Adult Swim’s original series Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, a live-action workplace comedy set in hell, features Henry Zebrowski (Inside Amy Schumer, Wolf of Wall Street) as Gary, a kind-hearted demon working to stay out of trouble with his boss, Satan, played by Matt Servitto (Sopranos, Banshee).
Normally it’s easy to describe a show, but Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell definitely doesn’t fit within any established boundaries.
Global News sat down with Zebrowski and Sevitto in Toronto to talk about the series.
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Global News: This show is like nothing I’ve ever watched before. I think it’s somewhat like Workaholics meets The Office meets something so crazy. Was there any inspiration from your own experiences in workplaces that led you to this show?
Matt Sevitto: Oh dear God. I did temp briefly in the city and it sent me screaming back to be a starving artist because I figured I’d rather die homeless and penniless in the subway than in a cubicle.
Henry Zebrowski: I worked at a headhunting firm for about a month in Wall Street because I was out of a job for three or four months. Again, also because I’m not going to say I committed credit card fraud in order to be a struggling actor. But I definitely would just get credit cards and max them out and be like ‘I don’t have this money.’
MS: What’s the difference between then and now? You still max out credit cards.
HZ: I just don’t pay them. Now I have the money and I still don’t pay bills. Basically, I sold my soul to this agency, being like, ‘Please hire me, I got to do it.’ I lasted for a month. I was getting screamed at with a tie on in a cubicle and they yelled, ‘Never get off the phone. I never want to see you off the phone.’ Finally, I freaked out and I walked into his office and I had a clip-on tie and I threw it at him and then I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’ And he’s like, ‘Let’s all cool out. Let’s not worry about this.’ The next day I came back and the office was emptied out, the entire office, and security escorted me up the stairs, where I was asked to clean out my desk and security took me down like I was a risk.
How would you describe this show in your own words?
HZ: Season 1 is way more of what we had been calling as an office comedy set in hell and it still is like that. It’s definitely like The Office in a Hieronymus Bosch painting but the show now to me is becoming almost like a complete evil version of Laverne and Shirley. It makes fun of a lot of traditional sitcom tropes mixed with a dead portrayal of what it would actually be like to exist in hell.
MS: I think it’s a lot like House of Cards (laughing). I describe it as The Muppets on acid. I think basically if you were flipping channels, that’s what you think you would have come across. That said, nobody flips past our show — you, like, you have to go back and ask, ‘What was that?’ That just went by. It’s a cartoon being done by human beings.
How is the makeup for your guys? Are the horns annoying to get on and off your head?
HZ: It is an ordeal but I think it’s a part of what makes the character. I’m not Gary until I put the makeup on and it takes 45 minutes to go in now, where it used to take me an hour and a half, but now we really can just pump it through because we’ve worked out the system, especially also we’re taking it off. I literally swipe myself with 100 per cent alcohol so my skin comes out of that — I am pink! But it’s like a chemical peel look. It strips all of your skin imperfections away. It’s like a billiard ball. It’s very strange. But otherwise, it’s great.
MS: They get a head start on me because they’re done and I still have claws that are put on with super glue and my horns are put on with some sort of adhesive that I always feel like we should just leave them on for the entire shoot because we put them on every day and take them off. You can’t move them.
How are your claws? Because I have some claws too. (Shows them acrylic nails.)
MS: Like, these guys all laugh, like I’ll be sitting there with somebody and I’m trying to work my phone…
I text with the sides of my thumbs. You got to learn!
MS: As I said, between wearing nine-inch heels and having claws, I now kind of know what the strippers feel like. Basically, by the time the makeup is done, I think I’m just like a big red drag queen. It’s much more RuPaul and less Lucifer.
How is the script for the show? Is there any improv or do you stick strictly to the script?
HZ: Unfortunately I can not read. And I faked it up until now, and this is a big shout out for anybody out there who can’t read. You can have a career by just faking it and cheating from other people… that is sarcastic (laughing). Learn to read, get a high school degree at least. They allow us to do a lot of improving. And a part of it is that I think it’s the feel of the show — we almost kind of do too much because we will sit and have fun in the scene and we’re laughing and the set’s laughing but then it’s like, we’ve been improving a scene that is now as long as the entire episode of the show. We have a lot of fun. We get an opportunity to really blow out the characters.
MS: It’s also a show for the digital age because trying to make this thing back when we used to shoot on film — film is very expensive, film stock and, like, processing film. I feel like shows like ours couldn’t have existed 10, 15 years ago because they would have killed us with the time we were wasting on film. So now in a digital age, you can just sit there. They don’t even yell cut anymore. Maybe they do yell cut, but we are just not listening (laughing).
What do you want your audience to take away from the show?
HZ: I’ve done a lot of work with the actual Satanic Temple and I think there’s this part of an idea of seeing the world from the other side. There is this concept of we all are in hell in this show but Satan is the ruler of hell. But he is in hell. So we are coming from this other perspective. This is a sitcom completely from (hell) — which is funny because Dave Willis is Christian and he puts a lot of his own Christian thought into the show and this idea of us literally being the devil’s advocate. The point is that you’re doing a sitcom truly based in hell.
Is there any comedic limits you find when you’re doing this show? Anything off limits to joke about?
MS: I’d say nothing is off limits on set. I mean, what gets by the network is a whole other thing.
HZ: And that’s the fun part. But then it’s the push and pull of, like, you can pee on his face but the pee can’t be yellow. It has to be clear. Poop can be seen and it can go on me but it can’t be coming out of a butt and if it’s smeared it cannot be brown, like, it’s that kind of stuff. That’s the weird stuff. You’re just like, ‘all right.’ It’s like we are in hell but I have to put a seat belt on in the car.
MS: I remember at one point I asked for my character to have a cigar and they said, ‘You can’t smoke it.’ You can’t smoke in hell.
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(This interview has been edited and condensed)
Watch Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Adult Swim.
Adult Swim in Canada will air episodes starting from Season 1.
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