Smiling Friends is finally coming back to Adult Swim with its third season, and ComicBook got the chance to speak with the creators behind it all about their work on the new season, getting renewed through Season 5, when they might want to end the show and more. Smiling Friends has become one of the biggest new additions to the Adult Swim line up in the last few years as it has been a hit with fans since the original debut of its pilot. Now several years later, the animated series is coming back to screens with its third season.
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Smiling Friends Season 3 is going to be making its debut with Adult Swim on Sunday, October 5th at midnight, and ComicBook got the chance to celebrate the show’s return with series creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel. Ahead of the new season, the two creators opened up about their reaction to getting renewed through to Season 5, potentially when they want to end the series, putting the show’s realistic dialogue together and much more. Read on below for our interview with the two (which has been edited for length and clarity).
Smiling Friends Creators React to Getting Renewed Through to Season 5
NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK: Just getting into it, you have Smiling Friends Season 3 on the way, and you were just renewed for Seasons 4 and 5 as well, so how does that feel?
ZACH HADEL: Feels like we’re a rat trapped in a maze. Looking for a piece of cheese we’ll never find.
MICHAEL CUSACK: Yeah, on a hamster wheel. No, it’s good. We’re so happy to be working on this show. It’s good because we’ve got this document of, about a trillion episodes on there, so we can go for a while, but, we wouldn’t want to go too long. Having it locked in for 4 and 5 for now is very satisfying, but who knows, you know? I don’t know if we want to say…we’ll see how we feel at the end of that, if we want to continue.
That’s what I wanted to ask about, too! Because you guys put it out there on social media, pretty much when the announcement was made, that you’re already kind of thinking about that endpoint. So, the larger question I just wanted to ask about that is how long is too long? Is it more of a vibes thing? Is it more of, you see some other animated shows get picked up for four seasons a piece with Fox, and Rick and Morty got picked up through Season 12. Do you look at those numbers, and you’re like, “Whoa, I don’t know about that?”
CUSACK: It’s funny, because when you’re young, and you’ve got piss and vinegar in you, you’re like, “I’m gonna make a show, and we’re gonna do two seasons, like Fawlty Towers, and opt down, “F-ck everyone else that goes along.” You got that mentality. But then, it’s very hard to get a TV show up, too. It’s extremely hard. So, once you get it up, you’re very lucky. So, there’s also the feeling of, “Alright, now that we’ve got this, let’s not take this for granted, and really try to do what we want.” But I do feel like there is a point where shows kind of outstay their welcome, and obviously, the creators will know that often last, and the audience will know that before them. So we try to be self-aware.
We want to end on a high. We want to end where we’re not making episodes that are disappointing people…we feel like we’ve outstayed our welcome. And when it comes to other shows, or like when a show has gone on too long, it’s hard to say, because there’s no real exact number, it’s more of a feeling, but it’s when universally, everyone’s like, “Alright.” It’s hard because time just itself can be that, you know? Even if the creators love the show still, and they’re really invested, anything can just go on a little bit too long. So we try not to do that. We just want to do a complete package with our show.
HADEL: We always talk about the box set. When you’re 80 years old, and it’s like, “Oh, that was cool. We made that when we were in our 20s and 30s.” We always try not to get in the mindset of giving a solid…we’ll go on this many seasons, because I honestly think we don’t know. We talk about it, and we both go back and forth all the time. Like, since the pilot, we’ve had the conversation of, “If we got a blank check to do as many as we wanted, how many would we do? Would we do five, eight, ten, three? It really is a vibe. Also, if we get to the point where we feel like…”Man, we’re running out of ideas,” or “Oh, we already did that.” I think that’ll be the time.
Also, I personally am a fan of stuff that’s very decade-based. Like, I think it is cool that The Simpsons is the 90s, and Michael, you’ve said before, The Beatles is the 60s. I certainly would not ever say that there will never be Smiling Friends after this decade, but there’s something cool, roughly, about everything being, “Oh, the 20s, that was when Smiling Friends came out.
Speaking to that self-awareness, there’s a joke in the third season where one of the characters is like, “Oh, with your classic realistic dialogue.” About that in particular, is this something you two were aware of that’s been going on in the series? That you’re just kind of like, “Oh yeah, here’s a joke acknowledging that” or is it something that had been pointed out to you by fans?
CUSACK: In a way, but more so because we start off as fans of the show before anyone else, so we would even talk about the mix of realistic dialogue in the show, and that being a staple of it. But also that kind of joke is meta in a way. We try to avoid that a lot, and that moment is more about just fandoms in general. But yeah, I suppose that is kind of a little jab at us, or a little reference to us in a way.
HADEL: No, I think Jab is right, because I think the lamest thing ever is us talking about…I view the episode as almost a rebuke of the show itself, where the whole ending…the point is, “You know, f-ck Pim and Charlie. What the hell, why was I even obsessing over them?” And he’s right, and that is the message of the episode, if there even is one. Michael’s exactly…we were very specific about, “Okay, this scene should be improvised, this scene should…no, this could be plot.” That’s definitely something we think about, and we try to also keep the ratio good. You don’t want it to be too much of that, and you don’t want it to be too little where that’s sucked out and the personality’s gone, so it’s always like a balance.
Smiling Friends Creators on Improvisation
Speaking to that improvisation too, I’m sure it’s even much harder with animation in terms of what you have to have done by a certain point. Do you guys get to sit in a room and record that dialogue together? Or is it something that you kind of layer on each other after figuring out how something is going to sound then animate it? Or is it a situation where you draw it out and then try to match what you’ve already set in place?
CUSACK: No, Zach and I will be talking online, and then we’ll say, “Oh, we’ve got to record improv today, let’s do it now.” Then we just call each other on the phone, and put in AirPods, and then go record. Just improv together, and that will be synced up, and it’s all before animation. It’s all just like in the early days, so we don’t have to worry about…we just worry about having fun and improving and the comedy of it, and then the storyboards will be indicated from that. It’s very important to us to have those improv moments, too, because otherwise it just can feel just too scripted and too static.
That’s something that people have really come to appreciate, especially when it’s mixing in with all the different art styles. Is that considered improvisation by you two as well, in terms of when you’re developing a character? Let’s say Silly Samuel [in the Season 3 premiere] Is it like, “Let’s do a silly CG character” or is it a result of an earlier design evolving to the point where we get it in the Season 3 premiere?
HADEL: I would say early in the writing process is like pretty mathematical. Actually, to a degree, usually we’ll have sort of ideas for characters or jokes, and we’ll plug them together, and when we’re really looking at the season or the episode, like, day one of the episode, or looking at the season, we’ll kind of be, “Okay, what is the feel of this? What do we need? Do we need a boss episode? Do we need in this episode specifically?” Silly Sam, I think the conversation there started as, “What haven’t we done?”
His original name was Mr. Random, and the whole idea with him was he was like a guy that was too crazy. I think that also had a fandom thing, where that guy kind of became famous, and that actually evolved and split off. Part of it became Mole Man and part of it became Silly Samuel, and we kind of changed the character. That actually happens a lot as well, where we’ll have an idea for a story — in fact, I think that happened on this season, but I can’t remember which one — where an idea became two. Then sometimes you’ll have an old idea that clicks into something else, where you’re like, “Oh, that idea from season one actually would be a really good B-plot thing here.” It’s like a mix of mathematical and organic.
CUSACK: You said it perfectly, and when it comes to the medium, sometimes we decide, like, “Alright, from the very beginning, we want to do a whatever animation, we want to do a claymation character.” But sometimes just the character insinuates the medium after we’ve written the episode. So we’ll be like, “Oh yeah, that would make sense doing this character more in this style.
How does that work when it comes to incorporating live-action actors? Like the Mole Man episode has I think my favorite cutaway kind of joke. Are you sitting there directing these actors, or do you have a team that puts that together and then it gets incorporated into the episode?
CUSACK: It’s a ragtag team. Zach and I will be there, on a set somewhere in Burbank or LA, and we’ll have a small crew. Aaron, our compositor and editor, will be there helping. The live-action moments are fun. We always try to scatter those throughout the series, because it always just makes it feel like that kind of late night Adult Swim thing. It always creeped me out seeing it as a kid. So the live-action mixing with animation, it just feels bizarre, so we love always incorporating that.
HADEL: The only thing I have to tag on, by the way, is that specific scene that you referenced, that’s a perfect example, by the way. That was an idea from 2019. That was supposed to be in Season 1, I think that got kicked out. I think it was supposed to go in the shrimp episode, where I think the line was like, “Honey, come in here, there’s a shrimp on TV.” And that was the original, which doesn’t even make sense. That sat there, we were like, “What do we do with this? Oh, maybe you could go here.” It’s in the episode now, but that’s a perfect example.
Working With Tons of Ideas
I know you mentioned a document where you’ve got all these ideas. Is that kind of what you work with, “Let’s bring back this season one idea?” Are you constantly kind of referring to that as almost like a “Show Bible” would be in other series?
CUSACK: Yeah, basically, it’s not too gospelly. Where it’s like, “Alright, we’ve got everything here.” But it’s really handy, because we just dumped a lot of our ideas in it very early on. It’s really unfiltered. We would often be walking around and come up with a gag, and then just put it in that document. It’s very rich with…a lot of the ideas probably wouldn’t fit anywhere, but we always go back to it. Especially if we’re stuck. So we were like, “What are some things that we’ve talked about before?” But we can also just disregard that document too, and just write an episode without it. It’s always there if we need it.
HADEL: I would say most of those ideas…every time I look through, I’m like, “Oh, there’s so many ideas in here.” I look through…80% are unusable or weird, outdated things we’ll never do. One idea, for example, was “Pim kisses the doorbell, the Ring doorbell.” But it’s like…maybe that’ll be in an episode, but what does that even mean? How is that an idea? So a lot of it’s just a stupid visual joke, or a video reference, or something, but like Michael said, it’s not the Holy Bible or anything.
Smiling Friends Season 3 premieres with Adult Swim on Sunday, October 5th at midnight, and will be streaming with HBO Max the next day.
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Image courtesy of Focus Features.
