Exclusive Interview with King Star King producer JJ Villard

KING STAR KING PREVIEW

Originally Published in BubbleMag Issue #2

You would think that it was ironic that King Star King will be premiering the same night on Adult Swim as Superjail’s fourth season, but really this was something in the works as far back as 2012. But, it took a while for show creator J.J. Villard to get in a position to be able to pitch an animated series to Adult Swim.

Having been born in London, Villard spent most of his life all over California and as such he certainly valued a stout education. ‘’When I was in high school, my animation teacher gave me private lessons where he would touch my dick and jerk me off.’’ Actually none of that happened, what did happen is that Villard would eventually graduate high school and would attend Cal Arts where he was classmates with Pen Ward of Adventure Time fame ‘’I fucking hate Adventure Time, I think it’s the worst’’ (for the record, J.J. cites TV shows like Superjail and Phineas and Ferb as his favorites).

Upon graduating from CalArts, Villard would work to get his name out there and did so successfully after he developed a short film and had it sent to a mess of film festivals. One of those would wind up at the Cannes film festival where talent from Dreamworks would notice it and eventually offer Villard a job as a storyboard artist for such block buster affair as Shrek the Third, Monsters vs Aliens, and Shrek Forever After ‘’Only four out of 45 graduates coming out of Cal-Arts actually get jobs!’’ Villard would eventually

leave Dreamworks and begin work on a Fine Arts career which ‘’was the worst decision I ever made. I went from eating sushi every night of the week while working at Dreamworks, to eating Taco Bell and drinking beer. I hit rock bottom and those were the only things important to me at the time. I used to party and go to strip clubs and literally the next day I’m leading a team of artists. Being a show runner has changed my whole lifestyle, I don’t know how guys like Christy (Karacas; Superjail co-creator) deal with it.’’

Eventually, Villard would begin construction on a sketch book then head to Comic Con where he would run into a former classmate in Laura Allen, ‘’while we were catching up, she said that I should pitch something to Cartoon Network.’’

That pitch came in the form of a presentation at Cartoon Network with Craig McCracken (Wander Over Yonder/ Powerpuff Girls) whom loved the concept of his pilot, only for it to fall by the way-side. In 2012, Adult Swim programming VP, Mike Lazzo got wind of the pilot and gave a call to Villard asking him to pitch some ideas as he was looking for a show to be that of a ‘’sister’’ to Superjail. That idea was called Happy Land, and after six months in development, Lazzo would fly out to Los Angeles from Atlanta to see progress. Whilst there, J.J. Villard would sendLazzo back to Atlanta with another sketch book where he would then see a sketch featuring the Spring Bunny. Feeling inspired, Lazzo would call up Nick Weidenfeld and ask that he relay a message to Villard to stop working on Happy Land and instead develop a different concept altogether derived from the sketch. That concept would eventually become King Star

In the pilot episode of King Star King which originally aired on Adult Swim in 2013, we meet the titular character best described as a punk-rock take on He-Man, as he gets demoted from a cushy life in the realm of the gods to that of a waffle house line cook. It’s here KSK regains his memory just in time to rescue his love, Princess Snow White from the clutches of said Snow Bunny. The concept of the show sounds rather simple, but that’s by design.

 

Similar to Superjail, show creator J.J. Villard has eschewed grand concepts in favor of a more visual presentation with old-school horror movies like Street Trash as the main inspiration. ‘’When we first started pre-production, I gave Tommy Blacha (KSK writer; Metalocalypse) about a 1000 characters to work with and every now and again he would start laughing at this Snow White with big tits. But, I would also tell him to make the scripts short. Tommy didn’t understand from the start, so I told him that I needed time to show visual jokes. Story is just as important as the visual’’ The other characters’ origins are just as unique as that of Princess Snow White, ‘’Cruiser the Duck was inspired by my crack addicted friend who was in a mental institution. He also just happens to be an artist and this one time I visited him and he drew this wizard. Then I drew my Jewish friend, but with his head down where his dick would normally be. ‘’And what about our title character King Star King? Turns out J.J. Villard is a HUGE fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, ‘’KSK was inspired by Brock Lesnar because when I first saw him fight I just thought “this guy’s a fucking animal!”

For those already drawing comparisons to Superjail, you would be wise to do so. However, there are quite a few stark differences that should give enough to the viewing fan more bang for their buck. For example, whereas Superjail employs more confined settings and more humane characters as part of the main cast, King Star King uses a more outer space-esque land- scape with backgrounds while taking a more minimalistic approach. That’s because while Superjail’s producers encourage their artists to be as gag-heavy as possible while putting together scenes, KSK’s  Villard prefers more quality over quantity and also exhibits more drug and sex humor than what is typically seen in most animated television nowadays. ‘’One of the most common notes we get from Standards and Practices is that of liquids and to make sure that when they spray it doesn’t look like semen, though I hope they don’t see all the cock references we did.’’’