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Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, the co-creators of Smiling Friends, don’t really watch many cartoons these days.
It’s something they’ve shared before in interviews, and something they reiterate on a call with PEOPLE in the midst of the third season of their own hilariously chaotic Adult Swim animated series. And it might just contribute to the show’s greatest strength.
“It’s a little bit like taking the piss out of the medium. I think if we hold it a bit too sacred, if we were really, really, really big cartoon heads and that’s all we did, I think you’d get a different flavor,” Cusack says.
Smiling Friends is certainly a different flavor than most shows on television. It’s fast-paced and absurd while meshing drastically different animation styles; it builds a beloved character out of a little guy who sits on beanbags; and the series does it all while translating relatable interactions into wacky storylines.
Debuting in 2022 and recently renewed for a fifth season, the comedy follows a group of mostly cute and some unidentifiable creatures (many voiced by Hadel and Cusack themselves) who run a business out of making others smile. Pim and Charlie, the series’ protagonists, are usually successful in their efforts and have also done the same for the two guys who voice them.
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While Hadel jokes he smiles most when production on the show is wrapped (“It’s nothing but frowning and ripping your hair out,” he says), Cusack says the two main characters sometimes follow them even outside of work. “I thought, at my low points, ‘What if Pim and Charlie walk in right now, what would they say,’ ” he says.
Cusack adds, “I guess that also is a good way to think about how to solve your problems in a more pragmatic way, like, ‘Oh, what would Pim say?’ And usually, it is the same old stuff like go outside, have a walk, get some vitamin D, stop scrolling on Instagram and TikTok. And then you’ll probably be happier.”
Smiling Friends has also been a reason to smile for the fans who tune in for its weekly 10-minute offerings. Over the years, it’s continued to grow a passionate following, spawn the occasional meme and get even more specific with its references as the show progresses (the latest Super Monkey Ball mention included).
To celebrate the ongoing third season, Cusack and Hadel spoke with PEOPLE about the buzziest (and arguably silliest) new cartoon on TV and their hopes for a movie (as they previously told IndieWire), while they spill secrets behind the lore and ever-changing world of Smiling Friends.
Does the energy surrounding this season and the response to it so far feel different than the past two on your end?
Zach Hadel: I feel like every time we release a season, it gets bigger and bigger… I said it before in another interview, but season 1 almost felt like an inside joke a little bit to us, just between Michael and I in the sense of it was just us. It wasn’t really established. We had YouTube followings and everything. But it’s gotten to the point now where people who have no idea about Michael and my previous work are watching the show. So it’s a little bit surreal. In some ways, it’s kind of the same, but it feels bigger. It’s kind of intangible.
You’ve said that before any of these characters, there was Mr. Frog. We see where things are for him at the end of episode two. Do you think there’s a chance of him going back to his old ways?
Michael Cusack: With Mr. Frog, we’ve got this attitude where we follow our gut. And that could be he goes on a serialized adventure and gets to a point where it feels like it’s the end. But then if it feels like we want to bring it back, we can. It’s more optional for us. To be honest, the purpose of that episode was… It was funny to us to see a stupid character like Mr. Frog go through a dramatic emotional arc like that. But we’ll see. We love Mr. Frog, so it’d be a shame if we didn’t see him again.
Is there a dream guest that each of you have for the show?
Hadel: We have a Google Doc, we have a list of names of people. To me personally, the one I would’ve loved to have gotten would have been Norm Macdonald. That’s the one that I wish we would’ve gotten, but it just wasn’t possible.
Cusack: Norm Macdonald would’ve been great. I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of the people that we like in there already… I’ve got a bit of a fear of the “meet your heroes” thing. I’ve got people that I like, but I’d be worried that we’d approach and they’d either say no or they’d be difficult to work with, so better to keep it.
Hadel: It makes the show feel cooler too. I feel like every celebrity we’ve tried to get, we are always told no, and we get somebody else that ends up working out better anyway.
This is a question I’ve asked myself but maybe it’s better left to the imagination: What does Glep do, or at least what do you think Glep thinks he does?
Cusack: At the end of this season, we might get more of an answer to that, a better answer to that. But he sits on a beanbag. Zach, what do you think?
Hadel: We might’ve nailed down what that means and what his whole function of the whole thing is. But I think originally, he was supposed to be a janitor or something. We had no real concept of what Allan and Glep might be doing. I think over time, they’ve solidified. Allan’s very clear to us, he’s the IT guy, he’s almost like an assistant, he does the inventory and sends emails and stuff. Pim and Charlie are obviously the Smiling Friends. It’s kind of a s— answer, but we will find out the cool origin this very season.
I’ll be tuning in. Do you have a favorite idea for the show that just didn’t cross the finish line this season?
Hadel: It’s episode six. We did what we wanted to with that but I was going to bring up the fact that it started off as a different idea… A lot of times, we’ll have stuff, really, really, really rough ideas, just floating. Like, “Okay, Pim gets sick for a day, what is that episode?” That was the original idea, and then that evolved completely into a whole separate idea.
Do you feel like you’re finding your groove better as it pertains to the third season?
Cusack: It is getting easier, especially since we know the characters more. Not to say that there’s a formula that we can go through for the show, but there is a little bit in the sense that it’s the same length, so we know where the important story beats need to go. And oftentimes, we know how to solve story dead-end moments. A lot of the time, it’s injecting stupid humor into it to get out of it. So we’ve got tricks in the bag that we’ve refined over the years to help the script-writing process.
The Mr. Boss dance has certainly resonated. Where have you found the most inspiration for the physicality and the movements of these characters?
Hadel: That Boss dance, it’s two things: Number one, it’s the animators and that was done by Paul ter Voorde. He’s really, really great, he can just do that in his head. I can’t even come close to doing stuff like that. We rely on people that can do it frame by frame. But a lot of times, it’ll come down to reference video… But a lot of times too, Michael will do reference footage, if it’s really supposed to be, not quite rotoscope, but heavily referenced. In the Halloween episode, there’s a moment where the Boss shoulder checks Pim, that was referenced in a video that Michael did. So stuff like that, we’ll usually say, “Try to get the energy of this, try to match it,” and we have people that can do that.
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What is the most surprising piece of material or media that’s served as an inspiration for Smiling Friends?
Cusack: History and trivia and boring s—. There’s little quotes in there that I don’t even think people have picked up on that are just silly little references to, I don’t know, boring stuff. That’s funny to us, in a way.
Hadel: This one hasn’t aired yet, but we love old debates from the ’70s, ’60s. There’s a great Milton Friedman where he says the phrase “oodles and oodles,” or a woman says it, that made its way in. I literally think, even if you’ve seen that clip, you’ll watch the episode and not even clock it, because it doesn’t matter. But just weird dad s—. I think I can speak for both of us here, we don’t really watch cartoons. South Park was the last one I really stayed pretty far into but I find myself more and more watching just s— on YouTube, just weird dad stuff. So a lot of inspiration is Michael and I sharing that kind of stuff, just like boomer level, “Oh, look at that, that’s a funny video, that’s funny.”
Do you think not watching cartoons adds to the charm of it?
Cusack: I would say so… I think the fact that we do keep it pretty non-sacred as a medium, I think that’s what allows us to be able to move around to different mediums easier and not think about that too much, and also break the show if we want and do maybe bad animation on purpose sometimes if it’s funny. So I do think it helps a little bit there.
You’ve floated this idea of plotting a movie as the curtain call of the Smiling Friends story. You get 10 minutes with these guys every week, how do you think these characters would translate to the big screen?
Hadel: Obviously, I’m biased, but I feel like even if you look at stuff like the Halloween episode from season 1, or the one we just did, or the Mr. Frog episode, there’s flavors of what it might look and feel like. I think when people think about that, I think if anyone’s skeptical, it probably has something to do with the fact that the show is so quickly paced. But we would treat a movie as if it’s a really big episode in the sense of… I imagine the pacing would be similar, but it’s not going to be nonstop, it’s not going to be 10 minutes times 10 or whatever. I think it would surprise people, I hope, in how it’s done. And we have really, really, really rough ideas for what we would do and I think they’re good ideas. I’d also want it to be something that if you’ve never seen the show at all, you can still kind of watch the movie, to a degree. It’s like you’re introducing the show to people and… Whatever. I don’t want to go too much into that. I feel like it’d be a good movie.
We’re three seasons in. What does Smiling Friends mean to you today?
Cusack: To me, it’s a little sandbox that I’m so proud of with Zach. The stuff I make on my own, I probably cringe a little bit more at it and I can’t watch it again after I make it, for whatever reason. Smiling Friends feels like something, I’m just lucky. It’s more like injection of other animators as well. I feel like I can step back and enjoy it and I’m so proud of it, too. It feels like we’ve created something really special and a sandbox and characters that are so fun to play with. I’m very proud of it.
Hadel: The headspace that we were in when we were making it was so born out of piss and vinegar and stress and frustration, just wanting to make something. I think we were really conscious about it when we were making it. But it feels lucky is what it feels like, it feels like we lucked out in a way. Obviously, it took a lot of thinking about it and getting it right… But sometimes, I do just look at it and go, “Oh my god.” Not even in a way where I’m like, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever made,” but just like, “Oh, wow, we made that, it’s good.” That Halloween episode we just made is one of my favorite cartoons. It’s almost like I’m not even involved, in a f—– up way. I can’t explain it, it’s very weird. But we’re lucky. And hopefully we’ll end it properly and it’s a nice, beautiful thing at the end.
New episodes of Smiling Friends air Sunday nights at 11:30pm ET/PT on Adult Swim, before arriving the next day on HBO Max.
The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
