John Wilson Talks Personal Growth and the “Religious Experience” of Making His How To Series

Debuting late in 2020, How To with John Wilson offered audiences an eccentric and unconventional look not only at daily life in New York City, but also delivered genuine advice about some of life’s most common questions, from “How To Make Small Talk” to “How To Split the Check.” Comprised of footage captured largely by Wilson, the series was less of a self-help series so much as it was a natural history documentary chronicling unexplored walks of life, digested through the lens of Wilson and producer Nathan Fielder’s absurdist sense of humor. Over the course of its first two seasons, How To has shed a light on everything from conventions exploring the Mandela Effect and Avatar fan group meetups to a man attempting to re-grow his foreskin and Wilson’s own connection with his elderly landlord, affectionately known as “Mama.” Throughout it all, How To has been both bizarre and touching, as it delivers countless incredibly human moments that are at once both outlandish and relatable. How To with John Wilson‘s third and final season debuts on HBO on July 28th.

In Season 3 of How To with John Wilson, documentary filmmaker and self-described “anxious New Yorker” John Wilson continues his heartfelt mission of self-discovery, exploration, and observation as he films the lives of his fellow New Yorkers while attempting to give everyday advice on six new deceptively simple and wildly random topics. Nathan Fielder (HBO’s The Rehearsal), Michael Koman, and Clark Reinking, who previously worked together on Nathan For You, serve as executive producers. Building upon Season 2, the episodes take unexpected turns, as John navigates a new set of topics including; how to find a public restroom, how to work out, and how to clean your ears.

ComicBook.com caught up with Wilson to talk developing this final season, the most visceral footage he has captured, and what he has personally taken away from this journey.

ComicBook.com: Season 3 feels like it’s your most personal, most vulnerable season yet, and so for you as a filmmaker, how do you find the balance, or is there a balance, between John Wilson: the filmmaker, the person, the actual identity versus the John Wilson of How To with John Wilson?

John Wilson: I feel like in the show I do drift in and out of a schtick. I hope it’s obvious to the audience when I’m being cheeky and when I’m telling you a true story. I mean, it’s all a true story, but there are certain visual gags that I am in a bit of a satirical character for.

But each episode is always anchored by a very real personal story a lot of the time, and I want to make sure that the audience does not doubt the veracity of that in any way. It’s tough tonally sometimes to thread that needle, but I make the show a lot of the time because there are things that I do want to confess, things that I do want to process that I have no other healthy way to do.

This has been consistent throughout the lineage of the whole project. I’ve been making how-to movies for 13 years, and that’s been the major engine for a lot. For the whole time, it’s actually dealing with my actual life and my actual problems. So, to me, having the show out in the world just makes it a little easier to talk to people in real life, which helps with social anxiety and stuff. Maybe if they know a bit about me from the show, then maybe I won’t have to worry about pitching myself as much as you would just meeting someone at a party normally.

Throughout the whole tenure of the show, you’ve captured some truly remarkable pieces of footage and really incredible, must-be-seen-to-be-believed encounters with other people. The conversation about Parasite, for example, is the one that comes to mind that just blows me away. When you look back on the series, is there an encounter or piece of footage that even you feel like you can’t believe that you captured? Or, for you, is there no real difference between just a compelling shot of a dog walking down the street versus someone walking into the CEO of Bang Energy Drinks’ house?

There is a spectrum, for me, of things that astound me, for sure. 

The shot of a dead pigeon is low-hanging fruit at this point, but in the end of the episode I made about batteries when this trash can spontaneously ignites in flames, and there’s this ad for vodka behind it that says, “Good vodka shouldn’t burn.” That was, especially in an episode about trash, it was just this crazy … I just couldn’t believe what I was witnessing and that I was there at that exact time after this whole journey, and things like that make me — that’s the most religious experience I’ll ever have, or moments like that, when things just happen to line up like that or … I don’t know.

There’s a lot of stuff in this season, too, I don’t know when this is coming out, but there were so many moments where I walked out of an interview, and I was just speechless. I had to sit for a while and think about why the universe delivered that to me. 

What have you personally taken away from this experience of putting this show out there? Is it a type of thing that it can’t really be quantified how much this TV show has impacted your life, or are you able to, with Season 3 about to come out, you can look back to where you were in life, emotionally, professionally and you see what those more distinct differences are for you as a person since this started?

I feel like I try to acknowledge that a bit in one episode this season, socially and professionally, how the show has impacted my life. But at the end of the day, I’m still walking to the same restaurants and getting coffee at the same place. The pleasure I get from the same routines hasn’t changed. It’s like when someone wins the lottery, and they still just would rather shop at Walmart. 

You not only capture all these visually striking images and moments and encounters, but just the people themselves, the conversations that you get into are just so fascinating and reveal so much about the human condition. Have you ever had one of your subjects reach out to you afterwards and felt like maybe they were misrepresented? I feel like it’s all very authentic, and you’re delivering objective footage of these people, but do people ever deliver any backlash, if you will, about how they appear in your shows?

Not really. I think the only person I can think of was my former boss at the infomercial place that I worked at. I think it was in the scaffolding episode. He reached out basically to say that he saw the episode and he didn’t seem that upset, though. I think he said that maybe someone who was on-screen, one of the on-camera talent, in some of the footage that we used, was maybe upset, but it was all fair use. So I didn’t even say anything about that person.

But other than that … And that was even in good spirits, because I think he was just glad that his company was getting PR anyway, press. But I am very upfront about what the context of a lot of this stuff is when I’m shooting with someone in the moment, so there really aren’t that many surprises.

Something that I’ve wondered going all the way back to Season 1, and it might change from episode to episode, but how much of the show is written to the footage that you’ve captured versus you write the show and then you find the applicable footage that will help punctuate the things you’re writing?

Each episode is different, but sometimes it’ll start with just an episode title or maybe even just a piece of iPhone footage that I know I have that was weird or just a kernel of another story maybe. Then I’ll just start shooting based around this general concept, and then weird stuff, just, I know it’s vague, but weird stuff just starts happening the more you talk to people.

Then you reorient everything around the material that is most compelling, and then you write broadly about what the beats could be. Then when you get in the edit, you then are very specific, like, line by line, shot by shot, line everything up.

Do you feel like you approached Season 3 of your show any differently than the previous seasons? Would Season 3, Episode 4 be just as in line with Season 1, Episode 6? Do you think they all are on the same playing field, or do you think there’s a theme or tone for Season 3 that sets it apart?

I would like for the audience to be able to just start at any episode, basically, without — save for maybe the finales of each season just because they have these wrap-up moments, but formally, I wanted it to be consistent throughout the way it’s shot. Just like in The Simpsons or any other thing, you just start from square one, “This is the problem and this is what we’re dealing with today.” 

I had saved this as my last question, almost because I’m not sure I want the answer, but I noticed that Mama wasn’t in Season 3…

No, I think she’s okay. I haven’t talked to her in a few months, but I still get her mail and stuff. I think she’s good. I should text her.

Thank God. I was seriously bracing for a horrible scoop here.

I don’t think, even if that was the case, I don’t think that I would lay that on you or put that in an episode, anyway.

Well, John, again, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to chat. I’ve been such a fan of the show. I can’t wait to see what you do next, and, in the words of Mama, “Have a nice day. Have a nice life.”

Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.

Season 3 of How To with John Wilson premieres on HBO on Friday, July 28th at 11 p.m. ET.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.