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Apr 9, 2015 · This Thursday, Charles returns to television with The Comedians, an FX series starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad as heightened versions of themselves who co-star on a fictional comedy show.
- How Did You Get Involved with The Comedians?
- Why Do You Think Billy Wanted to Do this? He Doesn't Need to Take risks.
- Did He Ever Push Back When He Felt Like You Were Crossing The Line?
- How Did Josh Gad Become attached?
- Do You See Billy and Josh as A Classic Comedy Team?
- What's The Biggest Change You've Seen in Comedy Over The Past 35 years?
- When You Were Doing Seinfeld, Did You Appreciate What You Were Achieving?
- And You Feel Like You Can Do That with Nicolas Cage Now?
- Why Have You Stayed Mostly Behind The Camera Over The years?
- But Now Everyone's Stolen Your look. Were You Ahead of The curve?
It's based on this Swedish show. If you can believe it, they have comedies in Sweden. They sent me a season of the show, and I loved it. It was very dark, dry, offbeat, and idiosyncratic. Then I heard Billy [Crystal] was involved, and I thought, God, if Billy is willing to strip away his persona and expose himself a bit, this could be a revelatory ...
One of the great things about Billy is he's still hungry. He's looking for challenges. He's done the Billy Crystal we expect. From the Oscars and When Harry Met Sally… and City Slickers, he's an icon. So he was looking for something that pushed him out of his comfort zone. Having a relationship with him, I was able to give him a safety net to take ...
That always happens. I've had that conversation with Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, and Sacha Baron Cohen. Sometimes you go over the line, sometimes you don't quite get to the line. There's always a debate, a discussion—almost a Talmudic dialectic about where that line is. As students of comedy, that was some of the most fun, debating, "Why is this f...
It was about finding someone who had a good chemistry with Billy. Josh and I had been developing this Sam Kinison movie, which hopefully will happen at some point. He's a really bright, funny, fast-witted, go-for-broke kind of a person. So I thought, these two guys together might really be magic. As soon as they sat down, they started riffing, and ...
I'm a fan of comedy teams, but they've sort of died out. This is a kind of postmodern take on a comedy team. It's as if you're behind the scenes with Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy. I hadn't seen this done before, so I thought, cool, let's go for this! It kind of fell together naturally the way things do sometimes, but most things don't.
When I was a young man, I felt I knew what was funny. As I've gotten older, I feel like I know less, and it's more exciting to not know. To walk into that dark, unknown space where you don't know if it's going to work. There's more of a willingness to not know now than when comedy was a setup and a punchline. All those rules have proven to be tempo...
I did. When we first started doing the show, Larry [David] said to me, "Come on, we'll do 13 episodes, we'll make some money, and we'll move on." That was very liberating, because we were able to do exactly what we wanted, assuming it was going to fail. And instead, the audience really appreciated the honesty of that show. That's why it still survi...
Absolutely. He's an amazing actor and person. He's done close to 100 movies, but he hasn't done anything like this. And he's looking to explore areas he hasn't been in before. He's an intrepid explorer as an artist. So we immediately bonded over that idea, and I feel like we're going to take an incredible journey together because of it.
It takes a certain type of personality to need to be in front of the camera. A guy like Billy or Jerry or Larry has to be a performer. Larry was very stifled during Seinfeld because he wasn't able to express himself directly that way. I'm a little more shy. I draw attention to myself inadvertently. I get a lot of fulfillment out of being behind the...
It's become a hipster, trendy thing to have long beards, so if you saw me today, you'd notice I've actually trimmed my beard. I've been bumping into people and they say, "Oh, I didn't recognize you." I have a new mask.
- Bruce Fretts
- unknown@hearst.com
The Comedians: Created by Larry Charles, Billy Crystal, Matt Nix, Ben Wexler. With Billy Crystal, Josh Gad, Stephnie Weir, Matt Oberg. A veteran comedian is reluctantly paired with a younger, edgier comedian for a late-night comedy sketch show.
- (2K)
- 2015-04-09
- Comedy
- 22
The Comedians is an American comedy television series starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad as fictional versions of themselves. A 13-episode first season was ordered by FX, and premiered on April 9, 2015. The series was developed by Larry Charles, Billy Crystal, Matt Nix, and Ben Wexler. On July 23, 2015, the series was cancelled after one season.
No.TitleDirected ByWritten By1"Pilot"Ben Wexler & Matt Nix & Larry Charles & ...2"Come to the House"Larry CharlesBen Wexler3"The Red Carpet"Larry CharlesAndrew Secunda4"Celebrity Guest"Ben Wexler & Matt NixMay 22, 2013 · Charles, Nix and Crystal are co-writing with comedy writer-producer Ben Wexler, who previously worked with Nix on Nix’s Fox dramedy The Good Guys. The four executive produce with Nix’s...
Apr 9, 2015 · TV: The legendary TV comedy director Larry Charles works on this show. What did he bring to the series? JG: He set the tone.
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May 22, 2013 · Billy Crystal to Star in FX Comedy Pilot From Larry Charles. Crystal is set to play a superstar veteran comedian who is reluctantly paired with a younger, edgier comedian for a late-night comedy...
