![]() ![]() Was it a goal to make sure that that was covered? I don’t want to give too much away, but I think if you watch all ten episodes, you’ll be surprised by how female-centered the show ends up being. But it shifts pretty dramatically as the season progresses. Yeah, obviously, the show is called Man Seeking Woman, so it tends to center more, at least initially, on a male perspective of dating. What kind of thinking went into how the show portrays women? The show is all from the male character’s point of view. I was really excited because I got to cast Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall and hire one of my all-time heroes, Ian Maxtone-Graham, who was on The Simpsons for 17 years. Also, movies like Shaun of the Dead or Brain Candy, which took certain risks that you normally only see in animated shows or sketch shows, while still maintaining a narrative. I was really inspired by Adventures of Pete and Pete, which I worshipped as a kid, and Chris Elliott’s short-lived show Get a Life, which similarly had a lot of surreal aspects to it and a lot of pretty major story discontinuity as well. I always fantasized about doing a live-action sitcom that incorporated the same kind of surrealism and absurdity as my favorite animated sitcoms. On a show like The Simpsons, Homer does actually go to outer space, and on a show like South Park, Kenny really is murdered repeatedly. It’s just being inspired by my favorite sitcoms, a lot of which happen to be animated. What’s really interesting is that you have these sketches, but you play them as if they really happened - you don’t say it was a fantasy. There is a lot of murder and decapitation and monsters and creatures of all stripes, but my hope is that it’s ultimately relatively light. I will say we tried to be as earnest as possible with the show. So yeah, my writing has definitely gotten a little more earnest, and hopefully, more redemptive. I started writing Last Girlfriend on Earth around the same time I wrote What in God’s Name, which is pretty much a straight-ahead romantic comedy. I got older and hopefully matured a little bit, and I started writing from a little more earnest and honest place. When I look back, I’m pretty shocked by how nihilistic and nasty some of the stuff in them is. Yeah, like a lot of people, I was pretty cynical when I was young, and that’s reflected by my first few books. The way every scene and every episode starts is with us talking about the humiliating and traumatic moments of our 20s.ĭo you think of yourself as a romantic, or do you feel that your opinion about romanticism has changed? The show is really autobiographical, not just for me but for all of our writers, directors, and cast members. When you watch it, do you see Josh and see yourself? Unlike the book, the show has a single protagonist. I don’t think this is a show we would have been allowed to make necessarily anywhere about five to ten years ago, and it’s just thrilling that FX is taking a chance on something as weird as this one. I’ve always wanted to do a show like this one that combines narrative-sitcom storytelling with the absurdity of my favorite sketch shows. Vulture spoke with Rich about the show (which premieres tonight), Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels, and his New Yorker piece that unexpectedly went viral. That show, Man Seeking Woman, is a deeply weird sitcom-sketch hybrid about the dating life of a young man (Jay Baruchel). He has released two novels and four humor collections, worked at Saturday Night Live for four seasons, worked at Pixar, and, most recently, created a show for FXX based on one of those collections, The Last Girlfriend on Earth. Photo: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Getty Imagesįor his entire impressive career, Simon Rich has been a person people can’t talk about without running through his origin story: The son of a famous writer ( New York contributor Frank Rich) who, after running the Harvard Lampoon in college, graduated with a two-book deal and a job at Saturday Night Live.
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