August 26th, 2019 
Jackson Murphy 
BoJack Horseman remains one of the most popular animated shows on television. Earlier this year, it won top honors at the Annie and Critics Choice Awards. And Season 6 is on the way. But the Netflix series has never been nominated for the Outstanding Animated Program Primetime Emmy Award… until now. It will compete for the prize on Sept. 14, with its critically acclaimed Season 5 episode, “Free Churro”. Supervising Director and Producer Mike Hollingsworth talks crafting BoJack’s 20-minute, uninterrupted eulogy and receiving the Emmy nomination.
Mike Hollingsworth: It’s terrific. We have had so much fun making the show over the last six seasons. We’re working on the sixth season right now. It’s been such a blast, and I feel like it’s a really groundbreaking show. It’s a show that handles topical headlines stuff… famously last season facing the #MeToo stuff head-on.
Jackson Murphy: This episode you got nominated for, “Free Churro”, has gotten such praise for being so different. And it is a very interesting, fascinating, emotional episode. Why did you choose this episode as the one you wanted to submit this year for the Emmys?
MH: It is a tour du force performance by two individuals. Obviously it takes many people to make the show. But Will Arnett basically… it’s like some kind of Shakespearean performance. It’s amazing. He gives a monologue for effectively 25 minutes. It’s engaging the whole time. It’s incredible. And Amy Winfrey, the director.
When Raphael [Bob-Waksberg, the creator] wrote this… From seasons ago he pulled me aside and he was talking about how he wanted to write an episode that was all in one shot – when there were never any cuts. And boy oh boy, that would’ve been murder as far as behind the scenes with the production of a TV show. When he eventually took that idea and tossed it into this eulogy that BoJack gives, he was immediately kind of afraid.
He was telling Amy, “Feel free. There’s no cuts, but there’s an organist. You can cut away to that organist. Maybe even cut away to the audience, perhaps when the audience is telling a story, we can see it flashback style.” But Amy faced it head on and was like, “No. If your intention is to just have this be one man talking for 25 minutes, let’s do it.” And she jumped in there and did a terrific job supervising the boarding. I think there’s only maybe three angles throughout the whole thing, and then one additional one at the end. She really created a special thing.
JM: There’s edgy, funny, sad material – all that BoJack says. When you present something like this to Will Arnett, what were his thoughts on having to do this 20-25 minute monologue?
MH: We have table reads where we generally have Alison Brie and Paul F. Tompkins – the whole cast come in and do this amazing performance. It’s an amazing comedy show happening right in front of you with all these amazing performers. But for this table read, it was just Will Arnett sitting there with everybody around him. And he’s just basically talking with Raphael reading the stage instructions and everything. He was in it right from there. He was totally on board.
I think basically when he went in to record with Raphael, he just kind of ran through the whole thing. He got it. He’s been playing this character for six seasons. And this episode does pretty much encapsulate a lot of what “BoJack Horseman” is. It has that interplay of humor and sadness, and the dance of humor and sadness is all through this episode.
JM: Do you think it took Arnett one extremely long take or certain takes for certain sections without much editing?
MH: They did do multiple takes – but after they let him run right through. Raphael let him run through and do his performance and then while he was making tick marks in his script of what he wanted to return back to and hear different performances of. But initially, just like in the table read, he did it all in one long take.
JM: Will Arnett is one of the most talented voice actors of our time – when you look at this show and “Monsters vs. Aliens” and LEGO Batman. Do you think this was maybe the most ambitious episode you’ve taken on, or he has taken on with this character?
MH: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s ambitious in its daringness to be still. There’s different ways to approach ambitious. Of course we have our underwater episode, which I directed. That episode was ambitious so much so that it stretched out over our entire production schedule.
JM: Wow. And “Free Churro” was actually placed as the sixth in the batch out of the 12 for the season. It’s not the season opener or finale, but yet it feels like an event episode. Was that always the intention?
MH: The first episode you always have to re-up and be like, “Here’s where we are since you last saw our show 10 months or a year ago.” And in the last episode, you kind of have to be, “Here’s where we landed.” They’re more deliberate episodes and they have to serve more of a definite purpose. But you can get crazier with those middle episodes. I guess it would’ve been just as bold as the first episode. But hey – I think it landed just right.
JM: And the reaction right away, after it debuted last September… the episode was spotlighted with quotes saying “bold”, “unique”, “we’ve never seen anything like this”. Were you surprised that this was the episode that was spotlighted like this and the praise that you were immediately getting for it?
MH: No. We always knew it was real special. We put so much thought into it. A fine piece of China may look very simple, but so much work went into it. We were all blown away by Will Arnett’s performance. As a storyboard team, to be handed something like that is such a delight. You know that you’re working with something great when a performance like that gets turned in. All we could do is f*ck it up. But we didn’t!
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