Rollo & Grady Interview :: Blake Anderson of Workaholics
Workaholics is one of the best comedies on television. The show revolves around three friends played by Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, and Anders Holm, whose characters are roommates and recent college grads that work for a telemarketing company. They hatch elaborate schemes to fuck with one another, but ultimately, the show is about friends that don’t want to grow up and join the rat race. Blake plays the long-haired, pot-smoking, mushroom-eating, Renaissance Faire vet and loyal friend. Anderson is the funniest character on television since Charlie Day [Charlie Kelly] of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Workaholics is one of those rare comedies every episode of which is hilarious from start to finish. Workaholics completed its first season in early June and was renewed for another ten episodes starting in late September.
R&G: How did the concept of Workaholics come about?
Blake: For about five years or so, we were doing internet sketch comedy as a group called Mail Order Comedy, and we were approached by some dudes who had an office space. They asked us if we wanted to do something with them and use the office. We were like, “We’ve never done anything where we were wearing ties, so we might as well give it a shot,” and we made a short web series of five episodes. That’s where the idea was born; then somebody over at Comedy Central, Walter Newman, saw the videos, brought us in, we pitched to them, and they gave us a small amount of money to make a pilot presentation. We had never been paid anything for the stuff we were doing on the internet – it was all coming out of our pockets – so when we got this small amount of money, we were like, “Holy fucking shit, man.” We were blown away. “Let’s pool all our resources and really go for it.” I think we turned in a pretty awesome product for the amount of money we were given. We blew Comedy Central away a little bit and they agreed to do ten more.
R&G: What were you doing prior to Workaholics? Were you in college or acting?
Blake: When I moved out here, it was just to live with my pop and go to community college. That’s actually where I met Adam [Devine]. I was always doing sketch comedy with them in my free time, but as far as a job goes, I was just delivering pizzas for the longest time. No complaint though: it’s my favorite job. You just drive around listening to music. I could do that my whole life, I think [laughs].
R&G: Where did you go to community college?
Blake: I went to community college in Costa Mesa at Orange Coast College. Go Pirates!
R&G: Your character takes pole-dancing classes, he’s a member of the Rancho Cucamonga Justin Bieber fan club, he’s a Juggalo, and he dresses up as a wizard for Renaissance Faires, but he still comes off as a cool guy. Why do you think Blake is such a likeable character?
Blake: Well, I hate to toot my own horn, but I’m just kind of being real. That’s kind of the way I am. I have a pretty eclectic taste in the stuff I like. Not so much Justin Bieber, but I’m a Renaissance Faire vet, and I’m totally down with the hip-hop stripper lifestyle as well. As much as I’ve never earned a buck from stripping, I have been known to get really drunk with really good friends and strip some clothes.
R&G: So you wear a banana hammock and dance for your friends?
Blake: Yeah, there is some photo evidence. One of the weirdest nights of my life was when I reunited with all my fucking buddies from childhood and got super drunk. I did a hidden camera web series where I wore this tuxedo G-string thing, like a little bow tie right above my wenis. It was crazy. There’s nothing better than just getting blackout drunk and naked with your best dude friends.
R&G: What are some of the similarities or traits that you share with your Workaholics character?
Blake: The character and myself are very loyal to our friends. The people that I call friends I like to keep really close. I think both the character and myself are willing to go that extra mile to help a buddy out and also like the eccentric lifestyle and getting creative. There’s no reason to be bored when you can go draw a picture or create something or make a claymation movie or just smoke weed and zone out to some Animal Collective.
R&G: What’s your favorite scene involving your character? Is it, ‘We Be Ballin,’ with the badass bear coat?
Blake: [Laughs] Yes, that was a great scene. The bear coat was amazing. Initially when that was being created, it was just a fur coat. I think we were sitting in on a punch-up and it was like, “What would Blake spend his money on?” I watch a lot of Ghostface Killah’s stuff and I was like, “Hey, he looks proper in those fur coats,” and I said, “What the fuck? Why don’t we make it a bear coat? Like the most epic bear coat ever?” And it was like, “Yes. That sounds great.” So we actually had it custom-made by these people in this garage deep in the Valley who make custom fake animal fur coats. It turned out exactly how I had envisioned it in my mind. I told them what my idea was and everything, but they really nailed it.
R&G: Did you write or ad-lib the line, “Bitch better have my honey?”
Blake: Shoot. We wrote a lot of lines and I don’t think that one was improv-ed. It was definitely in the script, but… I come up with a lot of… I think that’s kind of what I bring to the table and to the writers. Most of my joke pitches are like, “I’ve got a pun, guys. Buckle up.”
R&G: It seems to me that every episode’s storylines are well thought-out, but it also looks like you guys are doing a good deal of improv. How much of the show is scripted versus improv?
Blake: We really do pride ourselves on coming with a really tight script and a thought-out story, but we’ve been working together so long, like on all that internet stuff, that after we get a few takes where we know we got the script lines, we definitely cut loose and a lot of it makes the final cut. I think that’s what makes it feel real, because we’re really buddies just talking to each other when the camera rolls. It’s about 60% improv lines when you’re watching it, but we do have a tight script as well.
R&G: Can you discuss why having a tight butthole is better than having a loose butthole?
Blake: [Laughs] Sure. A lot of times when you want to describe something as being cool, a lot of people will be like, “Tits! That’s tits!” I’ve always been a fan of that, but Anders [Holm] was not feeling it. He’s like, “Why not have another part of the body describe it? Like, people say, ‘That shit’s tight.’” He’s like, “Why not just go with ‘tight butthole?’” And we were like, “Yeah.” And we tried our best to incorporate it. Sometimes we’ll actually sit down and say, “Let’s make this word something we actually use every day,” and we’ll go out of our way to use it. It just so happened that we kind of remembered that one, so, like, “Tight butthole!” You go with it and you realize, well, what if something sucks? “Well, that shit was loose butthole.”
R&G: Are fans approaching you, saying “Tight butthole?”
Blake: [Laughs] Yes, “tight butthole” is definitely the thing that gets shouted out the most. When we were at Bonnaroo doing our live show, every five seconds, somebody would yell, “Tight butthole” – we loved it. The fans were so cool and supportive. But it does get awkward when it’s in a public place; old ladies give us weird looks. We created a monster and were loving every bit of it [laughs].
R&G: You guys smoke weed in several episodes. What do they use for the prop weed?
Blake: The prop weed from what I’ve heard is just hops, like what they use to make beer, but it’s really… I would prefer that it was tobacco or weed or something, because it’s harsh. I remember one day when we were doing promos, I had a sore throat and wasn’t feeling so good, but the scene was basically us all getting high and it was tearing my throat up. I’m like, “Can we just did some weed on set?”
R&G: Comedy Central would love that.
Blake: We might lose our lines a little bit if that happened [laughs].
R&G: Speaking of which, you guys were renewed for another ten episodes. Have you guys finished writing new episodes? What can we expect for the next season?
Blake: I think we’ve got one more episode to write. We started filming at the end of June. It’s a lot of the same: crazy adventures, basically. We’ve got a lot of cool stuff happening in the office and then stuff where we’re just out in the world being our dumb selves. From what I’ve had come out of the writer’s room, I’m excited. I’m excited to get out and shoot ‘em, because we have a lot of really funny stuff.
R&G: You seem to be a big fan of Twitter. It’s cool that you interact with your fans. What are your thoughts about Twitter?
Blake: I love it. It’s a good outlet for me to say stupid shit. I was stuck at 50 followers forever. I did stand-up and all the dudes from the show were on Twitter before I was. I kind of got there late, so Devine [Adam] was always holding it over my head. We’d be talking about Twitter and he’d be like, “Well, who’s got the most followers in the room?” and he had like 300 at that point, but I got ‘em now and I’m into it. I think it’s cool. I like to talk to the fans and shout out at people that might be celebrities. It’s just fun when people answer back or fans come up with some actually cool shit like fan art or whatever.
R&G: You recently made a new Twitter friend with the porn star, Dana DeArmond. She is hot.
Blake: Yeah!
R&G: Is she taking you to the Adult Video Awards?
Blake: I’m working on it. She said ok. I think it would be cool. She seems real nice. I mean, I don’t know what her intentions are. I saw her posting like shirtless photos of me on her blog. It could be cool. Who knows?
R&G: Have you seen her porn IMDB page?
Blake: I’ve only seen her blog and her Tumblr. There’s definitely a lot of naked photos. Which is not a bad thing at all [laughs].
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