Reddit AMA Recap: Duncan Trussell Talks “The Midnight Gospel”
With The Midnight Gospel hitting Netflix today, show creator Duncan Trussell is out making the rounds in trying to promote it. To help, Duncan took part in a Reddit AMA session where he answered questions about all sorts of topics like conspiracies, the benefits of DMT, and possibly outer space. Here’s highlights of what went down.
Read the rest of the Reddit AMA here.
On putting the show together
We had a writer’s summit where for 2 weeks we had Weird Al, Emo Phillips, Maja Da Oust, Jason Louv, Johnny Pemberton, Brendon Walsh (Gawd I hope i’m not forgetting someone), come up with ways the world could end. Then we broke the apocalypses we liked best into beats and “hung” the podcast dialogue on that framework. It was REALLY challenging because too much animated plot distracts from the conversation but if a GIANT ZOMBIE is eating the white house you can’t just keep talking about weed so we had to figure out ways to pin the dialogue to the animation using VO we recorded after we had pieced together the animatics enough to know where it needed it. THANKS!! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it!
On working with Pen Ward
Pendleton is exactly the way you would hope him to be if you’re a fan of his work. Imagine being some kind of potion vendor in a fantasy world and one day a famous powerful wizard sends you a message that says “I enjoy your potions!” Then imagine that wizard invites you into his tower of sorcery and for a couple of years you get to help him and his sorcerer friends cast powerful spells that you sort of imagined were possible but had never witnessed yourself. Add two of the cutest pug-dogs on earth to the creatures living in the tower and That’s what it’s like working with Pendleton Ward.
On what Duncan took away from the process of creating an animated series.
I learned how to get out of the way of the process! Titmouse is brimming with genius animators and the folks on our crew were all brilliant and they poured their love into the show and when this started I was brand new to the animation process so I really had to lean into trust. Pendleton and Mike Mayfield really mentored me and helped me in this regard. they had seen countless versions of me look at an early animatic and go pale with terror and they knew how to explain that what animatics are like ultrasounds. “Don’t worry, your baby isn’t a fish.”
His thoughts on Rick and Morty
I love Rick and Morty! Yes I’m definitely a fan. Also Harmon and Roiland are two of the sweetest coolest mystical people I know.
The entirety of the 8th episode.
"There are also other characters that come and go (also owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate media company)."
Huh. Is that just referring to other characters from the show itself, or is this implying that the new season is going to have cameos from other WBD IPs