Paradise P.D. Q&A with Creators Waco O’Guin and Roger Black

Fans of Brickleberry can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the outrageous humour that put us in stitches is making its way back into our homes.  Show creators Waco O’Guin and Roger Black have found a home on Netflix, and their new series is ready for release this Friday.

Paradise P.D. will follow the misadventures of a local police department of course with interesting characters and coke sniffing dogs.  Creating an original series for Netflix has opened the doors for these two comedic brains to take their talents to another level.  We were lucky enough to get the chance to have a chat with them and see how this fresh series is going to take the humour to another level.

Jesse Bereta: How long after Brickleberry concluded did you start to develop the idea for Paradise P.D.?

Waco O’Guin: It was a little while because we did one other show after Brickleberry.  It took us a little while before we started working on Paradise P.D.  The first thing we did was try and get Brickleberry picked up.  It is probably the hardest thing to do in this industry, is trying to revive a dead show.  When the rights belong to another network, it’s really way more complicated then we expected.  We just knew we had such a big fan base.  Then when it hit Netflix, it kind of blew up again.  That was when we thought someone has to pick this up.

JB: Was that how you first got in talks with Netflix over Paradise P.D.?

WO: I’m sure that had something to do with it.  The guys at Netflix were talking to our reps and everything, and I know they were really looking for adult animation.  And, I know those guys were (Howard) Stern fans so that probably had something to do with it.  Probably a lot of factors involved, but we are definitely glad it worked out because we love being on Netflix.

JB: Is there any advantages to being on Netflix, like being uncensored or creating larger story arcs?

WO: It’s all advantages.  The people there are nice, I mean, they don’t scream at you or anything like that.  Just great people to work with.  They seem to be true fans of the show.  There are things like being uncensored, but even the small things like not having an episode trying to fit 21 (minutes).  You can go anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes.

Roger Black: We had to cut out a lot of jokes and stuff like that when we had to hit a certain time to the frame.  We don’t have to worry about that anymore.  There’s no time constraint.  The other thing is the notes.  When Netflix does give us notes there not angry phone calls or anything.  A lot more creative friendly there.

WO: It’s probably something that doesn’t sound like anything to most people, not having to worry about the length of an act break.  In Brickleberry, every act had to be a certain length.  We spent so much time worrying about a length of an act, now we can spend time on making the episodes.

JB: What can we expect from Paradise P.D., what are some of the major differences from Brickleberry?

WO:  I think the biggest difference is that it has a season-long arc.  We haven’t done that ever with any of our shows.  We were a little nervous about it at first, but once we figured out what it was, how to put it in all the episodes…  We really love it, and we think everybody is really going to love it when they watch it.

JB: One of the factors of Brickleberry’s success was the cast, and you have like 90% of your cast coming over.  Was that intentional?

WO: Haha, not that much.  But, we wouldn’t be opposed to it, we love the Brickleberry cast.  We did mix it up some, you just can’t beat Tom Kenny and Dave Herman.  We definitely had our visions for the characters.  Those guys just tore it up.  And, the cast members we don’t have back we would definitely love to work with them again, they are all so talented.

JB: Can we expect any other guest appearances to show up from the Howard Stern Show?

WO: Well, there is definitely some images of some Howard Stern people.  We love working with those guys.

JB: Can you tease any names for us?

WO: There’s a little Beetlejuice involved.  Late in the season, you will have to hang on to see him.

JB: What are some exciting episode plots that we can look forward to?

WO: Yeah, some of these ideas come from a long time ago, and just been trying to figure out how to get it made.  It’s always exciting when you have something bouncing around in your head for years, and you can’t figure out how to do it, but you finally get it right, you finally get it out of your head.  That’s like the best thing ever.  It’s annoying when you have an idea that you’ve talked about and you can’t make it work.  And then, for some reason, it just clicks one day.  So, there is definitely a couple of those ideas that have been bouncing around, and we figured out how to make them work in this setting.

RB: How can we fit this car fucking into an episode?

WO: We know we want someone fucking a car, how do we build a plot around that?

RB: And, you have to build a whole story around it.  That’s pretty much what writing is, you need to have a good skeleton, a good story to hang all of these crass and crazy jokes on.  We had a really good story guy, a lot of good story people on the Paradise P.D. staff.

JB:  Excellent, hearing about car fucking gets me pretty excited to watch the show for sure.

WO: I bet it does.

RB:  I tell you what.  We were told by the folks who’ve watched it over in Italy, they were really excited about it.

WO: They were really excited about that car fucking.

RB: They love cars.

JB: Brickleberry was eventually a comic book, do you think that is a path that Paradise P.D. may go down?

WO: We’d love to.  We hear that Netflix wants to get into comics, and hopefully, that’s true.  We’d be the first in line to do it because we had a great time writing comic books and overseeing all the art and everything.  We had a great time doing it.

Thank you to Waco O’Guin and Roger Black for taking the time for this Q&A.  This interview was edited and condensed for clarity purposes.  You can stream Paradise P.D. on Netflix on Friday, August 31.  Then we can see what all of this car fucking is about. Read our review of the first season here.