Zach Woods Talks His Series In the Know, NPR, and Killing a Drifter for Phoebe Waller-Bridge

From The Office to Silicon Valley to Avenue 5, Zach Woods has starred in a number of fan-favorite sitcoms, but he’s about to embark on his most ambitious comedy yet with Peacock’s In the Know. With a long history of improvisational comedy in his career, Woods has had a number of opportunities to get experimental with his craft. Given that In the Know sees him subjecting a number of celebrities to improvisational interviews, he catches his guests as more of their authentic selves, thanks to the formula of the series being that of an NPR parody. Making the project even more ambitious is that, while the celebrity guests are their live-action selves, the rest of the series is brought to life through stop-motion animation. In the Know is now streaming on Peacock.

The series is described, “Lauren Caspian is NPR’s third-most popular host. He’s a well-meaning, hypocritical nimrod, just like you and me. He’s also a stop-motion puppet. Each episode follows the making of an episode of Lauren’s show In the Know, in which Lauren conducts in-depth interviews with real-world human guests. Lauren collaborates with a diverse crew of NPR staff. They are also puppets and nimrods.”

Woods co-created the series alongside Mike Judge and Brandon Gardner. In the Know also stars Caitlin Reilly (Loot, Hacks), Charlie Bushnell (Diary of a Future President, Percy Jackson and The Olympians), J. Smith-Cameron (Succession, Rectify), and Carl Tart (Grand Crew). Guests on this first season of the series include Kaia Gerber, Jonathan Van Ness, Ken Burns, Finn Wolfhard, Norah Jones, Tegan and Sara, Nicole Byer, Roxane Gay, Mike Tyson, Jorge Masvidal, and Hugh Laurie.

ComicBook.com caught up with Woods to talk developing the project, dream collaborators, and more.

ComicBook.com: In the Know is such a unique, interesting, and ambitious … It doesn’t feel like there’s any other sitcom, animated show, interview show quite like it out there. Going back a bit, just to the inspiration for the idea, where did this all come from? Was it always planned on being a blend of stop-motion with these live-action interviews? Did it just start as an interview show?

Zach Woods: Mike Judge, I think, is one of the smartest people, if not the smartest person, I’ve ever met. I think he made an X-ray machine out of trash when he was in high school or something. I’m not sure the details, but he’s one of these autodidact geniuses. I think one of the things he first did in animation, was he just got an old Bolex camera and did some stop-motion on his own. It was something he was interested in, and then he became Beavis and Butt-Head Mike Judge and King of the Hill Mike Judge and Office Space Mike Judge, but it’s something he’s always been interested in. Then we worked together on Silicon Valley and he would notice that often I would ask a lot of questions when I was talking to people, because I’m just generally curious about people and I’d tacitly interview them.

Also, I am just a walking NPR stereotype, I’m a human tote bag, basically. I just am so solidly in the demographic of delicate, coastal elite, liberal arts f-ckfaces that it was just something where it was like, “Okay, this feels like there’s an opportunity to make a show where Zach,” that’s me, “interviews people as an NPR host and we could do live-action interviews,” which seemed just fun. And then Brandon Gardner came on as a co-creator. He’s my writing partner, and he helped flesh out the world a lot.

One thing led to another, the stop-motion part of it was good for … We had a few things about stop-motion. One was, for these kinds of twee, precious, delicate little people who are being controlled by forces that they’re not aware of, it seemed like a puppet was the perfect medium. And then, also, we wanted to do satirical stuff and I think you get a slightly longer leash if it’s stop-motion. Some things that could feel nasty in live-action, with the warmth of stop-motion and the sweetness and care that goes into every little frame of it, I think it softens it in a way that we thought would be helpful. 

It’s so funny that you mentioned the “twee” nature of it. For me, when it comes to Wes Anderson, I feel like Fantastic Mr. Fox is the epitome of his sensibility, so I’m totally on board with what you’re saying about that. When it came to either the visual look or the tone and how you parodied NPR without only being an NPR parody, there’s so much more to offer, I feel. I describe it as Space Ghost meets Creature Comforts.

That’s so nice. Whoa, that’s such a sweet comparison. Oh, my God. Mike will be thrilled. He loves Creature Comforts and I do too.

Well, so I guess though, along those lines, were there specific touchstones that you looked to for inspiration, especially since this is such an ambitious thing for the look of the series, and also just the tone of the comedy?

Well, the company that made the animation, Shadow Machine, had just finished Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and we had these astonishing animators. So a lot of times it would be just referencing back to them, their own work, as the reference. But Anomalisa had that wonderful naturalism to the stop-motion. We really liked that. We like Pinocchio a lot, Creature Comforts for sure. 

They did a show called The Shimmering Truth. That was just one season, but it was really interesting animation. I think the thing we really wanted to emphasize is we wanted to see if, rather than leaning into the cartoonishness of the animation, we could lean into the humanity of it and find little micro-facial expressions and beautiful little nonverbal moments between the characters that felt like they were happening between two human beings, as opposed to two broad archetypes. That was the challenge we set for ourselves and I was blown away by what the animators did, and in a very short time. 

Did you get much say in what your character looked like? Or did you give them free reign to turn your voice into a physical object?

No, we were very involved in every tiny, little decision. We were very micromanaging with that, but also they would come in with ideas that were better than ours, and then we would take those and run with them. I mean, it was a fascinating, Dr. Frankenstein experience because they’d show you a body and you’d say, “No more like this,” and then they come back with another body, and there’s something slightly ghoulish and spooky about the whole thing. But it was also really, really exciting to be able to dial in just the particulars of Lauren’s unfortunate face and body. 

From Ken Burns to Nora Jones to Finn Wolfhard, you have such a wide range of guests. What was that process like of figuring out who you wanted to go to and how that roster of interview guests would help set the tone of the diversity of an NPR show?

Well, one thing we really love about the real NPR is Terry Gross will interview such a wide range of people, and that’s such an exciting thing about the show, where you really don’t know what you’re going to hear when you’re tuning in.

We wanted to mimic the kind of booking behavior of an NPR show, and we had this incredible booker named Hillary, who is a booker for The Daily Show, and she somehow got people to sign on for a show that they couldn’t watch, where they were interviewed for an hour by an NPR, stop-motion host that they couldn’t see, except a still photo of, and it’s a very vulnerable thing to do. But all these people signed up, and I was so grateful for how game they all were. 

I think part of our thinking with the interviews was that when people are promoting stuff, they have these well-established talking points that they go back to again and again and again. It seemed like, if we put people in a weird enough situation where they’re talking to this weird NPR puppet, eventually they will unclasp their hands from their talking points and wander into some more unfamiliar territory, and we’ll get to see new aspects of them. So that was something that we were really trying to accomplish, to get them out of their comfort zones without making them uncomfortable. 

Since you have such a deep background in improv and you are just genuinely curious about asking people things, how much of your end of those conversations were bullet points or scripted, or was it a completely free-flowing conversation?

The interviews are all improvised on the guest side completely, with the exception of Jorge Masvidal, where that was a scripted story, so he’s basically acting. I mean, he’s working off of a script. At one point, we asked Tegan and Sara to pretend they were sick to their stomachs, but other than that, they’re all just reacting in real time.

On our side, the writers would prepare a bunch of questions, we’d have this big reservoir, and we do a lot of research about the guests. Then Brandon Gardner, the other showrunner, would be on an iPad, sending me stuff on my iPad while I was interviewing. He’d be like, “Oh, try this question, try this joke.” It was having mission control while I was improvising with them, and it was really fun. It was really fun. 

The people are so fascinating. And then, Roxanne Gay, for example, is this very serious editorialist and writes these really thoughtful, often quite painful pieces about serious stuff, or painful things from her life, rather. She was so playful and made dirty jokes and was just so fun. Or Mike Tyson had this very poetic banter. Tegan and Sara just played along so gloriously, I mean, just everyone, we were so delighted by everyone. 

I do have to give credit to you and Brandon and Mike, the entire format for it really does show other sides of these people that feel completely genuine, but a side that I’ve never seen before. Because you see the people on talk shows, they have their bits, they have their banter, that to get to see them in this format and drop their guard a little bit, yet still be hilarious and as engaging as you can imagine.

That’s nice of you to say. Brandon and I both like those old Dick Cavett clips. It just like, I don’t know, John Cassavetes is just on for an hour, just smoking cigarettes and talking. Because now, I’ve done a bunch of talk shows. You do pre-interviews, so you know what you’re going to say before you go out. It’s this bizarre, reenacted conversation, and I think those can work fine, but there’s not a lot of spontaneity. So I thought it was fun to do it this way. 

Well, I’m not sure you knew that this is our pre-interview and we’re going to do the real interview in another 45 minutes.

Of course. Oh, to be clear, if it’s me, there’s no f-cking way I’m doing it without a pre-interview, I’m going to look like an asshole. No way.

With emails, sometimes things get lost in the communication, so just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, I understand. I understand.

You had such amazing guests in this first season, were there any dream guests that maybe, for whatever reason, things fell through, that you weren’t able to get for Season 1? Or even through the process, now looking towards a possible Season 2, are there other people that you’re like, “Oh, this person is going to be at the top of the list of people we want to try and get,”?

Oh, that’s so interesting. I mean, I’ve got to be honest, we thought it’d be so funny for Lauren to interview Mike Tyson. So getting Mike Tyson was a little bit our pie-in-the-sky one. But I’m sure, I mean, I’d love to interview Michelle Obama. I think Lauren would be such a pain in the ass with Michelle Obama, and I think she’s so funny. Who else? There’s so many people I would love to interview. Suge Knight has a podcast that he releases. He’s locked up, but I would love to have Lauren interview Suge Knight if he would do it. I don’t know. I guess, I’m trying to think who else. Taylor Swift is an obvious answer, but I do think Lauren’s feelings of closeness to Taylor Swift would be interesting. And (Caitlin Reilly’s) Fabian is a big Taylor Swift fan in the show. 

Well, I mean, depending on scheduling, I can probably be available.

Thank you.

If you want to pivot away from … If Taylor’s unavailable, you can’t get Suge Knight, you’re like, “We need to bring on a lowly, C-list movie journalist.” 

Well, I take issue with your self-description, but I will say I’m glad that you could read between the lines. I was warming up, I didn’t know how to get there. I was being so coy, and you could see what I was getting at. And thank you.

Save it, though. Save the official invite for the actual interview. You don’t want that in the pre-interview.

Okay, I will. Yeah, this is the pre-invite in the pre-interview.

Then it gives me time to think about yes or no.

Great.

And in addition to your main character, you have such a great cast of supporting characters. How did they come about? Were the characters there first and then the voice talent came second, or was it vice versa?

The characters were always first, and then we cast them with the actors, who are so amazing. One exception would be Mike playing Sandy, the movie reviewer. One of the early things that he animated, you can see it on his Instagram, actually, is this guy who just goes, “I like film with filming films, the film, film, film.” He’s just one of these cinephiles who becomes so obsessive and self-satisfied, that he just starts screaming the word “film” again and again. We thought it’d be funny to have that guy as a reviewer. So Mike was obviously part of it from the very conception, and we knew he was going to play Sandy, but other than that, it was all casting. 

Well, and I guess that also means you don’t actually need me for Season 2, because that pretty much covers what my interview would go like, is just rubbing my temples and saying, “Film, movies, cinema.”

If there’s one thing that we know for certain, it’s that we need more people who feel strongly about everything, but film in particular. I mean, I think the truth is, I am a sucker for people like that. Mike was making fun of those people, but at a time when movies are eating sh-t in so many ways, when I meet someone who’s a snob about it has to be a 75-millimeter print or they’re not going to go see it or whatever, I love those people. I’m like, “Bless you. I hope you get your way and I hope these movies survive.”

I mean, it was nice to see us replicated in the series authentically. There’s really just not enough mediums in which film fans can express their opinions. It feels like we’re a marginalized group, if we’re being honest.

Yeah, right. You should be eligible for grants and initiatives and things.

Absolutely.

Great. I wholeheartedly agree. 

This was a reunion with Mike Judge and the gestation of this idea came from that previous collaboration. You’ve worked with so many incredibly talented filmmakers over the years, are there other filmmakers or showrunners, directors, writers who you’ve worked with who you’d really love to reunite with again, who you maybe only scratched the surface of collaborating with?

Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, weirdly, one of the other executive producers on this was Greg Daniels, who created The Office. So it was like there’s a lot of cross-pollination. I love working with Mike. I love Alec Berg. I love Armando Iannucci. Really, everyone I’ve worked with, I haven’t had a negative experience. 

You know who I would love to work with so much? She’s not a showrunner yet, because she makes films, is Céline Sciamma. She’s my big creator crush. I’m so obsessed with her, and she actually was very helpful to Brandon and I when we were setting up the room. She has this whole thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, she gave this talk, I think it was at the BAFTAs or something, but she’s talking about writing from desire. Basically, there’s such a structuralist approach to writing, where it’s like the first act has to have this, second act has to have that, but what she does is she just writes down a bunch of scenes that she wants to create, and then she writes down other scenes that she thinks will make those scenes make sense. I thought that was such a lovely way of approaching writing, so much less architectural and more sensual in a way that seems nice. 

Talking about that, by the way, can I just say, this is how I know I’m Lauren Caspian. I just said the sentence, “Talking about writing in a way that’s less architectural and more sensual.” I mean, someone should just walk up to me and hit me in the head with a hammer.

You don’t know this, but from my end, there was actually a weird filter that popped up where his face was superimposed on yours. I thought it was some preplanned thing.

I mean, it’s not that different. Let’s be honest, we could easily be cousins. 

I do have to bring up your work on The Office. You and I talked before about how uncomfortable the concept of being in Gabe’s skin ever again made you. I know that Greg Daniels, at least earlier this year, started to put a writers’ room together for a possible revival of the show. I was curious if, conceptually, you had any advice in what you would want to see for that show to come back? If there’s anything Greg or other writers could do to actually get you excited and interested in watching, just as a fan?

Like, my notes to Greg about how he should reboot The Office?

Yes. Since it was such a failure the first time, maybe the second reboot will really stick this time.

Oh, interesting. Where would I want to see a reboot of The Office…

I know some of the cast is like, “Yeah, I’d totally be down to come back.” Some people, like yourself, said they’re not really interested. So a complete fresh start, or what you see actually working for such a reboot?

I would like it to take place in Hell and have it be the characters who are judges, like the judges who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. I know it sounds very high concept and niche, but I think it’ll really play to a wide audience.

I grew up in Massachusetts —

Did you really?

The Salem Witch Trials are, I don’t want to say near and dear to my heart, but if you can put in a word with Greg, that if he needs any consultant on how to authentically replicate the character of Giles Corey, who, of course, was crushed to death by a door and his dying words were “more weight” because he refused to name any possible witches. I can clear some space in my schedule.

You got it. Listen, anytime I do an interview, I consider it part promotion, but part like Monster.com for the interviewer. I got you covered. 

I went to Salem once and I was so struck by — it’s fascinating because this was a true, human catastrophe. This is just mania leading to mass death. What’s so funny now is, when you go to Salem, there’s those things that you can put on your mailbox that looks like a witch crashed her broom into the mailbox. It’s so kitschy, and it’s so funny that you just give it a few hundred years and then it’s like, all of a sudden, you can buy vampire teeth at this place where we hanged a 12-year-old. It’s so wild. It’s so wild.

And it’s nuts because the place where a lot of that stuff actually went down is the town over.

No way.

Danvers, Massachusetts. At the time there was Salem Town and Salem Village. One kept the name, one renamed itself Danvers, and that’s where the actual locations are, but because it doesn’t have the name, it’s not the touristy place as modern-day Salem.

Wait, so Salem is fronting as the actual location of these witch trials, but it’s Danvers?

Yeah.

People of Danvers: you need to declare war on these frauds and posers.

Oh, no. This is how it started in the first place.

They’re not to be trusted, they’re of a different ilk and they need to be eliminated.

The Office was a huge success and it’s so fundamental for so many people who grew up on it, watching it. For you, did you have a particular favorite sitcom or favorite TV show growing up, where if there’s any reboot of it, you would absolutely be tuning in just because you love the concept so much?

Oddly enough, the first show that I felt that way about was the British Office, and then I love the American Office, so I’ve gone through that life cycle. When I was a kid though, my parents and I would watch NYPD Blue. I remember there’s lots of butts. They would put butts on that show. That was one of the first shows to show butts on television, but that’s not why I loved it and that’s not why my parents loved it. So keep your slander to yourself if you were drawing that conclusion. 

No, I used to watch NYPD Blue and ER with my parents, so I was a pretty cool kid.

Yeah, clearly. They just need to rebrand one of the SVU shows, just throw ER at the end, or throw S-V-U-N-Y-P-D Blue at the end and you’re just writing checks there.

That’s right. They’re a few extra initials away from syndication. I mean, they are syndicated, but you get what I mean. 

Since there were shows like Silicon Valley or Avenue Five, things like that where you were in from the ground floor, but then you had stuff like Veep or The Office where, like you mentioned with The Office, you were a fan and then got to join it. Are there any current TV shows or sitcoms that you’re just waiting by the phone or keeping your eyes out or planting some seeds on Monster.com to try and find a way to get involved and join those ensembles?

Oh, that’s interesting. The people who did Bottoms and who did Shiva Baby [Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott]. I love them. I don’t know, are they making TV? I thought Fleabag — I know that’s old, that was many years ago, but I remember watching Fleabag and being like, if Phoebe Waller-Bridge called me and was like, “Hey, we want you to just compromise yourself unspeakably on camera and we won’t give you any context, but we just need you to do it and we’re not going to pay you,” I’d be like, “Absolutely, sign me up.”

I guess, what I’m saying is I would do a snuff film if Phoebe Waller-Bridge asked me to. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge was like, “We need you to kill this drifter,” I’d be like, “I assume it’s for an emotionally resonant and beautiful work of art.”

Or it could be Jackass 5 and you just don’t quite know about it.

Listen, sorry to drop names, but I had a conversation with Johnny Knoxville once — hold your applause. And he told me something that’s so interesting. He was like, “I had to stop doing pranks with civilians.” He’s like, “Because people would want to prank me and then I would prank them back, and then they would prank me and then I would escalate it so hard because I’m from this world, this tribe of people who are nuts in this particular way.” And he’s like, I just realized it’s like how a boxer, I don’t even think it’s true, but there’s that thing of boxers having to register their hands as deadly weapons. I think Johnny Knoxville has to be careful how he wields his impulse towards chaos.

I feel like this is a great full-circle moment, because the last time I talked to you and talked about projects that you were interested in, you wanted to play a boxer in a horror movie, that’s something that you mentioned to me. So for you to circle back to boxers, I mean, this is great pre-interview. I’ve got to say, you really hammered it home.

Thank you. Yeah, I think just like me playing a boxer makes it a hard … Like, me shirtless, adds the horror to a movie about boxers.

Well, once that collab with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Rachel Sennott from Shiva Baby, once that comes out and you’re a boxer, murdering a drifter…

It’s all coming together. You’re weaving all of the disparate threads into a beautiful quilt, that I’ll keep myself warm with into old age. 

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In the Know is now streaming on Peacock.

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