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Let’s be honest: There’s a shining wellspring of material to mine for laughs in today’s overly triggered, social media-obsessed and politically charged landscape. Luckily, Peacock’s riotous new stop-motion adult parody, In The Know, unapologetically taps into every single one of those veins.
Formatted as an episodic show set amid the inner turmoil of a fictional public radio station, it features a neurotic talk-show host with a “naturally sassy pelvis” named Lauren Caspian whose insecurities and social fumblings make for hilarious fodder. Think It’s Garry Shandling’s Show meets 30 Rock, and you have a pretty good idea of what’s in store for viewers.
The satirical series comes from the twisted minds of Beavis and Butt-Head’s Mike Judge, The Office’s Zach Woods and co-creator Brandon Gardner. It was conceived as a black comedy lampooning today’s over-the-top political correctness with reckless abandon, and the result is comedic gold.
Nimrods on the Air
In The Know acts as a mirror to reflect today’s types of digital–age human truths, offensive typecasting and polarizing agendas to help deflate the insanity and bring everyone back to a semblance of normalcy. It’s a six-episode series with a fantastic ensemble voice cast and an eclectic group of guests that intersects with Caspian’s raw on-air interviews.
To execute their vision, the creative team turned to Brian Hansen’s talented posse at ShadowMachine for the series’ stop-motion animation. Most recently, this Portland, Oregon-based studio was responsible for the magic behind the Oscar-winning 2023 feature, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
“Initially, Mike Judge and I had worked together on Silicon Valley, and he was on my comedy Mt. Rushmore as someone who I really looked up to,” explains Woods. “We became friends, and he told me about an idea of doing something in the stop-motion space, maybe an NPR thing. He referenced Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and then I’m pretty obsessed with NPR. I feel like if NPR had a body, like the way I dress and talk and the unfortunate way in which I move, [it] is right in sync with NPR.”
Once the hook was set, Woods dove into the wacky source material to begin fleshing out the premise and world to discover rich opportunities for characterization and barbed humor.
‘Like the puppets, people like me who love NPR are often delicate and breakable, sometimes a little bit twee and awkward, just like stop-motion puppets.’
— Creator/executive producer/showrunner Zach Woods
“I came up with Lauren Caspian, and he’s dating a woman named Lauren, and I reached out to my writing partner, Brandon Gardner, who’s a genius,” says Woods. “He came on board, and we did a proof of concept, but when it really started to crystallize and take form is when we ended up with ShadowMachine.” The creative team’s initial attraction to stop motion was that it seemed well-suited to the NPR universe.
“People like me who love NPR are often delicate and breakable, sometimes a little bit twee and awkward, just like stop-motion puppets,” he adds. “And we are manipulated by forces we’re probably not even aware of, also similar to stop-motion puppets. We wanted to write a show that was rooted in performance, where the subtleties of human interactions were the punchline as often as the actual scripted jokes. That was an ambitious thing to take on. Then, we met the folks at ShadowMachine and Brian and his fleet of incredible animators.”
What Woods and company quickly realized was not only were ShadowMachine’s talented ranks able to execute what they’d put down on paper, but they were also able to elevate the comedic material in a way they’d never anticipated.
He says, “We hoped to do a loving satire of people who are like us. I’m such a hypocrite with my progressive values. I don’t walk the walk nearly as much as I should, and I probably talk the talk more than I should. I just felt people like me should be made fun of more, and we wanted to get a head start on that. We also wanted it to feel like the world was populated by actual human beings, and that’s where Brian and his pirate ship of artists came in.”
In carving up the current state of public discourse, Woods believes people are being reduced to one identifier, one demographic, one opinion, one terrible moment, one wonderful moment, etc.
“One thing we discovered about why stop motion is so beautiful is that each of these characters is played by like 20 people because different animators take turns animating them,” he says. “So, multidimensionality and complexity [are] built into the process. You have 20 or 30 souls all giving this one character their life. We wanted to make fun of these kinds of people, but also not dehumanize them even as we were being ridiculing, and that was really important.”
“I think the animation of these puppets is so great and so detailed and emotionally deep,” Hansen adds. “It’s not just one person, and they all put their bits of soul into the puppets. We attacked this in a different way than we would normally. There were different choices of expressions, and when people were reacting to each other it was quite often that your first instinct would be the opposite of what Zach and Brandon would portray. That really brings depth to these characters in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen in stop motion.”
In developing oddball characters with In The Know’s writers, there was a conflux of ideas for Hansen to consider as he imagined what this pool of public radio geeks might look, dress and sound like.
“We started in a place where they were more cartoony and wacky-looking, and they sort of brought them back around to where they’re more humanlike,” he recalls. “Lauren Caspian is the outlier in his looks, but I do think Zach and Brandon had an image of what it could look like. The puppets that Georgina Hayns and her team produced were above and beyond what they imagined. From the get-go, they were wildly surprised at the way we could articulate the puppets and the realization that the animators were also actors who would perform the action.”
When Woods, Gardner and Judge saw the stop-motion wizardry of ShadowMachine applied to their vision for the first time, it was a revelation of grand and astonishing proportions.
‘There were different choices of expressions, and when people were reacting to each other it was quite often that your first instinct would be the opposite of what Zach and Brandon would portray.’
— Animation director Brian Hansen
“ShadowMachine did Pinocchio and they were our Blue Fairy,” Woods admits. “They took our creatures that we’d conceived and tapped them with their wand and made them come alive. It was spectacular to see. It’s like an Advent calendar where there are new delights every week.
“First, you saw some preliminary character sketches from a guy named Kevin Lofton and those were exciting to see. Then, ShadowMachine showed us mockups, and those were really cool. Then, we got to see the beginnings of their faces in black and white and then in color. And their incredible clothes, the fibers of their sweaters, the weird glint of their glasses, their shoes. Then, we got to see the whole world that their wonderful art team created around these characters. It was an unfurling of delights that continued throughout the whole process. Every morning we’d meet with Brian and the animators and talk through that day’s shots, how we wanted to approach the scenes. They were all so receptive and they’d take that stuff and run with it.”
Hansen’s crew was up to the challenge and remained fully dialed in during the production. “In stop motion, the direction is often directional, but what Zach and Brandon were performing was an emotional direction,” he adds. “It was always about what the character was thinking more than where the character was in space and what the character was doing. It was six months total that we were animating and doing roughly 22-23 seconds per week.”
Another organic awakening to the enchanting qualities of stop motion for Woods was that they not only got to know the characters through the animators, but they also got to know the animators through the characters in a strange symbiosis.
ShadowMachine’s Magic
“Going to ShadowMachine is so crazy,” notes Woods. “It’s Willy Wonka s—. We’d never been there before, and it’s all these weird, wonderful artists who have somehow found their homes. It’s like those X-Men movies where all the freak kids are living in Professor Xavier’s mansion. With our small budget and our tight calendar, they did such high-quality work in such a short time with such limited resources, that they’ve set an impossible precedent that deserves the rage and vengeance of their peers in the stop-motion community.”
Adding to the show’s ultimate polish is an impressive vocal cast that includes Woods, Caitlin Reilly, Charlie Bushnell, J. Smith-Cameron, Carl Tart and Judge.
“Peacock was wonderfully trusting and supportive,” Woods declares in summation. “I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing for a giant entertainment company to be as hands-off as they were in terms of content. One thing we often talked about in the writers’ room was that we never wanted to punch down, we wanted to punch in. We didn’t want to treat our character as pin cushions to abuse. What are the core human characteristics that lead to these kind of extreme behaviors? Everyone feels, at times, lonely or invisible or inadequate or insecure. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m a better person than any of the people in the show. I’m just like them.”
In the Know premieres on Peacock on January 25. The streamer has just announced the line-up of guest stars who will be featured in live-action interview segments for Season One (6 x 30′), which you can find here.
