Emmy and Critics Choice winner Andy Samberg and his Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer/producer pal Neil Campbell are the creators of new adult comedy series Digman! It premieres this Wednesday March 22nd at 10:30pm (right after South Park) on Comedy Central. Digman! is about an archaeologist on a mission to make a comeback. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, Samberg and Campbell discuss the show’s humor, visual and story influences and more. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Andy, I have to congratulate you on your recent Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards voice acting nominations for Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. Frankly, I think you should’ve won for Chip N’ Dale. You’ve had a great voice acting year!

Andy Samberg: (laughs) Thank you very much. Yeah, I loved Rescue Rangers. Akiva [Schaffer], my buddy, directed it and did such an amazing job. It was really fun.

Neil Campbell: You were robbed.

JM: (laughs) Yes, you were robbed for that! I’m glad it won the Emmy, though, for [Outstanding] Television Movie. And Neil, you produced Brooklyn Nine-Nine which, of course, Andy starred on. So Neil, was it at some point while you were working on the show that you guys thought, “Hey, maybe we should get into animation now.”

NC: Yeah. Andy and I had known each other for years before I started on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We were buds. And then I got hired as a writer on Brooklyn Nine-Nine starting on Season 4, and I was on set a lot. And we would just be on set talking about what we love and what we would love to do together. Having that time on set sort of afforded us the opportunity to brainstorm and pitch on things. We landed on this idea. We wanted something that we could fill with jokes — that we never needed to cut jokes and cut comedy from. We could put in everything that makes us laugh and hopefully makes other people laugh too.

JM: I think so. So many great jokes and bits. Rip Digman is quite the archaeologist. Andy, who are the cinematic hero inspirations for your character?

AS: You gotta start with Indiana Jones — the O.G. (laughs) He was inspired by the serials when [Steven] Spielberg and George Lucas were kids. That’s a big part of it. Setting it in this world where archaeologists are swashbuckling heroes was a really funny jumping off point to us because we love those movies and we buy into that idea so much. It’s so nostalgic for us that it felt like a funny place to start and take it even further. And obviously things that came after that, like Romancing the Stone and National Treasure and the new National Treasure show — and there’s a new Indiana Jones movie coming out! It’s definitely an evergreen genre.

JM: Do you think Digman will be first in line for the new Indiana Jones movie in June?

AS: (laughs) Well, in our universe, Indiana Jones is a totally different person. (laughs) So yeah… well, maybe not, based on some things that are coming up in the show. I don’t know. I can’t quite call that one. What do you think, Neil?

NC: I think he’s first in line to replace Indiana Jones.

JM: The next installment…

AS: Yeah, he would probably go see “Indiana Jones” and be like, “FAKE!”

JM: I love when Digman goes to the Museum of Confetti. That’s a really clever idea.

NC: Thanks. We wanted something that would take us to Italy that was small and then would lead to a gigantic adventure inadvertently in a way. We have a great writing staff and a bunch of super funny, silly and weird people. There’s tons of pitches on what the exhibits were. People had so many funny ideas for it.

JM: Andy, what goes into structuring comedy in the animation world vs. a live-action sketch or a comedy series? Is there a difference when it comes to the timing and how you want to make that work?

AS: If you asked me, I would say “No” in terms of the timing. But I always want things to be moving so fast that we never let the audience think we like any of our jokes. And I’ve been told in the past that for some people that’s too fast. My mom comes to mind. (laughs) But I will say, working in animation, and I’m pretty sure Neil agrees, is so fun because you can make it go tight and move as fast as your brain wants and never linger. You could even let it air out. People either enjoy it or they won’t, but they’ll never say that we were wasting their time.

NC: In live-action there could be re-shoots, but at a certain point you’re stuck with the footage that you’ve got. In edits we’d [want to] change shots and things you can’t do in live-action. We had such an awesome set of animators, designers and board artists — who just put a ton of passion into it and blew us away because this was sort of our first time through this process.

JM: I think the energy is what audiences are going to like about Digman! So Neil, the newscasters on this show are BRUTAL! They hate Digman. Oh my gosh.

AS & NC: (laugh)

JM: Why are they so mean to him?

NC: You know what’s funny? We just wanted to make sure you get the sense of how the world feels about Rip. Our newscasters are always our window into that.

JM: Andy, besides Chip N’ Dale and Hotel Transylvania, you’ve been in the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies, Space Chimps and on SpongeBob. You’ve had a very good voice acting career. What has been the highlight for you of the voice acting aspect of your life and career?

AS: Honestly, every single time I get to do it, I’m in Heaven. I grew up obsessed with animation. I swore I wasn’t gonna bring this up, but here I go: The first movie I ever saw in the theater was The Black Cauldron. And from that moment on, I loved animation. When I got on SNL and suddenly people were asking me to do it, it was this lifelong dream realized. Now making our own show of it… When I was a kid and The Simpsons came out, it changed my life. To do an adult animation show that is the combination of animation and comedy that was so formative to me is another dream come true. Getting to work on all those ones you named, especially big movies like that with these huge rollouts and you know millions of people are gonna see it and kids are gonna know it… it’s just fun. There’s no downside to it. It’s just pure fun and love. It feels big and fun.

JM: One of the fun elements in one of the episodes of Digman! involves The Ten Commandments. What would you personally like a new Commandment to be?

AS: (laughs) What were some of the ones we didn’t use, Neil?

NC: That’s another list where we had 200 of them. (laughs)

JM: Maybe “Keep this show on the air for six or seven years”?

NC: Yeah, that should be the new Commandment.

AS: “Thou Shalt Watch Digman!” That’s what God wants, right?

JM: That’s perfect! And how would you do in “Top Gun”-style Gondola training? Would you be really good at it?

AS: Oh I would fold immediately.

NC: Shirtless bocce ball I could kind of hold my own in.

AS: That I would like to see.

NC: Alright, come on over!

JM: And we find out there’s an arcade game of Rip Digman. What kind of merch or swag do you wanna see from this show?

AS: If that arcade game ever actually existed it would be pretty rad.

NC: Yeah. We really modeled the graphics after The Simpsons and Ninja Turtles arcade games — and a little bit of Mortal Kombat as well. They had to build a whole different system just to do those kinds of graphics, apart from our normal animation thing. Every time we watched it we were like, “God, I wanna play this now!”