March 8th, 2022 
Neal Patten 
For Smiling Friends co-creators Zach Hadel, 31, and Michael Cusack, 34, the animated sitcoms they watched growing up in the 1990s played a significant role in shaping their sense of humor and their animation sensibilities.
“I grew up with ‘Beavis and Butt-Head,’ ‘South Park,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ – they’re pretty much ingrained in my DNA,” Cusack told Animation Scoop. “It’s pretty much a subconscious thing at this point, they’re always there when I’m thinking about comedy and writing and animation. Old school 90s story arcs and big storylines are what I grew up on and are a big inspiration for me. I thought it was a real golden age of cartoons.”
With their animated sitcom – which the eight-episode first season premiered on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block on Jan. 10 – the creators are trying to reinvent that type of comedy for today, by bringing their instincts from YouTube and Newgrounds to the project, Cusack said, particularly short, quick content.
While animated shows with ongoing story arcs is a classic format that they loved, for this specific show, the duo felt its scenes should be able to live on YouTube broken into one- or two-minute clips – and approached their writing process in that way.
Hadel is a popular animator on Newgrounds and YouTube and Cusack uploads his animations to YouTube, as well. They both have racked up tens of millions of views on their short form content – which includes both ongoing web series and one-off shorts.
One of Hadel’s most popular videos, “Get Out Of My Car” has over 53 million views, while Cusack’s biggest viral hit is “Bushworld Adventures.” That video – a parody of “Rick and Morty,” but starring Australian duo Reek and Mordi – was an April Fool’s Day 2018 prank commissioned by Adult Swim.
Actually, neither of the “Smiling Friends” directors were strangers to Adult Swim prior to their new show, and April Fool’s Day is a common thread between the duo and the network.
Hadel and a fellow Newgrounds creator, had previously pitched the web series “Hellbenders” to Adult Swim, but the pilot was rejected.
And Cusack is the creator, writer and director of another Adult Swim show, “YOLO: Crystal Fantasy,” which aired its first season 2020. The pilot for that show alongside the pilot for “Smiling Friends” debuted together in 2020 as part of Adult Swim’s annual April Fools’ stunt.
On Adult Swim digital platforms, the Smiling Friends pilot has since generated 1.3 million views and is the number one most watched episode on AdultSwim.com since its release.
While Hadel can’t remember exactly how the two met, it was around 2016 or 2017, he said. He just recalls that they were following each other on social media and watched each other’s videos, which led to them starting to chat with one another.
And while Hadel said the videos Cusack made were nothing like he’d make, he still found them funny – and once they started talking, they discovered they actually shared a similar sense of humor, their careers had gone down similar paths, and there was a “lot of overlap” between their histories and they had “obscure, weird stuff” in common. For example, Hadel has a Ronald Reagan impression that he said might only make 10 people in the world laugh, but Cusack was one of them.
They started doodling together and figured the natural conclusion was to try to develop a show together.
In pairing up, Cusack channeled one of his 90s inspirations again.
“As much as I like making stuff on my own, I love the idea of collaborating,” he said. “I love seeing how Trey Parker and Matt Stone work on ‘South Park’ – it seems like your work gets a different energy when you work with someone else. For us, it just worked. Smiling Friends is a middle ground between our different styles and here we are making a cool epic TV show.”
“It’s something neither of us would have made individually,” Hadel said. “The art style and humor is both of us. Even the way it’s drawn – he’ll draw it, I’ll redraw it – it’s an interesting back and forth thing, but we found a good rhythm to it and now we’re doing this crazy project.”
Old school, new style
In the quarter-hour animated series created, written and produced by the duo – company Smiling Friends Inc. is there to lend a helping hand to any city inhabitant who calls the hotline with a troubling situation. No matter how absurd, the folks at Smiling Friends will send representatives cynical Charlie (Hadel) and star employee Pim (Cusack) to save the day and provide a whole new take on self-help.
For the co-directors, waiting so long to release the series was a bit agonizing. They finished the pilot in October 2019, but had to wait for it to air until April Fool’s in 2020. And as creators used to releasing content episodically and getting instant feedback in the comments section, it’s been hard waiting to see how people will feel about the seven new episodes that dropped earlier this month, nearly two years after the pilot episode was released, Cusack said.
That would be like if someone only saw the pilot episode of “The Simpsons” and then assumed the whole show was about their dog, Hadel said, as the family getting a dog is a key plot point in that first episode.
“I hope now people get sense of what we had in mind,” he said.
That’s not to say the series has to be watched in any order to be understood though.
All eight 11-minute installments of the first season have been designed to be individual, standalone episodes with self-contained storylines that can be watched in any order, but can also be binged in order with the total running time akin to a movie, the creators said.
“It’s pretty much all situational comedy, you’re supposed to be able to tune into any episode and still understand it and it’s still supposed to be funny,” Cusack said.
Hadel views the first three episode a bit like a trilogy, as they establish the nature of the Smiling Friends Inc. business and introduce the protagonists Charlie and Pim whose jobs are to make people smile – but after that, the show deviates in different directions, he said.
“Yeah, I think it’s closer to a sitcom in a sense, there’s no big over-arcing thing,” Hadel said. “I don’t think that there’s any two episodes in season one that feel too similar, or bump up to each other, they’re not going to feel like they’ve got the same idea, it never feels like a repeat. We tried to fit as many themes and different characters in there as we could. So, if you’re not a fan of the first couple episodes, you might really love something in the back half.”
Different episodes offer different genres and feel different tonally, Cusack added, and some are even in different mediums or formats – the show itself is presented in mixed media.
“I’m excited for the stuff we did with mixed media, there’s some really cool art stuff, we worked with really cool people,” Hadel said.
Surprising People
While he obviously hopes people will find the entire show funny, Hadel also loves when just a specific part tickles someone.
“The goal of the show is to surprise people and make them say, ‘I didn’t see that coming, you got me,’” he said. “My favorite thing is when you can make someone say ‘most of this didn’t click with me at all, this isn’t my sense of humor at all, but this part was funny,’ that means you got them. I love surprising people, and exceeding their expectations as we go on.”
Despite the core premise of the Smiling Friends Inc. company, the creators didn’t want to be hindered by the concept of a workplace comedy.
“We tried to build into it comedy where – if they aren’t working – it’s still funny,” Hadel said. “Not every episode is about a job, sometimes they just go on an adventure.”
He compared that to “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” which for the first few episodes of the first season presented the protagonists as detectives and then that concept was abandoned until the eighth season.
While he says they won’t break from their initial premise as much as Aqua Teen did, if the show is renewed, while he’s not sure what percentage would be about the Smiling Friends business going forward, he said it won’t be the majority.
In some ways, the central concept was chosen just as a catalyst for the two main characters to go out and meet other characters since their jobs are to help people – and also because there’s simply only so many formats for a sitcom, Cusack said. Typically, those are either a family comedy, or set in an office or workplace. By introducing the characters through their jobs, they can lean into that premise, but they can also explore more than just making people smile, like taking the characters on a road trip, offering the “best of both worlds,” he said.
Despite the somewhat analogous premises, the creators didn’t watch other animated shows like Cartoon Network’s “The Problem Solverz” (about a trio who solve problems) or “Tig n’ Seek” (about a duo who find lost items), or even much in the way of live-action shows for inspiration.”
“I’m not sure of many office sitcoms I’m inspired by,” Cusack admits, but he still feels like it worked for this show.
“I didn’t watch any office shows and decide that’s how to do it,” Hadel added. “I like a show where a character can do anything and you accept it. I don’t want a show where you’re watching it and ask “why is this character always at work, why are they always working?”
One show he feels does that well is It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia – which, despite a core premise of the protagonists owning a bar, also expands beyond that concept.
Branching out
Another way in which they see themselves diverging from season one if they get renewed for future seasons is that Charlie and Pim don’t always have to be the main characters.
In fact, after around two years of production, stepping back and looking at it all as one package – they wish they had put the side characters in a little more, Hadel said. But also, putting Charlie and Pim front and center in season one was on purpose to help establish them, he said. That way, the first season wouldn’t feel all over the place characters-wise, and now after establishing the two protagonists in these first eight episodes – they hope to deviate in the future.
“That was the logic going into it,” Hadel said.
One character they both hope to explore more is The Boss. The Boss became their favorite character while producing the seven new episodes. In the pilot episode, he’s not fleshed out yet, they said.
“He’s not really who I identify with, but I’m looking forward to exploring him more,” Hadel said. “He’s a true wildcard, you never know what he’s going to do next.”
The character is voiced by their friend Marc M. who makes cartoon shorts as Sick Animation.
“You can do anything with him and it’s funny it seems,” Cusack said.
However, while exploring new characters is on the roadmap ahead – one way the directors do not wish to deviate from season one over time is the animation style. Hadel notes how for many animated series, the showrunners want it to look better every season. But he said he prefers the “looseness” of the first seasons of shows. He wants the whole series to be viewed someday like a cohesive package, as if every season was made at once – and so the art style won’t change going forward, he said.
“We want it to look as consistent as possible,” he said.
Finding their voices
Apart from not finding much inspiration in other workplace sitcoms or office comedies, Cusack and Hadel also said they didn’t really look to either live action or animation television shows at all for a blueprint on how to script their series.
“The initial idea – and I didn’t feel like I’d seen anything like it before – was to be like people who animate podcasts,” Cusack said. “I love that kind of stuff, that’s kind of the goal. It’s scripted, but it also feels loose and improv-y and almost too realistic at times.”
The entire show was produced remotely, across time zones. Cusack lives in Australia and Hadel in the United States. The two have never worked together in a studio, and the only time they stepped into a recording booth together was for the pilot.
The seven new episodes were by and large scripted over Skype video calls.
But it feels really natural when they write together, Cusack said. A lot of it is just them riffing or improvising and the funniest bits get turned into the scripted dialogue.
“We worked from home at our desks, the only exception is for the pilot we went into the voice booth,” Hadel said. “For any improv over Skype there was no magic, there was no 3… 2… 1… clap! It was all macgyvered together, held together with sticky tape and chewing gum. But it was better that way, more fun.”
“With the show, we tried to make the dialogue feel as close to real as possible,” Cusack added. “More and more as the series goes on, it gets more back-and-forth-y. Even with the interesting characters and stories and worlds and everything – we wanted something as close to real, interesting conversation as possible – set against the backdrop of this crazy cartoon.”
Characters are also born during these improv sessions, Cusack added. The pair will be sketching out character designs while on a call together, and then start to feel out a voice for that character right then and there while giving them a backstory.
When they draw a character, several voice actors or comedians will come to mind – so while looking at the character on screen, they’ll listen to audio clips or do their own impressions – trying out different voices and telling which ones work or not until they find the one that feels right for the character’s design.
And through this improv process, the ways the characters have evolved has been more instinctual than intentional, they said.
Looking back at the pilot, they don’t know what kind of character Charlie is as he doesn’t talk much. Meanwhile, in the pilot Pim is very positive all the time, but in the series, he has more ups and downs – sometimes even getting angry. But the pilot had less of that back-and-forth improv driving the script, they said.
“Subtle things like that, early on we established them when building characters, but during the series we got to know them more,” Cusack said. “By doing improv, we learn more about these characters and they become a bit more three-dimensional.”
Mutual Aesthetic
Since they’ve never worked together in the same room, when they’re drawing, they sometimes use the screen sharing feature on Skype, or they use an app called ShotGrid to review each other’s works and provide one another feedback.
But even if they ping pong designs, the final gloss of the main characters comes from Hadel, according to Cusack.
“Zach is better at aesthetic, construction – it feels like Zach is better at drawing an aesthetically-pleasing, good, nice drawing,” he said. “Like he might have a better eye for a certain, very small anatomy thing that I couldn’t see. My styles lean more towards the crafty stuff. Some of the comedy for some of the characters comes from how badly they’re drawn by me. But we went back and forth and it worked. I don’t know how, but it worked.”
But Hadel said their input on the show has been pretty equal so far.
“We think of every episode together,” he said. “It’s rare, but sometimes one of us goes on a walk and comes back and says ‘I had this idea,’ but there is no battle of will, just ‘that’s a good idea.’ We’re 95 percent similar in instincts. Five percent of the time we’ll say – ‘that’s not how I would have done it,’ or ‘I wouldn’t have thought of it like that,’ or ‘this is a better way to do it,’ but you can’t have an ego or else an inferior joke will make it into the show. Whatever we both feel like works best wins, it’s 50/50. Michael can do music, I can’t. I do the final design for some of the characters, but by and large it’s 50/50.”
As for what makes the Smiling Friends creators smile themselves?
“I smile if I have a nice cup of coffee while looking outside at a beautiful forest,” Cusack said. “As long as I’m alive, I’m happy. I love hanging out with friends, socializing – that’s pure, genuine. I’ve got a big smile on my face right now.”
“The human default is war, misery – our whole existence, our whole experience is bad,” Hadel said. “I don’t mean that in a nihilistic way. My philosophy is that the human experience is grimy and not very pleasant. So just to enjoy a nice cup of coffee at all feels very lucky. If you randomly dropped a soul into any body, it’d be a pretty bum experience. So the fact that we’re looking at nice cartoons, eating nice food… being alive feels pretty great.”
Watch season 1 of Smiling Friends now at adultswim.com/videos/smiling-friends
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