ComicBook had the chance to speak with Joe Bennett and Steve Hely, the creators of the new Adult Swim animated series, Common Side Effects, ahead of its premiere. They discussed the inspiration behind the show's unique premise, the development of the viral 'Jump In The Line' sequence, and their hopes for the future of the series.
Adult Swim is gearing up for a new year of animated originals, and the first of these efforts seems to be one of the most unique new projects yet. Common Side Effects introduces fans to Marshall Cuso, someone who has found a miracle mushroom that seems like it can instantly heal any fatal wound or disease when its eaten. But naturally such a drug could either save the world or throw it all into chaos.
It’s so much to unpack that ComicBook got the chance to speak with Common Side Effects creators Joe Bennett and Steve Hely all about the new Adult Swim series ahead of its premiere on Sunday, February 2nd. We got to ask about navigating conspiracies amidst some real world troubles, Copano and Harrington’s viral scene breaking out into the world, their hopes for Season 2 and more. Read on below for our full interview with Joe Bennett and Steve Hely (which has been edited for brevity and clarity).NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK: I do have to start with the biggest question that’s been getting at me since getting to watch. You’ve probably been asked this a ton of times, but “Geggory.” It’s such a specific name. Is there a real Geggory that inspired it? Was this on a list of names and you just happened to land on it?Joe and I go to the coffee shop almost every day, and just talking I know Joe likes to do the voice of the coffee shop guy when he announces the name. Just both shouting.I think baristas are taught a certain kind of etiquette where it’s like “I need to make sure that, because it’s such a crowded coffee shop, I need to make sure that people can hear me, but I don’t wanna sound like I’m yelling.” So it’s like a kind of form of, like, ‘Flat white for Geggory. Geggory.’ And I think I kept bugging Steve about that.Almost every day, we have a time to contemplate the auditing topic shot. But maybe everybody does. It was also cool hearing Mike Judge as Geggory too, and he does a bunch of additional voices throughout. But I’m curious as to how you two came to collaborate on, and I knew Mike Judge, and he wanted to sync us together. They paired us, and we got together and started chatting. And, within the first day, realized that there was a lot of overlapping kind of sensibilities and themes that we were interested in. We talked about health care, and mushrooms, and then slowly but surely, we started thinking about these sort of thought experiments. What would happen if you were to bring a medicine that could cure anything? What would be the repercussions of that? Who would come out and try to stop you? That sort of thing. Then it helped us to start to develop the show. On those lines too, what goes into developing a full pharmaceutical, politically charged thriller? Did you have to do research into actual conspiracy theories while crafting your own? Was it, “Oh, we need to make sure to keep comedy in there because there are more cartoonish elements to exaggerate?” What was the finding the balance like?We did a lot of research. We tried to talk to people from different points of view. We talked to a retired DEA agent. We talked to some people who worked in the pharmaceutical business. We talked to mycologists. Anybody who would talk to us, we tried to learn their perspective on it. And a lot of that, a lot of what you’re talking about, the comedy just came from little weird observations these people had or stories they told us. Some of it, we just sort of imagined what it would be like, and some of it we knew from studying things, or talking to people, or just tracking how people’s motivations would spin out and pretty quickly develop a complicated world.Speaking of the DEA, Copano and Harrington quickly became viral outside of the animation sphere with the “Jump In The Line” sequence. It’s cool to see subdued moments like that in animation overall since that’s more of a live-action kind of play. How was it developing that sequence and developing Capano and Harrington’s personalities?I think Joe is looking for ways to tell as much as possible about characters, and relationships without needing any dialogue or anything.Actually that particular sequence has a funny history because that was a little piece that Steve and I made to sell the show. Basically to pair it with our pitch sequence because we didn’t have actors at the time, and we were trying to figure out a way to show the kind of a relationship between these two characters. So having them in a sequence, where it’s just a visual sequence of just them dancing to Harry Belafonte, we used as a sort of a little proof of concept. And then, started making the show from that. We were fortunate enough to have Martha Kelly (Agent Harrington) and Joseph Lee Anderson (Agent Copano) do the voices and really pack more into the characters later on, but that was our starting point. And it was really just…limited resources is kind of the reason for that whole thin
ANIMATION ADULT SWIM COMMON SIDE EFFECTS JOE BENNETT STEVE HELY MIKE JUDGE COMEDY THRILLER CONSPIRACY THEORIES COPANO HARRINGTON INTERVIEW
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