Series creator and executive producer Scott Gairdner describes Moonbeam City as a “sexy animated superneon ’80s cop adventure.” Got that? Rob Lowe provides the voice of Dazzle Novak, an incompetent yet handsome detective. Will Forte (The Last Man on Earth) voices Rad Cunningham, Dazzle’s obnoxious rival.
The new series will debut on Comedy Central on September 16, 2015 at 10:30pm ET/PT, immediately after South Park‘s season 19 premiere.
Gairdner and Lowe teamed up at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con to discuss the animated comedy during roundtable interviews. Gairdner said he didn’t write the characters with anyone in particular in mind, but Dazzle has a Rob Lowe/Don Johnson/Marty McFly look. Lowe was the first actor they thought of, and Gairdner’s thankful he signed on. “Thank god he said yes and ever since then it’s been getting to write for him and his voice. It’s been so fun to do knowing that he’s going to perfectly deliver some of these insane lines.”
“It is insane,” agreed Lowe. “I get the scripts and it’s like a little Christmas gift every time I get one. I never know what it’s going to be but I have a suspicion it’s going to be funny, and it always is. Stuff I’ve gotten to do as Dazzle Novak, I could live 500 lifetimes as an actor and never get to do.”
Lowe says what he enjoys the most about providing a voice in an animated project is that it’s possible to do anything. “Almost anything is within the reality of an animated television show, which is why that brand of comedy is always so great when it works. In live action, it’s real so you’re forced to live within the boundaries of human nature, the laws of physics, stuff like that. Not so much in animation.”
As for the appeal of setting the show in the ’80s, Gairdner admits it’s an obsession of his. “I’ve just come to enjoy anything that’s sort of ’80s but futuristic from the ’80s. It’s come to strike me that that is an esthetic that you see in movies and you see in music. It’s kind of what Daft Punk is doing. But you haven’t really seen a very stupid comedy done with this neon esthetic that I’ve been so fascinated by.”
“And the sensibility of what we thought the future was going to be in the ’80s is just really funny,” added Lowe. “I remember when I was 13 my parents were like, ‘Listen, when you’re old enough to drive we’re going to give you the Volvo.’ I remember thinking, ‘F*ck that, I’m getting a flying car! What’s wrong with you people? Volvo?’ I still don’t have flying car.”
Asked the origin of Moonbeam City, Gairdner replied, “It sort of came from me wanting to explore that world of ’80s retro-futurism and neon and pastels and all that fantastic stuff. I knew the world but I didn’t necessarily know what happened, exactly. There was a moment where it was about something else. It was about fashion photographers and models, and that just made more sense to me for sort that angular chic esthetic. Our executive producer Richard Schwartz had the idea, ‘Wait a minute. You’re very close to Miami Vice here. Why not make this a cop show? Give them guns.’
That made Comedy Central happier now the show’s for dudes. It made it so much easier to write because police officers can go anywhere. We can go anywhere in this bustling metropolis because police officers have access to everywhere. Now we’re so not limited. We can explore any world in the show. We’ve seen drug dealers and the mafia. Dazzle goes undercover in the world of the dolphins and poses as a dolphin himself in a robotic dolphin suit.”
Watch the full interview with Rob Lowe and Scott Gairdner:
