was very trippy in the first season called "Downer Ending," where BoJack has a drug trip. And he experiences this alternate reality in which, if he had made some slightly different decisions in his life that were perhaps a little less selfish, he could have had this beautiful life in Maine with the woman he loved and a beautiful daughter."

"We kind of used the whole first season to build up to that climax," Bob-Waksberg added. "Like, we had 10 episodes just kind of grounding, before going super-trippy with episode 11."

"And after that, Raphael approached me and was like, 'What if we did a show that started there?'" Purdy continued.

"And that was the jumping-off point, and we kind of then went crazier from there." Bob-Waksberg revealed. "That was the beginning of this thing about the show. What would that be and what kind of things do we want to explore? And we talked a lot about the kinds of things that we're interested in talking about, as far as reality goes and what is real and what is our perception of reality and is there more to it? And the frustration of feeling like there must be something more than this. But time and time again it feels like this is all there is. And the temptation of somebody telling you, 'No, there is something more.' But maybe the fear of is any of that real, or is that just what I want to hear. And that tension, I think, was maybe the beginning of the show. And we talked about who are the characters and what are the relationships and where do they go."

Undone stars Salazar as Alma, a disaffected young woman who learns she has a unique relationship with reality after getting into a car accident. The series also stars Bob Odenkirk, Constance Marie, Angelique Cabral, Daveed Diggs, and Siddharth Dhananjay.

The first season of Undone is now available on Amazon Prime.