Q&A: Workaholics (SXSW 2012)

Coming from Toronto, Portland or even Los Angeles, the state of Texas can be a foreign love affair. Why? Because Austin likes to party. During South By Southwest, anything can happen whether its scaling walls to a see DJs make some wob wob noises, starting a Twitter trend (#cryonit) or asking Norah Jones out on a date, because she’s right there. Getting fully torqued in the middle of it all this year was the main cast of the comedy series WORKAHOLICS, who despite prepping for Season Three, managed to pull off a massive 13-hour booze-soaked house party featuring live acts such as Wavves, Trash Talk, Freddie Gibbs and The Cool Kids. As swarms of people got messed up off of Fully Torqued Tea and talked about their matching Mishka caps, we caught up with Adam DeVine, Blake Anderson and Anders Holm to find out more about the new season, The Wizards and if they really do have love for Canada.

The television show just finished up Season 2, and is moving on to a third…

ADAM DEVINE: We’re doing the third. May 29thh. Comedy Central. Tuesdays. 10:30PM/9:30PM CT.

ANDERS HOLM: Comedy Central Canada (laughs).

As for the show, did you guys know each other at all before it was created?

ADAM: Blake and I, and Carl, I mean Kyle, were roommates for a while. Kyle and I were roommates for seven years and Blake and I were roommates for five, and we’ve known Ders for seven to eight years too.

The chemistry between you guys is definitely there when you actually watch the show. But how does something like this fall into your laps?

ANDERS: You know, fall into your laps… it actually did.

BLAKE ANDERSON: That was a perfect way to explain how it happened.

ANDERS: We came from the Internet world…

BLAKE: See, a “laptop”.

ANDERS: Yeah, a “laptop”. So a lot of people were doing different comedy videos and stuff like that and then all of a sudden Comedy Central saw the web series we did and thought it could be a show and said we should try that.

BLAKE: And we did, and it was cool.

ADAM: We went in and we pitched the show initially and they kept stating they wanted “Workaholics”, which is kind of what the web series was like. So they told us to pitch the show and we went in and pitched that but we also told them our idea about a wizard rap group and they said they didn’t want to hear that. It got to the point where we had to pitch to the president of the network and the vice-president and they were just like, “We don’t want to hear that shit. Please don’t ever talk about wizards again”.

ANDERS: “You represent me now as I’m bringing you into this”.

So the idea of the wizard rap group came before the show?

ADAM: We actually had that before (laughs).

BLAKE: That was one of our first little Internet sketches and we have like four music videos. They’re still up, YouTube em, check it out!

You guys are performing sometime during this party, correct?

ANDERS: Yeah, the wizards will be transforming in from another realm.

ADAM: They’ll be entering in from another dimension around 6 p.m. And they will be performing. We don’t like to be around when they’re performing so we’ll just be kicking it in the back. There would be too much energy in the room if we were there and heads might explode. They’re really cool dudes though. They look similar to us but have beards.

Well put in a good word for us so that they know us.

ANDERS: Sure, alright groupies!

Since Workaholics was your show beforehand, do you guys now work with writers?

BLAKE: Well we write the show.

ADAM: And we have a small writing staff that we work together with. For Season Three, we’re doing 20 episodes so we actually got a few more writers for it so it’s been a lot easier than the past.

ANDERS: It just really is a heavy work load. If it was just us doing it, we’d probably pull our hair out. It’s nice to have other people bring their flavour to the table too.

And adding writers hasn’t affected your creativity at all?

BLAKE: No, not at all. We have a good group.

ADAM: We have a really funny group and at the end of the day, if there’s something that one of us doesn’t like, then it won’t be in the show or we all have to come to an agreement about it.

ANDERS: It’s a democracy. You familiar with that in Canada?

Well of course we have democracy in Canada.

ADAM: Oh, is that how it works? I thought things were different in the great north.

ANDERS: Yeah, you guys have the Queen on the money.

Our politics aren’t as sexy as yours in the U.S., like banning birth control and all that.

ADAM: Yeaaaah!

BLAKE: Yeah, we’re sexy. We are sexy.

ANDERS: Men tell women what to do!

BLAKE: America!

To quote the bear suit, “fur sure” is a very Canadian term.

ADAM: Well Canada just gave us that idea.

BLAKE: I was in Canada and my brother was playing in an ice hockey tournament in Whistler and I picked it up.

ADAM: Eh.

BLAKE: Yeah, we got love for Canada. Good beer.

ANDERS: Molson! (laughs)

Are you guys doing anything similar to this house party this year in support of the show?

ADAM: We have 20 episodes that we’re doing for the next bit so we really don’t have time do a lot. Luckily we were able to make some time to come do this as we don’t start filming for another couple weeks.

As the party keeps getting louder, I wanted to ask: are you guys torquing?

ANDERS: Right now? No, not really.

BLAKE: I’m getting there.

ADAM: I’m always full torqued though, it’s actually an issue. I have a hard time finding jeans that fit.

BLAKE: See I get torqued when the sun goes down, it’s kind of like a werewolf thing.

ANDERS: You know what he’s talking about.

Actually I don’t know!

ADAM: It’s a werewolf thing. It happens in America.

ANDERS: His pipe starts growing fur and fangs.

BLAKE: And it howls. So if you hear the howl…

ADAM: Watch out.

BLAKE: Stand back.

ADAM: It’s going to be six inches of fury coming at you. An angry little monster.

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