Fascinating Fungi: ‘Common Side Effects’ Creators Raise the Curtain on Their Clever Animated Series

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If you’re looking for a timely animated show that deals with the healing powers of mushrooms and shady big pharma, Adult Swim will deliver the goods this month with the clever new comedy-drama Common Side Effects. Created by Joe Bennett (Scavengers Reign) and Steve Hely (Veep), and produced by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, Office Space, Idiocracy) and Greg Daniels (King of the Hill), the half-hour comedy thriller follows the adventures of two former high school friends, one of whom has discovered a mushroom that can heal almost anything.

The series’ co-creators, who were introduced through Judge and Daniels around five years ago, recently spoke to Animation Magazine about their hilarious and highly addictive show and their inspirations.

“Steve and I realized that we both shared a common interest in mushrooms, and our sensibilities and sense of humor and favorite movies really aligned,” recalls Bennett. “As we chatted, we realized that we’re both thinking about psychedelic drugs, medicine, big pharma and conspiracies,” says Hely. “We talked about what would happen if there were a medicine that would cure almost anything and who would be after that, and how it would really mess up the world. So, that’s how we started to build up our show.”

“We’ve been working on this show for a long time now, and it went through a couple of iterations,” Hely continues. “We originally sold the show to Amazon, but then they passed on it. Joe was like, ‘I’m going to show these fools what they’re missing by animating a little bit of it,’ and once people saw what we were going for, it was an easier sell. It’s so cool to be part of Adult Swim. I watched their shows when I was a kid. They have such a cool brand, and it’s been great to work with them.”

Mushroom Magic

The show’s animation is produced by Green Street Pictures, the Pasadena-based indie studio founded by Bennett, James Merrill and Sean Buckelew that also produced Scavengers Reign. “A lot of the same artists that worked on that show also contributed to Common Side Effects,” says Bennett. “We also worked with a lot of international artists from France, Portugal, Spain and Mexico. The studio was born out of the pandemic, and we were just very used to working with remote artists. It’s been a wonderful experience.”

Hely says he loves that the show is a nice blend of thriller and comedy. “It’s something that’s quite unusual and has a tone all its own,” he says. “I love the fact that it doesn’t easily fit into any particular box, and it’s been very cool to explore and gives us a lot of freedom. We’ve also come to love Marshall and Frances, [the] main characters of the show. Some of the people you meet in this show are just fun to play with.”

“I like that it’s grounded and cinematic,” says Bennett. “It feels like there are necessary reasons that it needed to be animated. It would be very difficult to do certain things in live action. I don’t think it will be defined by its medium.”

Of course, another exciting part of the job for the duo was working with Mike Judge, who provides the voice of Rick Kruger, the shady president of the big pharmaceutical company trying to get its hand on the fantastic fungi. “Mike was a big fan of Joe’s, and he really respects his work as an animator,” notes Hely. “He plays this CEO of a big pharma company who’s a little beaten down by life when we meet him. Mike is such a legend of comedy and animation, and it was just great to have him around.”

Both Hely and Bennett are pleased that the show was able to tackle some timely and important issues. “We all have these questions about what it means to be healthy and how they constantly change things that are good or bad for us,” Bennett says. “Medicine is so complicated, and the results of traditional medicine are so weird, and there are all these treatments that can’t possibly be good for [the] body with all these crazy chemicals being blasted into your body. The way these powerful billionaires in charge operate was also interesting to us, and the way the system corrupts people and forces us into these weird traps. We were thinking about how people deal with healthcare and interact with pharmaceuticals both legal and illegal.”

 

“Some of them will kill you. Some will make you feel crazy, and others are delicious. The more you learn about mushrooms, the more interesting they get!”

— Co-creator Steve Hely

 

 

Hely mentions that both he and Bennett were fascinated by the possibilities offered by mushrooms. “We were talking about Paul Stamets [author, mycologist and entrepreneur who sells various mushroom products through his company] and questioning why alternative medicine continues to be seen as a weird taboo although we all see these incredible medicinal properties these types of things can offer.”

The show creators mention that they hold themselves to very high standards. “I’d say that this is a really ambitious project,” admits Hely. “We want it to be as good as a Coen brothers’ movie. Joe has this gift for finding incredibly talented people and getting everyone on the same page. I think this will be a project that will put Green Street Pictures on the map.”

Focus Blur Fans

The animation team used a wide range of 2D-animation tools including the Adobe suite, Harmony, TVPaint and Animate, because the staff worked remotely all around the world. “We should shout out all our unsung coordinators and production people who were putting material together from all these different formats, and it was amazing how smoothly they were able to do it,” says Hely.

“We really wanted to have a really cinematic look,” adds Bennett. “So you see lots of focus blurs and such. We had an amazing colorist and art designer, and our art director, Wes McClain, is really incredible. Overall, we were just trying to establish a show that visually felt like an expensive live-action show.”

Hely and Bennett hope that the show will help relieve people’s anxiety. “Hopefully, our viewers will feel excited and thrilled and will also laugh a lot” concludes Hely. “I hope they feel about these characters the same way they feel about real people. That would be great to achieve, because that’s the real trick of what we’re trying to do.”

 

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Common Side Effects sprouts on Adult Swim on February 2.