We Visited the Studios behind ‘Fugget About It’

“Fugget About It” is arguably the most popular animated show coming out of Canada today. Originally started in 2012, the show has seen a ton of success. First being one of the staples of Teletoon at Night, Teletoon’s late night adult block. Last year the show launched on Hulu, expanding it’s audience into the United States.

The show follows former mob boss Jimmy Falcone and his family. They are put into witness protection and moved to Regina, Saskatchewan after whacking his boss. Renamed the “MacDougals” the family must remain undercover to protect themselves from the mob, but adapting to life in the Great White North is anything but easy for the former mob family.

On a recent trip to Toronto, I had the opportunity to visit 9 Story Media Group to sit down and speak with some of the guys who bring this show to life: Producer Matt Beatty, Co-Creator Willem Wennekers, and director Rich Weston. To read the whole interview, you can find it down below!

Also during my visit, Matt Beatty gave me a tour of the studio and introduced me to some the animators as well to get a crash course on how much goes into making an episode of the show. They take every detail into account, and it’s extremely intricate. Every aspect of every character can be manipulated through an archive of character features they can swap in and out. It was like watching a puzzle be put together and finding the perfect image.

Typically to animate an entire episode of the show, it takes about four weeks. From start to finish, post-production to final product, it takes about eleven months. All for a twenty-two minute episode. To top it off, they can be working on multiple episodes at a time. For those of you who know anything about animation, you already know how intricate the process can be.

We spoke about the various stages of development in animation. It includes a lot of tweaking and quality control, and getting a pass from the higher-ups.

I had a lot of fun meeting the people on the “Fugget About It” team. They made me feel more than welcome, I already can’t wait for my next visit!

Finally, here is chat with Willem Wennekers and Rich Weston:

Q to Willem: So, how did the show come about? Did you have an inspirations?

Willem: “Yeah I can tell you the story, these guys have heard it a million times already. But, the gentleman I created the show with, Nicholas Tabarrok, who’s a movie producer, we worked together on a lot of projects years ago and one Christmas he got a flash animation card from somebody, and he called me down to his office and showed me this Christmas card. And he said if it’s this easy to do animation, that you could do it for a Christmas card and email it to somebody, we should do an animated show. We were both fans of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, shows like those.

So I went off and I came up with a bunch of different ideas to come back and pitch to him, to see if there was anything that struck our fancy. And the one show that I came up with was about a hotel. It was going to be like an animated Fawlty Towers. But one of the running gags that I had was going to be… sort of like how The Simpsons have Itchy and Scratchy, there was going to be a show that the characters would watch on TV called “The Falsettos”, which was a parody of The Sopranos, which at the time was just becoming really big around that time, and that sort of gives you an idea just how long “Fugget About It” has been in development. And Nicholas listened to my pitch and he said it was really funny! But he said “But, I think our show is The Falsettos”. He mentioned that we both loved mob movies, a mob cartoon would be amazing!

So, then I went back to the drawing board and started trying to come up with an idea that would be funny and entertaining, but not just an animated version of The Sopranos. And of course there also had to be a Canadian component because we were going to take it to Canadian broadcasters. Then it all just started coming together in my head. Why don’t we just take these guys and brought them here to Canada? That is sort of the genesis of the idea!”

Q to Richard: So, you have a decent amount of history in design. But between design and directing, which do you prefer?

Richard: Well, it depends. The thing about design is that it gives you the ability to get into the creative aspects, you don’t have the responsibility of overseeing anything. Because when you’re directing a show, you end up having to look at everything. You have to keep the whole show in your head, you have to keep thinking big picture. That gets very taxing. And if you’re doing that for a long time, it can really start to wear on you a little bit. So you look forward to a little break and sometimes you’ll go back to design or layout, but then once you just get comfortable doing that, you wish you had a little but more say in the rest of the show. “Ah! If only we had done it a little bit more like this or like that!” So they both have their ups and downs. But I love doing both.

Q: So congrats on your move to Adult Swim and your success with Hulu, but would you guys say that expanding to a larger audience adds pressure or is it business as usual?

Willem: We want to step up our game anyway. With each new season we’ve gotten we build on what we did in previous seasons. And in my case learn from what we did in previous seasons, so it’s always an effort to top what we’ve done before. Just push it a little bit further, make the stories more interesting, and get deeper into the characters. That’s what keeps people coming back. That’s what gets people invested. And that’s something we found out sort of recently! So, we didn’t know about it at the start of the season. But we were already aiming high from the very start.

Q: What are your favorite parts about working on the show?

Richard:  I think you and I have something in common about working on the show(speaking to Willem) and that is you get to come in, because Willem has actually been coming in and has been a lot more hands on. So when you get to come in to shape the show and we get to say, this is the script and we always have a blast writing, and when we bring it to the next level, the next process then we can shape it, play with it and try to build more of it. Which you’ve had a huge hand in this year (speaking to Willem again).

Willem: Yeah, to me that’s the most fun. When we’re watching an edit and it’s the first time you’re seeing your story, and you get to a certain part and you say “You know what would be funny here is if this happens or this little cutaway” and then Rich will say “Yeah, we can do that”. Then he’ll go to the revision guys and get them to draw it and then it becomes part of the show. A lot of animated shows you can’t do that. Once you’re at a certain stage, you can’t add new stuff. But with the way this is organized and Rich’s work flow, we can add stuff all the way up to the last minute. So as Rich says “Always kick the ball further up the field”. Make it funnier and better. We constantly get the chance to do that. Even though I love the writing room and it’s an extremely gratifying part of it, it’s really great to be here with the team and shape the episode.

Richard: It’s really great to start with a great and funny script. And then at every process being able to work with Will and even bring in some of the board guys and the animation leads, and get everybody together and everybody gets an opportunity to say “If I had an idea and if it were funny, would that be okay? If I wanted to try this, could we try that?” And it just starts this whole collaborative effort. It really helps the show be fun to work on, working with a really good creative team. Whereas other projects I’ve worked on in the past have been a little different, here we just have a good flow.

Matt: The cool thing with the three of us is that I don’t think anybody else gets to be as creative. We get to see each show evolve from script through to finish product. That itself is just really awesome!

Q: Lastly, do you guys have a favorite character on the show?

Willem: (Laughs) Making us pick between the children? They’re all my favorite characters! I love all of them! But I think for me and a lot of times in the writing room, our go to guy for any random bit of madness or comedy is Cheech. You know, I love them all but Cheech is so liquid. He’s so fluid, you can almost do anything with him and it makes sense because he’s so insane! So, not my favorite, but if I HAD a favorite it would probably be Cheech. Don’t tell the other characters! (We all laugh). And Gina! She’s cool because she’s a contrast. She’s a little kid and we have her do and say the most heinous things. And she’s still cute when she does them, but she’s also scary. What about you, Rich? Do you have a favorite?

Rich: Mine sort of changes from episode to episode. Usually it’s a case of “I like THIS character in THIS episode” for specific reasons, I won’t give anything specific for this season, but in season one especially there were a lot of episodes where I could say Cheech was definitely the lead for me or in another episode McCool would be the shining star. Even when a certain character isn’t necessarily the lead, they can still be that glue that brings the episode together. So, I’ve spoken with a lot of the fans and the variety of answers the give me is great, somebody will say Cheech and another will say Gina. And they’re all great characters. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of them.

Willem: The one that surprised me the most was Theresa. I think she was very underserved in season one, I felt she was basically a bunch of bulimia jokes and bimbo jokes, and I think we did really fun things with her in season two and gave her some really interesting arcs. And we’ll have a lot more in season three! I mean, basically we’ll just say every character. (We all laugh)

And that’s my interview with some of the key “Fugget About It” people. They were excellent guys and were very welcoming. I think they saw through how nervous I was, but were still very nice and we had a ton of laughs. I’d go for another visit in a heartbeat! I hopefully won’t be as nervous next time around!

So, thank you for having us! It was a real blast, guys!

Before I wrap up for good, Willem Wennekers, co-creator of “Fugget About It” had something special to say about BubbleBlabber.com. It was really the most uplifting part about my visit to Toronto and was a cherry on top for the whole experience!

“Before we go, I want to just say to the guys at Bubble Blabber, thank you so much for all the coverage since we premiered! Thank you for the award they gave us the other year. We read your reviews the minute they go up. And it’s always delightful to read the reviews… even if they’re not so great! (We all laugh). We still appreciate the attention you guys give us.” – Willem Wennekers