If you grew up watching the Indiana Jones franchise, chances are you thought about becoming a cool archaeologist at least 100 times before your 10th birthday. But the older you got, the more you realized that being an archaeologist was less about exploring mysterious caverns and fighting off ghoulish Nazis and more about analyzing redundant data and writing weekly reports.
Thankfully, Digman! co-creators Neil Campbell and Andy Samberg have created an animated world where archaeologists are as revered and respected as movie stars and we can all go back to imagining ourselves in cool outfits while rattling off badass one-liners. After the success of the show’s first season, Digman! is back and ready to draw up some hilarious and action-packed adventures centered around the titular character, Rip Digman (Samberg) and his oddball team of sidekicks.
Joining Samberg in the cast for Season Two of Digman! are a handful of familiar voices. Mitra Jouhari returns as the voice of Saltine, Tim Robinson as Swooper, Dale Soules as Agatha, Guz Khan as Zane, Melissa Fumero as Bella, and Tim Meadows as Quail Eegan. In addition, Season Two will feature a who’s who of celebrity guest stars.
We sat down with Campbell and Samberg to talk about the overload of compelling adult animation that is available today, the learning curve of their first season, and why being a goofball isn’t always a bad thing.
Matthew Swigonski: It’s been two years since Season One of Digman! came out. Obviously, a lot’s happened in the industry since then. Can you talk about the process of going from Season One to Season Two? Did you ever have any doubt that the season was gonna actually develop?
Andy Samberg: We actually got picked up pretty quickly. It’s just a combination of animation that takes a long time and the writers strike.
Neil Campbell: Yeah. I think we literally got picked up the Friday before the writer strike. So we already had the writer’s room maybe halfway done. Then, we had to pause everything for five months or whatever it was.
Matthew Swigonski: I was just browsing the Digman! subreddit and there’s a lot of people doubting the season was ever going to get made. Is there a challenge of recapturing the audience’s attention?
Andy Samberg: I mean, that’s why we’re talking to you, right? Trying to get the word out. Remind everyone, obviously. Even when the first season came out. We live in a different moment in entertainment, where there’s a flood of stuff. The amount of choices. And that’s just in the world of television. Forget about movies, video games, and social media and all the things out in the world. At a certain point when you do what we do, you got to just make things you’re excited about and that make you happy and put everything you got into them and hope it works out. And that’s what we’re doing.
Neil Campbell: Yeah, we’ve just had fun. We just feel that our North Star has always been comedy. We just try to make the funniest show we can and just hope eventually people watch it when it comes out or they discover it later, but then eventually it reaches people one way or another.
Matthew Swigonski: For most animated shows, it takes a while for them to get their footing and hit the ground running. Family Guy died about 15 times before they finally found their fan base. Do you think you found your footing in Season One, or are you still developing your voice?
Andy Samberg: I mean, tonally, we love what we made, We were told by Comedy Central that it performed really well. And I think the hope for us is always just to keep making it as long as possible and give it as much time to find people as possible. The reviews and ratings of Seinfeld weren’t good in the first season, and then we know how that went.
You look at examples of shows in our time right now. There’s Suits and Schitt’s Creek and these things where you’re just like “Just make it. Just make it, and then see what happens.” That’s what we’re doing. We really love working on Digman. It makes us laugh and the people that, we know, have seen it and really enjoy it. And I think especially right now, to be making something that’s just a pure comedy joke bag and joyful in that way … it feels really good.
Neil Campbell: Yeah, we’re so proud of Season One. I do think we continue to evolve as well, where we kind of go, “Here’s what worked, here’s what was a little bit more of a struggle in Season One. And now that it’s been made and put out there for Season Two, we think we were able to kind of build on that.
Matthew Swigonski: Actually, that’s a perfect lead up to the next question. Is there a noticeable difference between Season One’s production compared to Season Two? Were you aware of the mistakes you made in production during Season One or were you just like “You know what? F*** It. We have a great show. Let’s just keep going with it.”
Andy Samberg: I mean if you ask me, I would say the latter more. I love Season One. The thing that I would say was most notable about going into a second season was that neither Neil or I had ever made an animated show before, so it was learning all the ins and outs of how that works. And when to focus your attention on certain things along the way. When to get stressed out about something if it’s not right yet.
And something about the process that I love is that you get so many bites at the apple at any given moment in the episode and this season, especially because of the strike. It became a really stretched out process. But, you know, we had a long time to get things to places that we really liked, which was very satisfying.
Neil Campbell: This was true in Season One, but I could think of more examples in Season Two where we emboldened the board artists and the directors to bring in their own ideas. I think we made more changes this season off of a great idea from the animation side of things, where one of our directors would be like, “What about a whole sequence like this?”
And then we go, “Oh f***, yeah, let’s do that!” We’ll go to re-record some lines to make it work. I think in Season One everyone was still figuring out what the show is. In Season Two, it’s like, “Okay, I know what the show is. Let’s do this crazy thing that pushes it a little further.”
Andy Samberg: I think visually, it’s definitely leveled up. People did such great work.
Matthew Swigonski: You can definitely tell. I don’t want to spoil anything but the Season Two premiere of Digman! just goes balls to the wall straight out of the gate.
And Samberg: Yeah, when I first saw that sequence, I was like, “Oh, it looks great. It’s like real, good action.”
Neil Campbell: Yeah, it’s also Sarah, who directed that episode. And then, Mike [L. Mayfield], who’s our supervising director, really took care to make that. Oh, they knew we wanted to have an opening sequence that was really visually awesome and funny. And you know, there’s like this sort of Akira moves in there and stuff. And I love what they did with that.
Matthew Swigonski: Are you guys super hands-on in the production or do you let the team do what they do?
Andy Samberg: I would say, we’re incredibly hands-on, but often we don’t need to interfere much because the people we work with are really talented, and we love them creatively, and they often know what we want and make it even better than what we’re imagining.
Neil Campbell: We’re really getting in there, getting granular with the edits and stuff, and we sit there for all of the edits. So we’re hands-on in that regard, but I know many animated shows that are created by animators. They have someone getting in there and redrawing. I’m never pulling a toon boom, and like push a board artist aside.
Matthew Swigonski: Speaking of talent, the voice talent you’re bringing in for Season Two of Digman! is just insane. You have guest stars from Jeffrey Wright to Mark Hamill. Does having this kind of talent come in make your job a lot easier as storytellers?
Andy Samberg: It’s cool and very flattering, obviously, that they trust us. Some of that is that I’ve been working in the business on camera for 20 years, and I have relationships. And some of it is just people like working, and we send them stuff. And they’re like, “Yeah, this is funny. I want to do that. I have a take.” And you know? Performers want to perform is something I’ve always found. It was always something I felt for myself as well. So I connect with that. If you really like comedy, and this is slightly loaded, how I’m phrasing it … but, there’s not that many places left to do, just f***ing goofy comedy [laughs].
So I can tell you, when I get asked to do stuff. I’m like, “Yes, please, oh my God! You send me these pages!” They’re actually funny jokes. It’s such a gift that I would hope that’s how a lot of them also feel when we ask them to come in.
Neil Campbell: Yeah, it’s nice when we also have so many funny friends. I mean, our fourth episode has Stephanie Beatriz, who obviously we know from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and also as Geraldine Viswanathan, who’s super funny in it, and Geraldine is friends with Mitra, who plays Saltine and Rachel Kelly, who wrote that episode, and it’s just nice. We’re like, “These are super funny people, and we get to work with friends who really make us laugh.”
Matthew Swigonski: It’s clear that these people are having fun playing their part. And they’re fully leaning into it, you know? Some shows you watch, it can feel like maybe they just read their line and that’s it.
Andy Samberg: There’s a lot of adult animation. I think there was an insane glut of it right around when we first came out because of the quarantine and everything? No shade against anything, but I didn’t watch them all. So I can’t really even speak on it, but there were a lot of big name animated shows announced. It’s people doing what you’re saying, where they come in, and they’re talented. And they just sort of bang it out. And then it gets handed off, and you just see what happens.
Neil Campbell: Yeah, I think you’ll be surprised with how much Andy reads every script. Being present for voice actor records, even if he’s not recording with them. Obviously, recording his voice there for all the edits, everything. It’s the opposite of what he’s describing of just banging it out. He’s involved in every part of the process.
Andy Samberg: Thank you for the credit, Neil. But yeah, I mean, so much of comedy is in the editing, you know? Unless it’s a single camera pointed at someone doing their stand-up act. You really have to finesse it to give it the correct timing and energy, and to give you that sort of brain tickle feeling. It was part of the reason that we were so excited to do this was to be able to really fully control something creatively, and that’s been part of the fun of it.
Matthew Swigonski: You guys kind of touched on it, but here’s this backlog of the animation. What separates Digman! from everything else out there?
Neil Campbell: I mean, I don’t know if this necessarily fully separates it because I’ve had other shows have similar goals in mind, but it is a show that is very focused on comedy and trying to be the funniest show and trying to be joyful and fun. And there are shows that tackle more serious themes and ideas, and there are those shows that are being run and being written by people who are the right people to be doing that.
I think we’re goofballs. So, we are the wrong people to be doing that. We’re just trying to make something really fun and fun to watch. But I would also say with our Brooklyn Nine-Nine background, where it’s not just pure absurdism. We like to have characters who you care about and have a bit of a heart to the stories as well and have some genuine emotion in there too.
Andy Samberg: And ideally, adventure stories that are interesting and engaging. And you know, I believe that we’re the only archaeologist based animated adult show out there.
Matthew Swigonski: We’d have to verify that. But yeah, I think you’re right.
Neil Campbell: You might have actually just created a flame war with some other archaeology show.
Season Two of Digman! will premiere on July 23 at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central.