Something Completely Different: Raphael Bob-Waksberg Talks ‘Long Story Short’

No pressure. No pressure at all. For Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the success of his animated shows BoJack Horseman and Undone means any new series will be judged not just by industry standards, but by his own previous efforts. He’s set a pretty high bar. But, as you’ll see in the interview below, that’s the exact type of challenge he’s looking for. And it can’t feel like a sequel or spin-off. It needs to be different in every way. Down to the line drawings.

His new animated adult comedy, Long Story Short, debuts today on Netflix. The show is simply described like this: jumping through the years, the series follows the Schwooper siblings from childhood to adulthood and back again, chronicling their triumphs, disappointments, joys, and compromises. Rest assured, nothing he produces is simple. And his new show is indeed something completely different.

Long Story Short stars Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, Ben Feldman, Abbi Jacobson, Max Greenfield, Angelique Cabral, and Nicole Byer. Recurring guest stars include Dave Franco and Michaela Dietz.

Bob-Waksberg serves as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. He enlisted the help of his BoJack Horseman production partners, Tornante Television, which serves as the production studio, with ShadowMachine handling the animation. Tornante’s Noel Bright and Steven A. Cohen once again join him as executive producers.

Longtime creative ally, collaborator, and goto person, Lisa Hanawalt (BoJack Horseman production designer and supervising producer; and creator, EP on Tuca & Bertie, on which Bob-Waksberg was also an EP ), is also back as the show’s supervising producer; she also helped define the look of the show alongside Alison Dubois, who was Hanawalt’s art director on Tuca.

We recently spoke to Bob-Waksberg, who we first interviewed back in 2016 about the upcoming second season of his critically acclaimed BoJack series, a talk he remembered because of one specific question he didn’t exactly agree with (more on that later). He shared his rather organic, not-easily-explainable development process and how he indeed feels the pressure – though not crippling – to produce successful shows. And that no one sets out to make a bad show, though often, that’s exactly what they end up doing.

Enjoy the trailer, then enjoy the interview:

Dan Sarto: To start, tell me how the show came about.

Raphael Bob-Waksberg: Sure. Well, I was thinking about time - as one does as they age - and I was thinking about family - as one does when they have one. I guess the big change since we last spoke is that I started a family of my own. Saying “started a family” sounds like I built one from scratch or claimed one, but really, a family has kind of sprung up around me.

When you have kids, you think about your own childhood, how you were brought up, what you want to repeat, and what you'd rather do differently. You also start to see your parents as people in a way you maybe hadn’t before. So that was all on my mind.

I was also thinking about how we change - or don’t change - and how we see ourselves, how identity defines us, how others perceive us, and the roles of community, culture, and religion in our lives. All these themes were swirling in my head. I had a very loose conversation with Steve Cohen and Noel Bright at Tornante, who produced BoJack Horseman, Undone, and Tuca & Bertie. They said Netflix might be interested in a show like this. I also met with Billy Wee at Netflix, and he talked about, you know, wanting something about a family. Wanting feels very directive. More like he was interested in shows about families. And so, I thought about what I would do with these ideas for Netflix. It was a very organic kind of process. 

DS: That’s the 35,000-foot view. What solidified the framework of what we now see?

RBW: That’s a good question.

DS: To interrupt… nothing about any of your shows sounds or feels trivial. Even when things flash into cartoon absurdity, there’s always a deep foundation of thought.

RBW: It’s funny. I just watched the first episode with an audience for the first time. And seeing it with them, I was reminded that there are moments in that episode that won’t even make sense until later in the season. There are Easter eggs and setups that pay off episodes down the line. I forgot some of them myself!

DS: So, how did your earliest ideas all solidify? How did the characters and relationships come together?

RBW: I’d say it came together easily, but it was a protracted process. It started from the outside in - with the big themes. I wanted to explore change and time. I thought about three siblings who could represent different paths a person might take. What are the different places they might go? What combinations of characters and relationships would give me the most interesting dynamics and tension? The most maximum conflict? Then I played around with voices - how each character talks, what energies contrast well.

It sounds mathematical, and in some ways it is. But a lot of it is subconscious. Like when I was a kid taking math tests and struggled with the “show your work” part. I’d arrive at answers without always understanding how I got there. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I wasn’t, but I was doing things in my head I couldn’t explain and didn’t myself understand. And that’s true now. That still happens in writing - some choices feel obvious, very straightforward, but I can’t explain the process or trace exactly how I made them.

DS: Let’s talk about the look of the show. It’s very different from BoJack or Undone. I sense that you start with ideas rather than visuals. Is that fair?

RBW: That’s correct.

DS: So, what was the inspiration and process behind the look and feel of this show?

RBW: We reached out to Lisa Hanawalt, who did the art for BoJack and created Tuca & Bertie. One of our first conversations was about making sure this didn’t look like anything we’d done before. She was also adamant about that - it shouldn't feel like a spinoff or a repeat. So, we made active choices to differentiate the visual language. These characters wouldn’t look right in the BoJack universe.

The backgrounds are mostly designed by Alison Dubois [art director on Tuca & Bertie], who’s worked with us before. We were very deliberate in saying, “What are some of the choices we made on BoJack and Tuca & Bertie that we can make the opposite choice here?” Reverse some of our earlier choices, trying to play in a different sandbox.

Some of it was also about learning and improving on what we’ve done in the past. I remember some of Lisa’s early BoJack art being really enchanting and human, but somewhere in production, the characters became more rigid. At some point in the development process, stuff went through the machine of becoming animated characters. And they became a little less interesting. For this show, we wanted to retain that rough, hand-drawn charm, even though it’s digital. We’re rigging puppets, but we didn’t want to clean things up too much or be beholden to model sheets. If a storyboarder drew a funny face that worked, we used it.

We had a big design rule: no straight edges. Every line is hand-drawn. That leads to some wonky lines and weird perspectives, but we embraced it. We didn’t want to color inside the lines. We wanted it to feel handmade.

DS: Got it. Now, jumping ahead, I want to revisit something from our 2016 conversation about BoJack. I said I often found a lot of comedy writing lazy, like they went for the low-hanging fruit. You took gentle exception to that comment.

RBW: I remember that specifically. I also remember how I pushed back.

DS: You did! You said you'd worked on both good and bad shows.

RBW: Not a lot of bad shows, but yes, some.

DS: And you said that on all those shows, everyone worked very hard to make the best show they could. And for many reasons, some of them didn’t turn out that good, but not for lack of trying. I’m going to push back now a bit. I appreciated your point then and I appreciate it now. That mostly holds true.  But I’ve talked to many show creators who almost brag about the lack of discipline in their writing process. They’ve told me they hate the writing process, and basically just sit and go with whatever makes them all laugh. Nothing wrong with that, but when you look at the results, some of the shows are just awful, mostly because the writing is awful.

RBW: That’s true. And I think it’s fair to say that not everyone works hard on every project. There are shortcuts. There are creators who just want to go home. This may not be their passion project. They’re doing what they think they should be doing, not what drives them. So yes, the truth lies somewhere between.

Maybe I’ve been lucky to work with passionate people. To push back on the pushback of the pushback, sometimes people are modest, and they undercut their own work a little bit and say things like “we’re just fucking dancing monkeys.” But there’s more going on than they admit, even to themselves. Their instincts, their taste, their experience all come into play, even if they act like it’s just off the cuff. So no, you can’t always tell how much thought went into something. But sure, some shows are definitely lazier than others.

DS: That’s fair. It’s a good compromise.

RBW: I’ll take that. That’s so funny because I do remember that conversation now you brought it up.

DS: It was a really good conversation. And I was making that comment to you in general, not about your show. I also want to say that BoJack was one of the rare shows that actually got better and better as the seasons progressed.

RBW: Thank you. I think so too. I’m really proud of it.

DS: It was just as strong, if not stronger, at the end as it was at the start.

RBW: It built on itself. It got better because we, the creators, and the audience, understood the characters and dynamics better over time. So, we could do more with less. We could allude to things with a line that went back several seasons.

DS: You also could’ve taken it in a dozen wrong directions. Not out of laziness, but because sustaining quality is hard.

RBW: Totally. That pressure was real. The pressure to keep it going. We didn’t want to let people down. Sometimes it was, “This is going to be the season where everyone turns on us!” This show meant a lot to people. I’m proud that we stuck the landing, and that I didn’t have a total mental breakdown in the process!

DS: That leads to my final question. You kind of set a gold standard with your shows. Do you feel that now you’re constantly being compared to your own past work, not just to other shows?

RBW: Yes, but not in a crippling way. That’s partly why I want to do work that doesn’t feel like I’m chasing my own tail. This show feels similar in some ways and different in others. I’m not trying to recapture the magic of BoJack. Some people who loved BoJack might not get this new show. Others will see the through line, appreciate the differences, and be excited. And maybe some who didn’t like BoJack will connect with this. I think it’s fun and exciting in a different way.

DS: Great seeing you again.

RBW: Another great talk.

DS: Always a pleasure.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.