How to Complicate Characters: A Conversation with ‘In the Know’ Co-Creators Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner

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.

You've met them before. Either in passing or possibly within your inner circle. Characters of all shades and different shoes. Narcissistic. Delusional. Kind hearted. Recluse. You get all of these characters and then some in the latest Peacock original animated series In the Know, created by Zach Woods, Brandon Gardner, and Mike Judge.

Co-creators and creative collaboratives Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner spoke with Script about the ethos of their new show, the challenges and creative liberties of working in the animated space, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: This show is definitely all about character, character, character. What came first? The NPR workplace comedy idea or the characters like Lauren Caspian?

Zach Woods: Well, it's interesting - Brandon, Mike Judge, and I created this sort of, in little pieces. So, Mike called me and was like, ‘Do you want to do this show sort of like Space Ghost in the NPR area?’ And then I called Brandon and I was like, ‘This is sort of what we're thinking, it's this guy, Lauren.’ And then Brandon cooked up a bunch of other characters. It it was this kind of, like, potluck creative process, where everyone was just bringing different pieces, which I guess is all creative processes.

I think with Lauren, it's been a slow burn. I've always felt sort of fascinated by the secret what I view as this sort of secret machoness of these kind of slightly over-educated, coastal kind of…they're both like the most non-threatening and the most ego-driven people. [laughs] Like I feel like I've met many, many football players who are way less macho than the Liberal Arts professor who does like 18th-century French poetry classes, but behind that kind of scarf and that quiet voice is a like cunning competitiveness. And sometimes well-disguised chauvinism. And that was something that really interested me.

And also, the affected way that NPR people talk sometimes. Or the very demonstrative curiosity and empathy, that kind of 'mm' 'hmm' all that stuff I always thought was kind of funny. And I probably have some of it myself, like, I sometimes notice now in conversation, someone will say something and I'll go, 'mm', and then I'll be like, 'Oh fuck, that's me, I'm just doing myself.'

I think Lauren probably started as a way of channeling my disgust towards myself in a way. I'm so aware of how…I'm probably not even aware, but there's so many ways, maybe it's better to put it that way - there's so many ways in which I fall so far short of my professed values constantly. And I think like something, we were talking the other day, and I was like, I think my credit card statement does not match my ideology, you know what I mean? It just doesn't. And I have all of these kind of lofty ideas, but in terms of execution, I just think I'm basically a hypocrite, and I feel often horrified by myself and by others like me, where there's such moral confidence and such little follow through. And I think one thing that was nice about writing Lauren, and then all these other characters is initially I started with this kind of contempt for self and others like me, and then just out of the necessity of writing stories, we ended up having to discuss in the writers’ room, 'Well, why are people like this? Why do people act in such venal performative, insincere ways?' And through that process, I've felt like I've come to a maybe not more accepting but slightly more compassionate view of the Lauren's of the world, and I sadly consider myself among their ranks. Does that make sense?

Sadie: Absolutely. It definitely rings true. And it reminds me of from our previous conversation, you had mentioned something about, especially with Bud that you both like to write things that preoccupy you but also that feels disturbing and feels moving and feels hopeful. I feel like you guys do all of that in this show. And also, I feel like there's like this unspoken, free pass when it comes to animation that you can do this type of farce, right? How did you guys approach that when breaking the series and the overall character arcs?

Brandon Gardner: Yeah, I think going back to what Zach said, a lot of it came well, I think when it was just Zach and I sort of like we had thought about what the show would be with Mike. And then when it was Zach and I writing the pilot, I do think we are channeling probably more of the contempt we have for ourselves and people in our tribe. And I think especially the first draft of the pilot sort of reflected that. And then when we first met with the writers, and we spent a lot of time just talking about who the characters were, and the different ways in which we all related to the characters.

I think it's not a show where there's like really character arcs. But we did want in the six episodes that we had to have the chance to investigate different aspects of each of the characters. And so that it might be something where you watch the pilot and you think you know who a character is, and that they fit into a particular box. And our hope is that by the last you encounter something like, ‘Well, that didn't fit my preconception who that person was,’ which I think is how, a lot of times, that's how meeting people in real life works is not necessarily that they've changed, it's that you got a chance to know them better. And you're like, oh, ‘They weren't just the first impression I had of them. They're not just how they depict themselves online.’

There are complicating things, both in good ways and bad ways where you might watch the pilot, or the first couple episodes and think of Barb is a sort of perfect saint, and in a lot of ways she was or is but then you might also see like, well, who suffers with that, including herself. And you might start to be like, ‘Well, I wish Barb had some of these aspects that Fabian has,’ I think that that ability to just stand up for yourself could be really helpful for Barb. And for Fabian, you start to hopefully see areas in which she's really soft and kind and strong in ways that you would want to be yourself. And so, I think that dictated, there's not really like a plot arc through the six episodes, but we were talking about how we can complicate the characters or explore the characters through the six episodes that we have.

Sadie: Once you get the cast involved, how much were you guys refining those voices to match these characters?

Brandon: Well, one thing I'd say that was interesting about animation, is that there's two sets of actors, there's the voice actors that are amazing. Then you have the animators that are really actors themselves. And I think we learned a lot about the characters at both phases of starting with the voice actors in the radio play, and hearing their voices and being like, ‘Oh, you know, that character is actually a little bit more like this.’

And then similarly, when we first were testing out the animation, one of the first characters they were animating just to show us what they could do was Carl. And when we first saw them animate Carl, there was such vulnerability in his eyes, that there were things where we had to go back and we're like, ‘We cannot have a character say this to Carl later. America will hate them.’ [laughs] And so there was lots of learning. I think like Fabian was a big one where from Caitlin's vocal performance, then all the animators animating her, we had a much better sense of her, I think, as a character by the midpoint of production than we even had at the writing phase.

Sadie: How did you land on that kind of animation style, and incorporating mixed media? But also with this type of animation style, where it gave you creative liberties to go outside of the box?

Zach: Well, I think you really hit the nail on the head in terms of like animation, giving you a longer leash in terms of satirical territory you can cover. People are much less likely or we're about to put this to the test, [laughs] if people watch the show, maybe they will be offended, but we're banking on there being a little bit of a longer leash, in terms of what you can say from a puppet.

The other thing we talked about with the puppets is that there's a kind of natural affinity between NPR types and puppets. They're these kind of delicate, precious, and sometimes twee little things that are being manipulated by forces beyond their own awareness. And they're quite breakable. And they're quite spindly, and it just felt like, animation gets us hopefully a) a little bit more leash in terms of satirical content, b) mimics the kind of delicacy and tweeness of the actual kind of people we're depicting, and then meaning us and then, c) I think, to the point we've been discussing a lot in this conversation, I think a lot of what we wanted to do is, nobody is just one thing, you know, nobody is just one thing. We're all full of contradictory impulses, behaviors, and philosophies, and I think one of the beauties of animation is every character has about 30 authors, because it's the voice actor. And then different animators do different scenes. So, each character is being manipulated by these individuals who bring their own soul, their own quirks, their own senses of humor.

And so there's a kind of natural, multifacetedness that enriches the performances, there is something that we hadn't really thought of in advance, but which we noticed a lot, which is like, ‘Oh, wow, look at that weird little vulnerable moment that we weren't expecting from Chase,’ so I think it's served in those three ways.

Sadie: In terms of working with Mike Judge, especially again, for you, Zach, did he give you guys any tips or advice when it came to working in the animation space?

Zach: Mike, I think he's such an allergy to self-aggrandizement, you know, he's so self-effacing and kind of soft spoken and, and wry about stuff. So, I think for him, it's an annoying paradox that often the people who you would most want to hold court and bestow their jewels are the least likely to, and I think he falls into that category.

The thing that I feel like we really got from Mike is I guess it's sort of twofold. One is just he has experience with animation. And he really understands it and is really interested in stop motion. For example, he led us to ShadowMachine, which are like the best on planet Earth. They're the greatest animators in the world. We wouldn't have known to go to them. And then the more I think consequential thing is that Mike leads by example, in that I never feel like any of the things he makes are punching down. It never feels like he thinks he's better than his characters, even though his characters can be real, like Beavis and Butthead or King of the Hill. It's like, even though we're making fun of these people, it's from a lateral position. It's not from on high. And that's the thing that I've always admired about Mike's work is that it's somehow both unsparing and also unsanctimonious. And that's what I think we wanted to mimic in our execution of this show.

Sadie: There’s a great rhythm to the dialogue and jokes, what was your guys’ and your writers’ room process with that?

Brandon: The first thing that came to mind, I tend to look back to when we were actually writing it, but what the first thing that came to mind is one thing we wanted to do, and we're lucky that the actors were willing to do this, because I think it's pretty rare for animation, is that when we first brought them together, we literally brought them together, where we talked to a lot of actors who worked on animated projects, who never actually met, people that they did scenes with, they recorded all of their dialogue apart. And we actually had them even actors that were in New York-based come to LA in person. And we did a table read all together, where we could talk about it and ask questions.

And then we brought them all into the same booth, we actually had, like two adjoining booths, because there was too many people. But allowing for them to be in the same space and play off of each other's energy, and occasionally improvise and sort of get loose and really feel what the show was together, I think, is part of why the dialogue hopefully feels the way it does.

As far as, as the writing part, it's funny, it's like dialogue was never something we necessarily talked about, except that we were always trying to make sure that the characters felt like real people. And so, to the extent that, we wanted to have as many jokes as we possibly could, but we also wanted the jokes to come from the characters and to not be at the expense of their intelligence or believability. And so hopefully, that comes through in the dialogue is that it's not the dialogue is not there only to serve up jokes. It's hopefully coming from the character's point of view. And sort of like Zach was saying, from the beginning, a lot of times when the characters are at their worst, and that's coming out in their dialogue, you can sort of trace it back to their insecurities and fears and the reasons why people virtue signal or attack each other, you don't have to scratch that hard to get to see what's underneath that.

Zach: So our editor Kelly Lyon and also Hamilton Barrett - one thing we talked about with those too early on is we wanted the cut…OK, someone told me this thing. Even if you see a process from beginning to end, you write it and then you fire the writer. Then you shoot it and you fire the director. And then you edit it. So, it's like, even if you're all three things. So, because you have to it's you're rewriting at each phase in a way. And I think in this case, like Kelly and Hamilton, something we talked about early on with them is make it jagged. Like Kelly gave us a first cut that was very elegantly and expertly edited, but it felt very kind of snappy, and it felt very smooth, in a way that almost like a multi-camera sitcom or something, and it was really good. But we want it to feel more jagged, a little more, herky jerky. And I think a lot of the experience of the dialogue exists in the edit, you know, the kind of jaggedness of it the syncopated part of it, that's from the editors a lot.

And to Brandon's point, just because it's a script we're talking about is good about making sure all jokes originate from character. Alec Berg who is a writer who used to write on Seinfeld. And then he ran Silicon Valley with Mike and then Barry - he's amazing. Anyway, he had these two expressions that I found very, very helpful. One was the Price is Right rule of comedy. Which is like in the Price of Right, you can be like $100 below the correct price, and you can still win. But if you're $1, over, you lose. He's like, well that's true with jokes. It's better to undershoot the jokes than to overshoot even by 1%. And then kill your character, basically, you fuck everything up when you play it too big. And the other thing is that he would say is don't eat your seed corn, which I guess is like a farm thing. I don't know, I'm an idiot. But I guess there's certain corn that you're just supposed to use for planting. And if you were to eat that, then you have nothing to plant with the next year. And he would use that as a metaphor for character. So, I think that just those two expressions where if people are reading who are writers, those have been helpful to me anyway.

Sadie: No, I love those expressions - definitely covers a lot in terms of character work and jokes. Any key takeaways or big learning curves from making this show?

Brandon: It's interesting, I need almost more time to reflect on it. The amount of time and work that went into it was something I really was naive about. Where the writers’ room was Fall of 2022, like October to early December. And in my naivete, I was sort of like, probably because I was about to have another baby. and I was like, ‘I'll probably be wrapped up with the show by April and have lots of time to help get ready for the baby and stuff.’ It's like we were working through October. And this year. And I think like one thing that Zach and I have said to people - ShadowMachine - that would have felt so much more soul-sucking if they weren't working equally hard all the time. Really everybody there is so talented, but also just really had their heart in it and really did more than they were contractually obligated to. So that was always really inspiring.

And a couple of times, their studios are up in Portland, Zach and I got to go up and be there with them while they worked. And that was always so energizing and exciting and emotional. We were meeting a woman who fabricated part of the miniature furniture in the office that you see that like you really feel like you can touch it's got so much texture and made me like start to well up because it's just like, ‘Oh, you spent so much time on this thing that started is just like the silly idea. But you're all making it so much bigger than that.’ So I guess my biggest takeaway is just like now when I watch other shows, I pay more attention I think to things, like the wallpaper they chose in this kitchen scene or the wardrobe and I'm a little bit more conscious of all the choices and all the artistry that went into like a couple seconds of a show.

Zach: I mean watching Brandon pick up a tiny chair and start to cry is like a very moving and hilarious experience and I felt the same way. I was just walking around misty the whole time but it's also funny from an external perspective if you didn't know what was going on just watching two grown men just go around and like pick up like a little binder and be like, ‘It's so beautiful.’ [laughs]

I think the big piece of advice, I'm just echoing what Brandon said, is love is like the fuel that powers everything. And you need to find people who love what you're working on with you. Because like Mia Rose, she was in the art and production design team. She would do a weekly newspaper about the characters in the show where she would write jokes and articles and word searches and crosswords about what Sandy was up to and distribute it every week to the people on the crew. When we wrapped, someone made temporary tattoos of that Mona Lisa penis and put them on people's faces, people would do like these beautiful watercolor pencil drawings of Lauren that looked like they're like out of a New Yorker thing, you know, just the amount of care Rob DeSue, who was our production designer, sent us early on a playlist of songs that the scripts had evoked in him.

I guess what I would say is the thing that I learned from it is just how much to value that kind of vulnerability, sincerity, devotion, commitment. It's like, there's so much stuff in show business that is soul-sucking, mercenary, transactional, manipulative, ugly, you know, there's a lot of that stuff I would say, it doesn't predominate, it's not the main thing, but there's plenty of it. And then there's so much, that is like unimaginably beautiful and childlike and community-based and just transcendent and hilarious and warm. It's both things it's not, it's not just one or the other, you know, it's like, it can be as maddening and chaotic and alienating, as you could imagine, once in a while, but more I think it's just gorgeous. And it makes you feel better about people, because people are being so beautiful all the time working on it. 

In the Know premieres on Peacock on January 25, 2024.