Matt Groening‘s latest animated creation, Disenchantment, is a far cry from The Simpsons, and while it’s closer kin to a show like Futurama, it still stands on its own.
True diehard Groening fans will be familiar with his early comic strip work, Life in Hell, and if forced to compare, Disenchantment is most on par with that early work. It has a dry humour, and for the first time in many, many years Groening has the luxury of introducing and expanding upon brand-new characters.
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Disenchantment takes place in the “crumbling medieval kingdom” of Dreamland, where viewers follow the misadventures of hard-drinking princess Bean (Abbi Jacobson), her elf companion Elfo (Nat Faxon) and her very own personal demon Luci (Eric André). While the laughs don’t come as regularly as they do in Springfield, the fantasy show has a certain magnetism to it.
Global News spoke with Groening over the phone about Disenchantment, the inspiration behind it and his creation “rules” that ended up being broken anyway.
Global News: Why place the show in a fantasy world? Was this something you had in your head for a while?
Matt Groening: I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, yeah. Back in high school, I used to draw a little comic strip for my friends, called Tales of the Enchanted Forest, which had talking animals and all that fun. I’ve always loved talking animals … in fact, I used to think that I would only ever draw animal characters. Life in Hell, for example, has the talking rabbits.
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Or the cheese?
Or the cheese … but I will say that we’re going to choke you up! It may seem like dark comedy, but we’re going to go places that are quite moving. Just to warn people.
It’s always fun to have flawed characters who are incomplete and who complete each other in a more ambiguous way. Luci, the personal demon of Bean, is definitely a part of that trio. I thought, symbolically, it would be fun to explore the idea of all the bad thoughts that are there, in each of our heads, telling us to do the bad things. For me, it’s just … having another cookie instead of working out. [Laughs] I thought it was neat that the bad voices in your head telling you to do the wrong thing are actually manifesting in a little being with a pointy tail.
For Disenchantment, are the majority of the voice actors pillaged from The Simpsons or your other shows?
No, we have a lot of new voices on the show. The three main characters, I’ve never worked with those actors. Abbi Jacobson from Broad City, absolutely brilliant, great improviser. Eric André, from The Eric André Show, again — fantastic talent and great improviser. Nat Faxon, who has the distinction of winning an Oscar for the screenplay of The Descendants, is wonderful as Elfo.
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What do you anticipate fan reaction to be to this show, and do you care? People get nervous when Mr. Groening moves into new territory.
Two things: one, I want to give a lot of credit to everyone I collaborated with, including animation, writing, voice acting and music. Secondly, I have no idea what the reaction is going to be; of course, I care too. I want people to like it.
If anything, the older I get, the less I’m interested in the zaniness. I’m more interested in real emotion and exploring that. Although there are a lot of goofy sight gags and some pretty broad jokes, we’re going for a moving series of stories that will perhaps … break your heart? Maybe? We’ll see. We realized we were able to do that on Futurama, so I thought, OK, let’s see if we can do it on this new show.
I have a personal pet peeve in literary fantasy. What is up with the apostrophes in names? Forget it! It’s so annoying. You’re making up words anyway, so why add the apostrophe? So: no apostrophes. We stuck to that rule. [Laughs]
What can your longtime fans expect from Season 1 of Disenchantment?
I hope they’re going to hear jokes they haven’t heard before, and stories they haven’t seen before, and maybe from moment to moment, even though the characters look the way they do, they might fall in love. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll forget they’re watching a cartoon.
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‘Disenchantment’ is available for streaming on Netflix on Aug. 17.
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