IN THE KNOW Showrunner Brandon Gardner Explains the Show’s Unique Format and Reveals How the Celeb Interviews Influenced the Show

The new Peacock series IN THE KNOW is just an average workplace comedy…if your workplace is made up of stop-motion puppets who scramble to put together the third-most-popular NPR series. (All episodes will be released on Thursday, January 25.)

“[Co-creator] Mike Judge had an idea that he wanted to do an animated interview show, and he thought it might be fun to set it at a public radio station,” co-creator Brandon Gardner tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “And then he brought in [co-creator] Zach [Woods] to help develop it and Zach brought me on…I’m sort of Zach’s regular writing partner. The thing that got us really excited about stop-motion is that it felt like stop-motion puppets, which are maybe these 12-inch very fragile things—we felt a lot of connection to [them].”

Woods, Judge, Caitlin Reilly, Charlie Bushnell, J. Smith-Cameron, and Carl Tart lend their voices to the stop-motion ensemble, as host Lauren Caspian (Woods)…is trying his best. (And driving everyone around him a little batty.) “There’s like a twee-ness to [the puppets] and a delicacy to them,” Gardner says. “And this idea that they’re being controlled by outside forces, or influenced, at least, [it was] like, ‘Oh, that makes a lot of sense for us and sort of how we see public radio.’”

Though the show dives into timely issues, don’t expect commentary on breaking news. “That [difference] was important because stop-motion takes a really long time to do,” Gardner says. “We were really worried as the process was going on that it would feel dated by the time it was released. Because everything that came into the [show] are things that Zach and I and the writers had thought a lot about. So the beginning part of the writing period was just us talking about in what ways we relate to those characters.”

“One of the things that Zach and I find funny and absurd about ourselves is how we have these sort of progressive ideals and we want to be a good person, but all the ways we sort of fall short of that,” he continues. “And how easy I think it is to sometimes confuse projecting yourself as a good person versus being a good person. And, again, all the ways that we regularly fail with that…I don’t know if there’s a lot of comedy about that. When we get really frustrated with ourselves or the members of our chosen community, writing the show felt very cathartic to [say], ‘Well, now we can put it into something constructive.’…maybe we could make something funny with it.”

The six-episode first season also boasts an impressive guest cast—who portray themselves in live-action form—who sit down for interviews with Lauren: Kaia Gerber, Jonathan Van Ness, Ken Burns, Finn Wolfhard, Norah Jones, Tegan and Sara, Nicole Byer, Roxane Gay, Mike Tyson, Jorge Masvidal, and Hugh Laurie.

“The number one thing was that we wanted them to feel like guests that might actually be on an NPR show, that you might hear on Fresh Air,” Gardner says. “And the other thing was that we wanted to talk to people that we were generally interested in, that people that we think are fascinating and that are all different from each other.”

The showrunner notes the team was grateful for the varied talent list taking a chance on an unknown—and unconventional—series.

“Roxane Gay could not be more different than Mike Tyson or Tegan and Sara or Ken Burns,” he notes. “And the other thing that we’re really excited about is that all of these people get interviewed all the time. But we’re really hoping that because the format in which they’d be interviewed would be so unusual where they’re talking to an image of a puppet…it would give them the chance to show aspects of themselves they don’t normally get to show in interviews.”

Occasionally, some interviews needed to land in certain places due to what happens in the episode around them—but the team was flexible in allowing the interviews to shape the show, too.

“All I would tell them is treat it like it’s a real NPR interview,” Gardner recalls. “And none of the other parts would be scripted, with rare exceptions—we knew that Tegan and Sara were Lauren’s dream guests, and we had the idea that one of them would get sick…they did probably an hour’s worth of real interview, and then at the very end, I was like, ‘Would you mind pretending to get sick at the end of this so we can use it for the show?’”

“[But] a lot of times what would happen is that things would happen in the interviews that would actually cause us to go back and rewrite parts of the episode,” he continues. “Mike Tyson, for example, says these really profound things about loss that we’re like, ‘Oh, now that he said that, let’s rewrite the ending of this episode. Let’s have what Mike Tyson says be the reason Lauren is able to sort of get over this crisis he’s in.’ So they sort of both influence each other. Sometimes, Zach [as Lauren] would bring up something specific that’s part of the wider story in the office, and sometimes something one of the guests…would influence the outside story.”

IN THE KNOW, Series Premiere, Thursday, January 25, Peacock

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