Man Seeking Woman really spoke to me in the first season. We’ve all felt like our ex was dating Hitler and we were being set up with trolls, but Simon Rich’s TV comedy literally depicted those feelings. Now in season two he goes even further with Liz (Britt Lower) having an affair with Santa Claus and Josh (Jay Baruchel) negotiating bro time with Mike (Eric Andre).
I had a one on one with Man Seeking Woman creator Simon Rich before his show’s panel for the Television Critics Association. He updated me on the new additions to season two’s staff and what that means for the surreal, absurd antics of Josh and his friends. Man Seeking Woman airs Wednesdays at 10:30pm ET/PT on FXX.
Simon Rich Interview:
Are you still dealing with material from your books?
Simon Rich: “No, we’re all out. We are 100% out so everything this season is completely original.”
Had you thought about writing more books or is it all in the show now?
Simon Rich: “I have written another book. It’s called Spoiled Brats which came out about a year ago, similar in tone, more magical realist/absurdist stories but they’re not about dating. They’re more about growing up and turning 30.”
Spinoff!
Simon Rich: “Maybe. I think in terms of dating stories, all of my love-based writing is now squarely focused on the show.”
Do writers come to you with stuff that blows your mind?
Simon Rich: “All the time. It’s an incredible writing staff. It’s the same writing staff as last year. Ian Maxtone-Graham from The Simpsons. Robert Padnick from The Office. Sofia Alvarez, a great New York City playwright. Dan Mirk from The Onion but we also added a huge crucial ingredient which is Merika Sawyer who is one of our producers and writers this year. She is my old writing partner at Saturday Night Live and we have her this season. It’s just a huge jolt of talent into the staff.”
Does hearing their stories make you glad you’re not dating anymore?
Simon Rich: “Yeah, there are some horror stories in the writers room. It’s a very autobiographical show, not just for me and the writers but for the cast itself. They’re part of the creative process. Jay was in the writers room this year for a good stretch and really helped us generate stories and flesh out the characters.”
Not-Joshero-sexual hit really close to home for me.
Simon Rich: “Yeah, that’s an episode about how sometimes when somebody’s not attracted to you, you literally cannot do anything. You can’t change it. Sometimes you just have to move past it and face the music.”
Your voice-over of the Blade trilogy killed me.
Simon Rich: “Thank you so much. That was Ian and I writing on a legal pad on set, voiced by our script supervisor. This amazing guy named R. Emerson John. So a non-professional actor nailed that part.”
Was there never any talk of having the actual Blade movies?
Simon Rich: “We always like to have a little bit of fun with fake movie dialogue. It’s one of our favorite things to do. We have some fake Carnivale dialogue in season one. There’s more fake movie dialogue to come this season.”
Which movies?
Simon Rich: “Must Love Dogs.”
Can we assume they’re talking about how someone has to like dogs?
Simon Rich: “It’s pretty on the nose, yeah, exactly.”
Is this season somehow even more surreal than the first?
Simon Rich: “I would say it’s equally surreal. The first season, we were really focused on just establishing the rules of the show, establishing the world and its surreal point of view. This year, now that we’ve built the world, introduced it, we’re mainly focused on character development and trying to flesh out our protagonists and their relationships with one another, and also to put those relationships to the test. So I think it’s more dramatically propulsive, more narratively driven but equally nuts.”
Are we far past texting and settling for trolls? Falling for a coworker is a lot more complicated.
Simon Rich: “It’s a lot more complicated and it only gets more complicated as Josh and Mike enter into this love triangle which dominates the second half of this season. It becomes this highly serialized show with cliffhangers. So the show has, I would say, a little bit more narrative energy. The other thing is thematically, season one was very much about getting over heartbreak for Josh, and then ultimately for Liz as well. This season is really about unrequited love. It’s more active. It’s future tense instead of past tense. All of our protagonists are going after a love object they probably shouldn’t be. It has more narrative tension.”
Do the guest stars get the tone easily, that they have to play it for real?
Simon Rich: “You know, 90% of them do. They really get it. Robin Givens in particular, when she showed up to play Mrs. Claus, instantaneously understood exactly what was required. She played it completely straight, completely naturalistically and was amazing. I’ve been really excited by the commitment that actors have brought to this show, especially our protagonists.”
Not even celebrity guest stars, but the day players who played the couple at the Not-Joshero-sexual parade.
Simon Rich: “They were great. They were excellent. They got it. Callum Keith Rennie plays a ton of hard-boiled detective types and he plays one on our show. It’s the cold open scene where Josh is going to drunk text a girl in the middle of the night. We play it as if he’s a maniac with a bomb about to detonate it. We shoot it anamorphically and it’s a full cop drama. We hired the best cop playing actors we could find and they played it completely straight. It looks like a completely different show. It’s shot like a cop drama. We’ve got the sirens and the anamorphic lens. The only thing that’s weird about it is instead of it being a bomb, it’s a cell phone.”
Was Fred Armisen your first choice for Jesus?
Simon Rich: “Yeah, we’ve been trying to get him on the show forever. We were so lucky to have Bill Hader last year playing Hitler. We always wanted to get Fred in there too and he nailed it. I love him in that episode. It was so fun to watch him out there.”
So Maggie’s not still clinging to Josh?
Simon Rich: “No, Maggie definitely moved on from Josh for sure. I think in season one, Josh moved on from her eventually. It took him a whole year but Josh didn’t learn a whole lot in his first season but he did learn that that relationship was wrong and that he shouldn’t cling to it anymore. This year he’ll learn even harsher lessons.”
Was it always the plan for Maya Erskine to leave after one seasons?
Simon Rich: “We always knew it would be for one season and that would be Josh’s arc that he would get over her and she would move past her as well. It was hard losing Maya because she was so talented and excellent on our show. She’s phenomenal and really a hugely important part of the first season, just extremely funny and talented. Sometimes story-wise you need to write a character out even when the actress is fantastic, which is a drag. Who knows? Josh’s life is long and weird. Who knows what kind of women will reappear into his life.”
Was it fun to make Josh the villain of the season premiere?
Simon Rich: “So fun. Really, really fun. It’s great to see him from another perspective. Ultimately we’ll see Eric from a different perspective too, not to give too much away. I think people will be surprised by how much range Eric Andre has as a dramatic actor. We learn this season that a lot of his bro-y facade is just for show and that when it comes to love, he has just as much vulnerability as anybody else.”
There are so many different genres in that episode. Was that very ambitious?
Simon Rich: “The axe murderer one? Yeah, because we go from a war movie trope to an underdog union story to a slasher movie to a Lifetime original movie all in 20 minutes. It is a weird show that we combine science-fiction, horror, Greco-Roman mythology sometimes all within 10 minutes. Writing an episode is sort of like building a tower out of differently shaped blocks.”
Sarah Gadon also got the tonal shifts.
Simon Rich: “Nailed it. Her monologue explaining the mythology of her and her friends, she just nailed it, just completely straight and deadpan. Really, really gifted actress. I’m telling you, most of the people we bring on, they get it 100%. I think if they didn’t understand the conceit, they probably wouldn’t take the gig. Everyone really gets it and has been really bold.”
Aren’t we also in a world with a lot more surrealism and absurdity, it’s not as hard a sell as it might’ve been even 10 years ago?
Simon Rich: “I think that’s definitely true, absolutely. I think that people have watched 150 episodes of The Simpsons.”
There’s actually over 550 episodes of The Simpsons.
Simon Rich: “I know but everyone’s watched at least 150, and they’ve watched South Park. They’ve seen surrealism on television for years. I feel really lucky that I get to work on this show, and I’m not convinced it would’ve been possible to make something like this even 10 years ago.”
Or without FX?
Simon Rich: “Or without FX absolutely, and the amount of creative freedom they’ve given us is completely insane.”
