It's a fun show, BoJack Horseman to do, and that gets around. It's easy, especially for a lot of actors who don't do a lot of voiceover. No makeup, no wardrobe, they really just come in, the lines are right there, we goof around for a half hour, and I think it feels like, "Oh, yeah, this is why I got into this business: to play around and have some fun." There's no paparazzi, most of them don't do any promotion for the show. it's the fun part of acting, without the other stuff.
Raphael Bob-WaksbergI am wary of repeating myself too much. In this age of Netflix, as a Netflix show, if you want to go back and watch a season 1 episode, you can do that easily. I'm not interested in repeating the same story beats over and over and over again. But part of the truth of BoJack story is about how much he repeats himself and these patterns that are difficult to get out of. I'm trying not to be evasive about that. I'm not using that as an excuse. I think that's convenient to fall back on as a TV writer: "Oh, it's a show about stagnation."
Raphael Bob-WaksbergIn a certain way, sometimes it does feel like we say goodbye to a character, and we don't want to bring them back unless we have a good reason. We left the door open if we wanted to use him more. I always think it's better to leave the audience wanting more.
Raphael Bob-WaksbergBoJack especially is a very dialogue based show. A lot of the comedy comes from conversations, and a lot of story comes from misunderstandings and people trying to connect with each other, and there was a really interesting challenge trying to write a script with no dialogue.
Raphael Bob-WaksbergOne of the things I've found really interesting about the show is that a lot of people really relate to our animal characters, more than we thought they would. Part of that is, because they are animals, people project themselves onto them. If BoJack just looks like Will Arnett, people go, "Oh, I know who that guy is. That's a Will Arnett type." But because he's a horse, people can go, "Oh, I'm kind of like him in some ways."
Raphael Bob-WaksbergI think you can imagine everyone has ankle weights on, or technology, and there's a reason that people aren't floating around. But I also liked this idea that in this world, people forgot they can swim. The modern world weighs you down, there's always emails to check, you've gotta go to your job and pay your mortgage. You're not really thinking, "Oh, yeah, I can swim around." BoJack discovering it is a big deal, and kind of fun.
Raphael Bob-WaksbergIt was fun figuring out the science of the world as much as we wanted to figure out, and then playing fast and loose in other places. Which we do with our show in general. One of the things we love about the BoJack Horseman show is that we can always fall back on, "It's a ridiculous cartoon." And it is! It's a serious, relationship-based grounded character tragedy, but it is also a ridiculous cartoon.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg