[Exclusive Interview] Paul Rust on the Cathartic, Cozy, Character-Driven Comedy of ‘The Great North’

FOX has made a strong name for themselves when it comes to family-centric animated comedies, yet The Great North has emerged as a consistently rewarding piece of television that seems to have recently solidified its status on the network’s Animation Domination programming line-up. The Great North is a humble comedy that follows Beef Tobin and the rest of his family as they make the most out of their simple Alaskan lives.

Paul Rust provides the voice for Ham Tobin, the family’s absent-minded teenage son who has a heart of gold and is a constant source of endearing entertainment. With The Great North’s third season upon us (and a fourth already confirmed), Paul Rust graciously opens up the sweet, cozy energy of the Tobin family, what an honor it is to be involved in a series with such diverse, authentic characters, and what slasher film The Great North needs to embrace for its next Halloween installment. 

Daniel Kurland: You’ve fallen into a nice run of voice over work in The Great North and across a number of other series, but your career started as a writer, comedian, and actor. Did you expect to get into voice acting and has it been a surprising experience at all in any ways?

Paul Rust: In terms of anticipation, I remember that back when I was a college R.A.—very cool, very cool—I remember seeing on one of the doors of a resident, they had taped a magazine ad for Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. I remember thinking, “Wow, animation is so cool that it can have the best writing and comedy, but that the audience and fans love it so much that they cut it out of a magazine and tape it on a door!” And so when I was an R.A. in college—very cool, very cool—I had aspirations to get into comedy as a writer and performer. So when I saw that ad I thought how cool it would be to be a part of something animated that has great writing and talent involved that people get excited about. So to have that with The Great North is the best, but the additional work that I’ve done on other animated shows has also just been a blast, too!

DK: On the topic of fandom, I know that this past year was your first San Diego Comic-Con. What was it like to be a part of a show that first off has a presence at Comic-Con, but also getting to engage so closely with that level of fandom?

PR: Yeah, it was my first time at a Comic-Con as a person on a panel, but also my first time at Comic-Con, period. I had never been to one before. I’d been to a Wonder Con before, for a prank show pilot…I was so bad at pranks and I remember when I was doing the prank at Wonder Con they were like, “Dude, you’re one of us! Why are you pranking us!” So I was happy to go to the San Diego Comic-Con as someone who is still involved with genre stuff, to some extent. 

What’s really cool is that I got to encounter some fans of The Great North. This interesting thing happens…I haven’t thought about it this way before, so it might come out sounding a little weird or crude…You know how pet owners’ pets will start to look like each other? If you’re on a show that represents the best of humans and their well of compassion and love for each other, then that kind of brings the same viewers and fans in kind. They begin to resemble each other in some way or are brought to each other. That very cool mind-meld thing happens between the people that make something and those that enjoy it. This is a long way of saying that everyone who I met that was a fan of The Great North was as big of a sweetie as the sweeties who are the characters on The Great North, as well as the people who write and created The Great North.  

DK: I feel like those occasions can really show you how much these shows mean to others and the impact that they’re leaving. It can be difficult to recognize all of that when you’re just reading reviews or seeing social media messages.

PR: That’s true! Online, the sweeties maybe stay more hidden. But IRL, the creeps don’t walk up and say anything as mean as they would online! So that’s very true.

DK: I know that you’re a big fan of coziness and I honestly can’t think of a cozier animated series than The Great North. It feels like it’s increasingly difficult for shows of this nature to find an audience and stick around. Are you grateful to be a part of a show that fills this niche?

PR: Daniel, you’re blowing my mind because yes, coziness is very much celebrated and expounded upon in a podcast that I run with Matt Gourley, called With Gourley and Rust, and we love finding the coziness in horror movies. How did it never dawn on me that The Great North is 100% cozy and it’s not even with a horror element. It’s cozy upon cozy!

DK: It’s so cozy!

PR: It’s comedy cozy! Just the opening credits where it ends with a family in front of a fireplace playing a board game together. That’s awfully cozy. You can’t beat that. As far as being a part of an animated show that has longevity, it is nice that the show is entering its third season, but it’s been announced that we’re going to do a fourth season, too. There is a commitment to the show, which feels really great. It feels great to be a part of a show that’s so well-written and to put it bluntly—not hack—is awesome. It feels so, so good. I’m proud to be a part of it. Then, to have not just the writing, but also the animation, all be developed by really art-minded and art-centered human beings. They’re such a great community, all of which stems from Loren Bouchard who has just cultivated this workplace of people who are at the top of their talent, but also very humble about it all. 

Now, in terms of the show sticking around and having longevity, I also know that it can be hard for something to stick around when it isn’t hack. So it’s incredible that this show can not only stick around, but that it’s also very good. I’m only just 0.5% of that equation, but I’m still happy to be involved with it all!

DK: Ham has a big family, which is something that’s very important to him and is often the underlying message of each episode. As someone who has a family of their own, is it rewarding at all that this is a show that you can watch with them and that there’s a very sweet energy to it?

PR: It’s really great how shows about families are just automatically in the wheelhouse because like it or not, we were all born into a family! We all know what that experience is! So the show is about a family and for families to watch together. I have watched it with my family, which is great, but it’s also a great way to stay connected with my sisters and my parents. They can be like, “Oh, we tuned in tonight and just saw an episode…” It’s a sweet show that’s about families, but yes, it’s also become a sweet way for me to connect with my own family.

DK: The Great North really excels with character-driven storytelling. It’s a show that features such diverse characters, viewpoints, and orientations, but most importantly, they all feel natural and not like they’re part of some mandate or algorithm. How does it feel to contribute to a show like that, let alone with an important character like yours?

PR: You’re hitting it on the head with all of that. It’s true that the show works because it’s never coming from a cynical point of view. The creators, Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux, that’s just who they are as people. It was never mandated by them because they were just born and raised that way. It comes from a pure place of creating comedy where the humor comes out of having lots of different doors open for lots of different voices. 

DK: No, it always feels authentic 100% of the time. Even just the fact that Beef is a single father of four is a setup that’s not typically on display on TV.

PR: As a person who is a father in COVID, it did make me consider how previous generations of dads would hold up in these circumstances where they’re under a roof with their kids and not working. I smugly was like, “Me and the Gen X-ers, we’re all the best and we’re doing a great job raising our kids! Even people who had to suffer through the Great Depression wouldn’t be able to hack it at home through COVID!” That’s a long way of saying that Beef was already sort of this COVID dad ahead of the curve. Alaskan weather has already forced him to adopt this lifestyle.

DK: Ham must also be the longest that you’ve consistently played the same character, right? Has it been a gratifying experience to embody Ham for so long and watch him further develop over time?

PR: That’s true! That’s something that hadn’t occurred to me, but it’s true! When you said that it makes me reflect on how hand-in-glove something can happen when a talented staff of writers are exploring a character at the same time an actor is playing the same character for multiple seasons. I remember when my wife [Lesley Arfin] and I were working on Love and there was probably some point between seasons one and two where we noticed that that thing is happening where the actors have maybe reflected more than the writers have. The things that the actors started to show us are things that we started to write towards. It’s so much fun when that synthesis between actor, writer, and character occurs. 

DK: Wendy, Lizzie and the rest of the show’s writers are incredibly talented, but do you feel like you have some level of ownership over Ham to some extent now? Like would you speak up if you felt like something was inauthentic for the character? 

PR: That’s a 100% valid question. It’s interesting though because that’s never happened in this case. I think that some part of it is that I identify first as a writer, and so anything as an actor that I’m given I always make the assumption that the writer wrote it this way on purpose and that it’s my job as the actor to click in with them. Now, there are some times where I’m like, “Hmm, I don’t know if the writer has been thoughtful in that way…” and I know that sometimes a performance is good specifically because they push back on a piece of writing.  I rarely think that those are people who also write because then they’d know how tough it can be! You don’t put this stuff down on the page unless you’re really thought it through! 

With Wendy, Lizzie, and the whole writing staff—who I know to be so talented—if I ever did have that sort of compulsion then I think I would just trust that they know what they’re doing and that I have to interpret that. I know that might sound a little contradictory about how some actors need to find their own truths, but because it’s an ensemble show and these writers have experience writing for an ensemble there’s a greater ability to fine-tune the elements within an ensemble.

DK: It’s just interesting when you play a character for so long and that synergy is experienced.

PR: Yeah! I think where that synergy comes through the most is that I’ll notice that they start putting things into Ham’s character that they’ve noticed me do as a person. There was a situation in a recent episode that’s set at a water park and Ham is waiting in line to get on a raft in a lazy river. He finally gets to the front and someone steps in front of him and he’s like, “Oh, sorry. Go ahead.” And he like never gets on the raft…It’s so funny, but I know that they must have seen a quality in me that seemed like it’d be funny for Ham to embody. If I hadn’t played that character then maybe that wouldn’t have happened. 

DK: Something that I really love about the series is that it has such a musical language to it–just like Bob’s Burgers and Central Park–and it’s even had a musical episode. You’re in a band and are musically talented. Was it fun to indulge in that area and would you like to see more musical episodes in the show’s future?

PR: Oh, yeah! Mike Cassady and I, we’ve written some of the music that’s been performed on Central Park. So, I’ve gotten to have a lot of experience with the music department that works on that show. They are such big-hearted, patient human beings. Like, through Zoom they’re explaining how to emotionally hit a note correctly and they never do it in an opposing way. They always have people leave a recording session feeling really good as opposed to terrible. So, I love it. It’s so fun and as a viewer and lover of the show, I love them and hope they continue to do more! Even exploring more of Ham’s punk band aspirations would be fun. Those really cracked me up last season. 

DK: Similarly, you have a healthy interest in horror and The Great North has previously done a Halloween episode, which I think is such a fun tradition for shows. If The Great North were to do a send-up of a slasher series in a future Halloween episode, which do you think would work best?

PR: Oooh. Well, previously on Bob’s Burgers I got to be a part of A Nightmare on Elm Street homage episode that they did. That was a lot of fun and it’s when I got an inkling that the writers there are all huge horror hounds! Whenever I get together with the writers from The Great North we end up talking horror movies, so there’s a definite love there. Now, as a Friday the 13th fan I just automatically want to say to do The Great North there. However, I want to be true to the surroundings. As Matt Gourley and I have talked about on our podcast, a wintertime-set Friday the 13th would be very cool. However, I think it maybe has to be The Thing! Holed up in one house under snowy circumstances! Come on! If they did a Thing episode then that’d be really fun.

DK: The Thing would be great! I could see them all just being too pilot to accuse each other. Even just them getting a Chucky doll and not wanting to throw it out because they think it’s too cute seems up their alley.

PR: That’s very true. Exactly!

DK: Finally, have you ever been to Alaska before and do you have more of an interest in doing so after working on The Great North?

PR: I’ve never been, but I’d love to go there! I think that’d be really special. I’m not a travel bug, but my wife is, and that’s partly why we find the loves of our lives. It’s because they’re open to other things that we aren’t. The Yin to our Yang! So she’s opened me up to traveling and if we went up north to the Great North then I’d love that!

Season three of ‘The Great North’ begins this Sunday at 8:30pm (ET) on FOX, with next day airings on Hulu.