Awards Daily talks with Mulligan showrunners Robert Carlock and Sam Means about their animated apocalyptic comedy that’s survived both COVID and writers’ and acting strikes.
It’s fitting that production on the animated series Mulligan, which follows what happens after an alien apocalypse, would start during our own little apocalypse in real life and then drop on Netflix during the WGA strike last year. Like its premise, the show elicits laughs in the face of danger.
“[COVID] influenced the production of it certainly,” said co-showrunner Sam Means. “We started in May 2020. We had been looking for office space, and the whole production ended up being over Zoom.”
“We have writers we’ve never met,” echoed co-showrunner Robert Carlock. “The concept was pitched and sold before that, but it was creepy some days that we were living in this world we were creating. It gave us some inspiration but was also kind of chilling.”
“I kept hoping it would become less relevant,” said Means.
“Fortunately heading into 2024 and Season 2, everything is fine,” said Carlock with a laugh. “Everything is fixed.”
The Movie That Inspired Mulligan
Mulligan takes place in what would be the end of a Michael Bay movie or what happens after Mark Wahlberg saves the day, despite the earth being in ruins. In Mulligan’s case, the brawny hero becomes. . .President of the United States.
“The original impetus for it was the movie San Andreas,” said Means. “I still have not seen all of it, but I caught the end on cable. The Rock and Carla Gugino are looking out over San Francisco, which is a wasteland, and she says, ‘What do we do now?’ and The Rock says, ‘Now, we rebuild.’ So I thought, okay, what comes after the end of this movie? Is he gonna do it? Because I don’t think he has the tools to rebuild society.”
And clearly the character of Matty Mulligan, voiced by Nat Faxon, doesn’t either. The Bostonian is in over his head and takes his Carla Gugino-esque heroine as his First Lady (voiced by Chrissy Tiegen) even though she has no desire to be with him. He’s joined by some of the smartest people left on the planet, including Dr. Farrah Braun, voiced by Tina Fey.
“We’d been wanting to do something animated in conjunction with Tina for a while,” said Carlock. “We always had too many jokes and too many things and a little too much ambition in our live action. We were actively looking for something that wanted to be animated. To have that elasticity and to have backgrounds show a destroyed Washington D.C., you can do that in live action, but no one is going to pay for that.”
“We’ve been writing animated shows for years and just making it harder on ourselves for having to build the sets,” said Means.
‘Like the Saturday Morning Stuff We Grew Up With’
Means was a cartoonist before he became a writer and had some ideas in mind for how the animation should look.
“We wanted it to feel like human forms. In a way, this was a real destroyed D.C., and the actions are happening on top of that. That was our starting point. G.I. Joe was part of the Pinterest board.”
“The proportions are human,” added Carlock. “We don’t want it to be too cartoony. We wanted it to feel a little like the Saturday morning stuff we grew up with.”
To make the characters come alive, Carlock and Means assembled an all-star voice cast, including Dana Carvey, Fey, Ayo Edebiri, Sam Richardson, and Tiegen, among others.
“First, we strong-armed Tina ’cause she’s in the office next door,” said Carlock. “She said yes before she knew what she was doing. And you have to have Phil LaMarr in your animated show.”
“We had just worked with Chrissy on Mr. Mayor and thought she was such a natural and so funny and so game and wanted to write something for her. Ayo is one of our writers, and we were like, you’re funny—why don’t you do that voice on the show? We don’t deserve it. It’s such a good cast.”
“If 13-year-old me could watch a recording session with Dana Carvey and Weird Al Yankovic, he would lose his mind,” said Means.
Even though the cast is pretty balanced and diverse, in the Mulligan universe, women out-populate the men significantly. Are we to understand chivalry is not dead and they sacrificed themselves to put women and children first?
“I think it’s mostly men doing stupid things during and after the attack,” said Carlock. “It’s a lot of men having a YOLO attitude that reduced the population considerably.”
“A lot of jet ski accidents,” added Means. “They were all way too excited to do parkour.”
Season 2 of Mulligan
Pending any new kind of disaster, Season 2 of Mulligan drops May 24 on Netflix.
“Spoiler for sure: Dana also voices Cartwright LaMarr’s mother, who’s still alive somehow,” said Means.
“It might be a Psycho situation,” said Carlock.
And while they didn’t experience it in real-time, the 30 Rock alums love the fact that people’s X timelines were filled with clips from the show earlier this year.
“I watch that show as comfort food,” said Means. “I just rewatched the ‘It’s Never Too Late for Now’ episode. I just wanted to laugh. It’s wonderful that people are still watching.”
“I like getting reminded of jokes that I’ve completely forgotten about,” said Carlock.
Mulligan Season 2 streams on Netflix May 24.
