NYCC 2014 Recap: ‘Robot Chicken’ EXCLUSIVE Interview

It’s hard to believe that Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken has been on for nine years, with seven seasons under its belt. Seems like just yesterday I was watching the first episode and saying, “What the fuck is this shit?” But ‘this shit,’ this clay-mation/stop-motion sketch comedy series, has worked its way into my heart, as well as the hearts of around two million people that watch every new episode and special and buy their endless DVD releases. And if I’m surprised at the show’s success, you can only imagine what the creators, producers, and cast of the show think. Well, now you don’t have to wonder, because New York Comic-Con 2014 brought co-creator/director/producer/writer Matt Senreich, producer John Harvatine IV, and voice actor/writer Breckin Meyer to town to talk about all things Robot Chicken.

So let’s kick it off by starting at the beginning, all the way back in 2005 when the show was just a seed of an idea, with a different name – one that’s even weirder than the current one. “Originally it was called Sweet J, and we couldn’t get the rights to it,” Breckin Meyer explained. “When we used to make live-action shorts together, ‘Sweet Jesus’ was always something one of our older characters would say. We changed it to ‘Suite J,’ like it was an office number, and it didn’t work either. Then Matt [Senreich] and Seth [Green, co-creator/producer] were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Kung-Pow Bistro, and on the menu was an item called Robot Chicken. To this day we don’t know what the hell it is.”

Despite the show having a unique niche in the television world, writing for it is not unlike that of some other shows. “I compare it to SNL; it’s a sketch comedy show,” Senreich said. “People write sketches, and you submit them, and we vote on them. Everybody sits at their computers typing stuff up – from like 9am to 4 – everyone is writing. At 4 o’clock everybody gets distributed packets, you read through the packets, you see what you like, and we vote on them. If they’re voted, it goes into the next round where it’s going to get scripted, or we give notes and say, ‘Hey, punch it up like this and bring it back to us tomorrow,’ or ‘Hey, this is terrible; don’t ever think about it again.’”

As for the types of sketches that generally get voted for, there’s an easy rule the staff follows. “Funny wins out. Whatever is funniest,” Meyer said. “You can ask Matt about the voting procedure on Robot Chicken, which is a fucking abomination. The way we vote on sketches, to this day, drives me mental. I don’t have a vote, because I have ADD. I think it’s five people who have votes, and majority wins. I’ve thrown many, many hissy fits in the room about skits – and then I’ve gotten them on and they tank. And I’ll bother Seth at night. I’ll literally send him texts and be like, ‘Sethy, I cannot fucking believe you didn’t vote for that sketch. You weakened a nation.’ But funniest wins out. My whole goal with the show has always been to make Seth laugh across the table or when Seth is directing the records, to make him laugh in that tiny little glass box when he’s running the record. That’s my whole goal, is to make him giggle. And vice-versa. I think that’s one of the reasons our show has been kept around; you see that fun and you hear that fun and that stupid goofiness that we have.”

Matt confirmed this, while adding a bit more about the process. “It’s whatever makes you laugh,” he said. “It’s just having a moment, talking about a situation, and then finding that one odd moment in it, and it just spirals into something funny. That’s really what sparks it, because our writer’s room is just a bunch of friends who have known each other for 20 years.”

“I’m a lazy writer,” Breckin said of his personal process. “So a lot of the fun stuff from Robot Chicken comes about in the room. Me annoying Doug Goldstein, one of our writers, when I didn’t want to write, became our King Randor skit.”

Sometimes it doesn’t even start with an idea, but just a voice instead. “The skits we’ve done about Lindsay Lohan, all come from my experiences working with Lindsay Lohan,” Meyer said. “I came to the writer’s room exhausted, with a lot of tales of working with Lindsay, and I’d do the voice – my interpretation of it – and that would be the beginning of our skits. I found out that Lindsay’s voice on the show, which I had done, was credited to Michelle Trachtenburg – which was great.” Not that it’s actually hard to tell who is doing each voice, part of the show’s signature simplicity and instant familiarity. “You know if it’s Seth or me right off the bat,” he admitted. “I only got gravelly-voiced me and regular-voiced me.” Which is fine, because he’s still had the opportunities to voice some great characters. “I’ve done Jesus Christ and Boba Fett, so I’m covered.”

However, Meyer wanted to point out that none of the parodies of people or works on Robot Chicken are done with any ill will. “No matter what our skits are, it’s done out of fun,” he said. “I think there’s a general fan vibe to what we do. When I wrote ‘The Emperor’s Phone Call,’ we were really worried because you don’t mess with Star Wars. They’re litigious. But George [Lucas] embraced it, and it was passed around LucasFilm, and suddenly we got word that we were being invited up there to hang out with George. And I think it’s because it wasn’t done maliciously.”

Skits can also be inspired by toys the producers like or liked as kids. Although it turns out Breckin Meyer didn’t get too many toys as a child – a revelation he had during our interview. “I never got the big ones. I never got the Millennium Falcon, I never got the big, giant sets,” he said. “The one big thing I was able to get on my birthday was Castle Grayskull. That was pretty great.” He paused for a second to ponder his childhood, and began shaking his head sadly. “My parents suck. I was just now thinking that I never got any of the big stations or vehicles.” Was he really that disappointed? “Super disappointed,” he said, laughing. “I just think they suck as parents.” By the way, no worries about them stumbling across this article, because his mom doesn’t understand the Internet and his dad still calls the show “Robutt Chicken.”

Sometimes the toys used are sent by fans, other times they have to go out and find them, which can prove to be difficult. Sometimes unnecessarily so. “You know, one of the hardest to find toys for a skit we had was the Knight Rider KITT car with David Hasselhoff,” Meyer said. “And the funny thing was, Hugh Sterbakov, who is our toy wrangler, was trying to find this thing everywhere. You know, you got to go to eBay and you got to look everywhere. And the entire time he was looking for it, I had one, but I also know what we do to our toys, so I was like, ‘You ain’t fucking touching mine.’ I still have mine, happily.”

There are also toys they have, but aren’t sure how to use on the show yet. “We keep talking about Ben 10,” Senreich said. “It’s that next generation, because we’re a little older. People know it very well, it’s really popular, and yet we just cannot figure out a way to make that a funny sketch. We’ve written like ten that just get thrown out. Breckin wrote one that was horrible. That’s the biggest one.”

Speaking of things desired, with the unbelievable list of guest stars that have stopped by to record for the show, is there anyone they’re still after? “Harrison Ford,” Senreich said without hesitation. “I know [actress and Ford’s wife] Calista Flockhart had a really good time on our show, and I’m hoping she speaks really highly of us, because she was awesome.”

And in case you were wondering, getting A-list stars wasn’t always easy. “First season was a lot of begging, because nobody knew what it was,” Senreich said. “We we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re a sketch comedy show with action figures, and we’re 11 minutes,’ and everyone’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ But we got lucky, so we called on a lot of favors from people Seth had worked with. By the time it actually came out, people were starting to follow us, and coming to us saying they want to do the show.”

And there’s no stopping Robot Chicken now. “We have our holiday special that’s coming out in December, which is the last episode of season seven,” Senreich said. “And then we start writing season 8 in December.” They also just released the Robot Chicken DC Comics Special 2 DVD/Blu-Ray last week, so look for that too, and be sure to check out the special features. “We have some really good stuff,” Senreich added. “There’s a whole behind the scenes of us getting quizzed, and testing our DC knowledge. Those questions get progressively harder, and it is very uncomfortable to watch all of us try to answer those.”

What else is on the horizon? Maybe a movie? “The Simpsons didn’t have a movie until like season 20-something [Editor’s Note: It was between Seasons 18 and 19], Family Guy still hasn’t had a movie, we got time,” Senreich said. “We enjoy the television world.” Okay, well, how about a video game? “I have a vision for it,” he said. “I want to do it like WarioWare, where’s it like a bunch of those mini games. Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

For now, the Robot Chicken crew seems quite content with where they are, especially considering the success of it is something they never would have expected. “We thought we were getting canceled after the first few episodes,” Senreich said. “For Seth and I, first season, it was our second job. We had other jobs while we were doing it. I worked in comic books, and we never thought it would be a full-time scenario. And then realized this is bigger than all the other stuff.”

John Harvatine, in one of his few contributions to the interview, agreed completely. “It’s kind of crazy to think about,” he said. “Because back then a stop-motion show that would have longevity was pretty rare and unique. Right now it’s the longest-running stop motion show on TV.”

This is a fact that the guys have not, do not, and will not take for granted. They clearly both appreciate and enjoy every minute of it. “Why is anyone paying me to play with toys every day? This is my job?!” Senreich said. “I’m going to ride this as long as they let me. It’s a surreal experience.”

[Photos by Becca Green]