Exclusive Interview: Royal Crackers’ Jason Ruiz, Seth Cohen, and Evan Mann on Perfecting the Secret Ingredients For Season 2’s Recipe

Royal Crackers follows the dysfunctional Hornsby family who run a fledgling cracker company that’s on the verge of crumbling. Royal Crackers has all the makings to become Adult Swim royalty through its effortless ability to mix slice-of-life family drama with outlandish adventures. Season one establishes a successful formula for creative comedy that only grows more confident in its second season. It’s proven to be a greater challenge in recent years for Adult Swim comedies to survive beyond their sophomore seasons, but it truly feels like Royal Crackers is just getting started and has a lot more to say.

Series creator and executive producers, Jason Ruiz, Seth Cohen, and Evan Mann, get candid on Royal Crackers’ growing monarchy, expanding upon its unconventional universe and leaning further into genre storytelling, and they provide a small taste of the wild weirdness that’s in store for season two.

 

Daniel Kurland: In terms of writing this new season, was it written back-to-back with the first season or did you get a bit of a break where you were able to learn from the first year’s experience?

Jason Ruiz: I’m so bad with timelines, so correct me if I’m wrong…My memory is that there was a very, very tiny break. I was in it right up until the end, with the animation, in the first season–and Evan was with the second season. For me, I was literally on vacation for like five days and then I was back and writing season two. I think production pretty much overlapped. It was hard, but well worth it, for sure.

Daniel Kurland: It feels very seamless, which is why I was curious. This season also feels a lot bigger than the previous one and that you guys are playing with a broader scope between Matt’s school and all of the Zeebos technology stuff. Can you talk a little on the expansion of the show’s universe?

Evan Mann: That was definitely the goal. We wanted to spend a lot more time with all of the supporting characters — Rachel, Darby, Al — they all have episodes where we spend a lot more time with them. Additionally, we spend a lot more time in the past with a young Theo Sr. and learn more about the Royal Crackers company, how it came to be, and really how decisions from the past have informed who Stebe and Theo are today. 

Daniel Kurland: I’m happy to hear that. One of the highlights from season one was the flashback to Theodore Sr.’s past. So I’m glad that you’re keeping that going and that more is on the way.

Jason Ruiz: That’s my favorite from season one, too. I love that episode. You bring up a great point, though. Evan and I were just talking about this the other night. I was so proud of that tenth episode from season one [“Craftopia”]. I really hold that episode dear. On the timeline, that episode was finishing being edited while we were starting season two and it really felt like we were on a high of making this really special episode. That’s the head space that I was in when we started season two. I was really optimistic that we could invest this much heart into the show, generally, moving forward from here; this level of psychological deconstruction of the characters. It was good timing there to set the precedent for season two.

Daniel Kurland: I love that season one finale so much. It’s such a sweet story and you guys do a really good job of mixing absurdist comedy with real emotion. These feel like real people. I was happy to see that the work that you did with Matt there wasn’t erased. It’s still very much present in what you guys are doing this year.

Jason Ruiz: Thank you! I think we leaned into it a lot harder this year.

Seth Cohen: Thank you because that means that you’re watching the show that we’re trying to make. You’re on the same wavelength as we are.

Daniel Kurland: Is it a challenge to balance such a large cast of characters and give everyone something to do? And do you get to explore any new character dynamics this season or push characters into different roles than where they were before?

Evan Mann: Yeah, I think we definitely do. We learn more about Al, his relationship with a young Stebe and Theo. We spend more time with Darby and get to know his personal life a bit more. The same thing with Rachel, too. That was one of our goals, this season. Matt, too! I think that Matt definitely shined in the final episode of season one and we wanted to keep that going. There’s more going on with him and we get a little deeper with him, story-wise, too. 

Daniel Kurland: Is the whole storyline with Theo viewing George Zeebos as a father figure going to further develop over the course of the season as well?

Jason Ruiz: No, no. Theo will always have father issues. Those aren’t going anywhere. But him and Zeebos’ relationship was just a fun one-off. That’s not to say that we won’t revisit it in the future! 

Seth Cohen: Yeah, I like that as a storyline!

Jason Ruiz: But unfortunately, no. Zeebos is one episode this season. And it’s one of my personal favorites. Absolutely though, we’d be down to lean into more of that in the future because that episode turned out so great.

Daniel Kurland: This season already seems to have some playful dips into science fiction and fantasy, like the first year, but is there even more of that on the way? Is that fun territory to indulge in and bring forward? Even just the Dennison kid shattering at the end of the first episode is a fantastic touch.

Seth Cohen: You’re going to be excited. This year we’ve got a horror episode. There’s a sci-fi episode. Both of those are surprises, but I’m dying to share the details. In addition to broadening the characters, there’s a playfulness with the genre this season. I think it’s led by Jason and Evan, but also our crew are also such sincere fans of those genres. They’re able to make such fun references. There are a lot of deep cuts that fans should leave and details that prove that we’re fans of these things, too. 

Jason Ruiz: Any time in production when we’re like, “How are we going to do this?” The references that we anchor ourselves to are not the ones that you’d expect. Like, “Well how did Predator do it? Or how did Terminator 2 do it?” It’s all informed by those movies. We’re not consciously being like, “We’re going to do a sci-fi episode,” but it still happens. There’s one episode this season that was definitely a conscious homage to Evil Dead and campy horror, but outside of that we mostly just try to do as many left turns as possible. We try to go against traditional storytelling and traditional plot devices. That’s what we’re conscious about and that creates sci-fi elements because we’re just thinking so outside of the box and trying to do things that no one would expect. It either goes supernatural or sci-fi.

Daniel Kurland: With two seasons now completed, where do you see Royal Crackers going next if you get to keep making more of it? What else would you like to explore?

Jason Ruiz: That’s a great question and something that I should probably have a better answer for, but I want to keep going, for sure! I definitely want to keep going.

Evan Mann: If we’re fortunate enough to get a season three then we’ve laid this groundwork where we have this foundation and these characters. We were just talking about doing an episode where maybe Al retires and what happens after that. Maybe we follow him around after that big decision. We’re at this point now where we know the world and the tone of the show, so coming up with story ideas, at this point, really just comes down to “what’s the most fun?” We don’t know exactly what that is now, but we know that it’s there for us, which is exciting. It doesn’t feel like we’ve created a closed universe. It feels like there’s still tons of room to expand. 

Daniel Kurland: I love that. And lastly, what would you say that you’re most proud about with this season and is there a particular episode, or even just a scene, that you feel perfectly illustrates Royal Crackers?

Jason Ruiz: I think that season two involved a lot of ambition. A lot of ambition. Personally, if I’m the head coach of this team, then I feel like we fell short in a few places and we exceeded expectations in certain places. The tenth episode — the finale — is very ambitious. I just watched it the other night and I feel like that one really gets it. We hit the goal that we were trying to hit with that one. I’m really excited to see how that one plays out, much in the same way that season one’s finale is such an important, special episode.

 

Season two of ‘Royal Crackers’ premieres Thursday, February 29th at midnight, with new episodes airing weekly