July 13th, 2022 
Jackson Murphy 
Roger Black and Waco O’Guin, the creators of Brickleberry and Paradise PD, have a new adult animated comedy series premiering this Friday July 15th on Netflix. Farzar is a sci-fi show about a recently alien-invaded planet and its outrageous inhabitants, including czar Renzo and his 30-year-old son Fichael. Black and O’Guin take me on a trip down all the avenues of Farzar in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: I’ve seen the first three episodes. Wow. This show is wacky and wild. Roger, what was the starting point for Farzar?
Roger Black: We’re huge sci-fi fans and we had actually come-up with this idea before Paradise PD and we were shopping it around. We love that world. We love the world building. You can do anything in sci-fi, especially in animation. We were super excited to do it.
JM: And Waco, right out of the gate, you’ve got Futurama and Rick & Morty references. How do they serve as inspirations for your show?
Waco O’Guin: Both are great shows, and we’re fans of sci-fi. The show is very much in our vein… blue humor. So I think it’s different enough. What we put in the trailer is just to try to say what everybody’s gonna say before they say it. We’ve been around long enough to know exactly what everybody is gonna comment! We’re gonna say it before you can even type it! (laughs)
JM: Roger, after making this show, are you now prepared for an alien invasion on Earth?
RB: Yeah. We are all set. We got all our survival gear and the laser pistols are ready.
WOG: I hope it’s Bazarack. I wanna hang out with him.
JM: He is wild! And all the humor and the rim shots on the drums. Waco, tell me about the goals you had with the Renzo and Fichael relationship.
WOG: To have some story to cling onto. With Brickleberry, we really didn’t get to… they wanted standalone episodes. But Netflix is great because we get to do an arc. It’s good to have some emotion there and not just all jokes. To have somewhere to go — and it really helps with the episodic writing, to know we want to accomplish this by the finale, so how do we get there?
RB: Brickleberry was more like a work ensemble, and we have more of a family element to Farzar.
JM: I would agree with that. Bento Box has such a strong track record. And all these intricate characters. Roger, tell me about working with Bento Box and creating these one of a kind-looking characters.
RB: We love Bento Box. They’ve been in animation forever and have a great pipeline. Waco and I come from art backgrounds, but the character designers and background designers that they can find and recruit are amazing. We give them a little bit of direction, but they really take the characters to the next level for us. Bento Box has been great for us.
JM: And Waco… as I watched these first three episodes, it moves and it moves really well. And we go to different locations. There are quick cuts to other locations or situations. Why is this style of pacing so important to you with this series?
WOG: Our background designers would request [fewer] locations.
JM & RB: (laugh)
WOG: That’s just our style. We learned that you gotta keep it quick. Short attention span. You gotta keep everything moving to keep people interested. There’s so many things you could watch out there. Our goal is: once you start binging Farzar, are you gonna make it to 10 [episodes]? It’s gonna feel like a short trip. We know we always have to keep it fast-paced.
JM: It works. I loved listening to Lance Reddick [as Renzo]. Many people know him from the John Wick movies. I thought he was also really good in Sylvie’s Love and One Night in Miami. And Roger, you previously worked with him, right?
RB: Yeah. And Waco can speak more to this because he was a huge fan of The Wire. We love Lance because he’s got this serious, intense voice [but] we make him say the most ridiculous things and we love him.
WOG: We had no idea he was gonna accept, and then we were afraid he was gonna quit when he came to the first table read. But as we got to know him, he’s just as silly as we are. He’s got a sense of humor just like us. We play video games with him every Saturday for about three hours. We play Destiny. He’s the main character of Destiny, so we get to hear him talking to us from the video game and through the headset. He’s a great dude. We love Lance.
JM: Nice. Did you get any John Wick: Chapter 4 secrets out of him?
WOG: (laughs) He won’t tell us anything! He knows better.
JM: I can’t wait! It’s already been too long since Chapter 3. The third episode starts off with this Sarah McLachlan “In the Arms of the Angel” spoof. You do it so well.
WOG: We were like, “We’re not gonna get this song. There’s no way they’re gonna license this song.” They have to give us permission. And they want money. But first, the permission is the most important thing. We always try, but we always assume, especially in this case, there’s no way. And then for some reason, I guess they thought it was funny. I think it was because it’s a futuristic thing with aliens — so separate that they felt like they could let us use their song. And we were so happy. Grey DeLisle sang it perfectly.
JM: Roger, a lot of this humor is shocking. At any point did you shock yourselves with what you were coming up with?
RB: I think we’re always trying to do that. But no. I mean, we kind of have to please ourselves because Netflix does give you a lot of creative freedom. “We could do that, but maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll just bite the guy’s head off instead of something else.”
WOG: If you wanna be shocked, come into the writer’s room and see the stuff we turn down.
RB: (laughs)
JM: Wow. One of the funniest elements of the second episode is this B.S. Meter you come up with. Waco, do you guys really have a B.S. Meter, and what does that look like?
WOG: Lance Reddick has a B.S. Meter.
RB: (laughs)
WOG: You can tell that when he gets fed-up on Destiny his B.S. Meter goes off. (laughs) It’s another funny thing to give Lance to cling onto.
JM: How do you feel you’re making an impact when it comes to adult animated comedy series?
RB: I don’t know if I’m changing the world… [but] I just wanna make people laugh.
WOG: When we get messages from people saying it’s been tough… “I’ve had problems with depression and your show helped.” That really means a lot.
RB: Yeah.
WOG: And I can’t tell you how many messages that we’ve gotten on social media from people — either from COVID or family stuff, they’re having a rough run and we just made them laugh. Our show is super silly and not serious and you can just watch it and hopefully feel better.
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