Exclusive Interview: Meet the producers of ‘Biatches’

 

It’s September 2nd, 2014 and it’s Brad Ableson’s birthday. He could be out chilling with his beautiful wife and kids or head to a Tiki bar, instead he helps me arrange a quick call with the producers of the new series he is working on for Comedy Central studios called Biatches, ‘’everyone wants to work with Brad.’’ says show creator Julia Wolov.

And rightfully so, Brad has enjoyed a fantastic career as a story-board artist on The Simpsons and is currently working on pilots for both Comedy Central (Legends) and Adult Swim ( Harold and Kumar). His most recent original work was an animated series called Good Vibes for MTV which most would agree was cancelled WAY too early, and is definitely one of MTV’s finest examples of not knowing anything about animated television be it with this example or their cancellations of shows like Beavis and Butthead and Clone High, all shows that would spawn producers that have had outstanding careers post MTV.

It’s on Good Vibes where Brad would meet Julia and Dana Min Goodman, both of whom joined the animated series as show writers. The duo have been working together for about 20 years for a number of different shows like Pretend Time and Faking It, says Julia ‘’we’ve always joked that we would have been thrown out of school so many times if we were in the same classes together.’’ She says that as Dana tells me about all of the crazy shit she used to do when she was a kid in school, like prank calls, obsessing over sex, and driving all walks of adult life crazy.

Eventually, the girls would combine their powers of dirty, raunchy humor for a their new series Biatches. The series is a brand-new endeavor that continues the CC: Studios initiative that Comedy Central launched last year in an effort to develop shorts programming that could potentially be turned into 30-minute cable television. Until the series gets there, the producers are happy as hell to see Biatches thrive as a web series. ‘’This is a dream come true’’ says Dana ‘’because everyone told us that this show is too edgy and would never happen.’’ Welp, it did happen and all parties agree that doing a series online would be the best avenue…for now.

After Comedy Central showed interest in the series, Dana and Julia went to Brad Ableson to help them come up with the look for the series, ‘’he literally sketched the characters right in front of us’’ says Julia ‘’in like two minutes’’. “I have this crack-dealer mentality, where I do drawings for free in hopes that one of them makes me a bunch of money’’ says Brad ‘’but, like most crack dealers I end up getting high on my own supply’’. In all seriousness, Brad has known Julia and Dana for a long-time, so coming up with eleven-year old versions of them was a cinch ‘’I guess I just read the scripts and listen to the voices, and the ideas for actually drawing the characters comes to me.’’ Knowing that he was using a shoe-string web series budget, Brad employed an animating tactic that he used while producing HBO’s The Life and Times of Tim, where he kept the animation both simple and fun.

And yea, this show has a pretty hysterical-looking cast of characters to go along with Julia and Dana whom are voicing the main characters, the show also stars HORATIO SANZ (Ms. Klitnick/Bub) , KEVIN DORFF (Levi) , Lavell Crawford (Michael Jackson), Betty Cahill (Shelly), Jeff Richards (Croatian), and Brian Stack (Govindas). After getting kicked out of junior high, Dana and Julia mingle in a school for the behavior-challenged which pretty much lets the producers go wild with ideas, ‘’we decided to make that the setting which is both hilarious and retarded. We’re very vulgar and dirty, so we put the series in a context where we would be allowed to be dirty. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting the girls kicked out of this type of a school.’’

During the course of the series, we see the girls deal with a vast array of tween issues like dealing with changes to their bodies, men, and their teacher Ms. Klitnick ‘’an Afro-American Jewish women who loves the kids but is pretty oblivious to all of the trouble-making because she’s more concerned with finding love.’’

Love is a battlefield, and so is making an animated series, thankfully producer Brad Ableson was rightfully rewarded for his hard work, ‘’”Dana got me the biggest joint I’ve ever seen and as a result I spent an entire weekend drooling on myself and eating dog food….it was awesome.”

Biatches premiers on Comedy Central Studios September 4th @ 9 am ET. Watch it here.