Whether you love it or hate it, Woke has been taking Hulu by storm with its interesting concepts and social commentary. The series is based on the works of cartoonist and comic artist Keef Knight, who will be sharing an exclusive chat with us next week.
Blake Anderson (Workaholics) is one of the main characters in the series, portraying a flawed white ally in a very interesting light. We recently spoke exclusively with Blake shortly after Woke premiered, in support of his work on the Adult Swim series Tigtone.
We may have touched on Woke a bit, but a lot of the focus is on Blake's nerdy habits and influences on Tigtone, which he works on with Benjamin Martian. We had both of the creatives on the show to chat with them in detail, and we learned a lot about the contributions each of them makes to the series.
To hear our chat with Blake and Benjamin, click the podcast player below, otherwise scroll down for this portion of the transcript and tune in all week for more Tigtone and Woke fun!
Literary Joe: Can you tell me about the contributions each of you make to the show? Because I know I've seen that you guys have writing credits, I know that you voice a bevy of characters here or there, and obviously, you do a lot behind the scenes.
So what else do you contribute? And which part is your favorite?
Blake Anderson: I mean, well, first off, this show is Andrew and Ben's show. And I saw it one day when I was getting stoned with a mutual artist buddy of ours, Skinner. He was staying over at my house.
And he's like, "Dude; you have to watch this thing on YouTube. I have this thing my buddies made called The Begun of Tigtone!"
And when I watched that episode, I was just like, "Whoa, this is the weirdest, coolest, fantasy thing I've ever seen." So I got in contact with them, and we just started to build a relationship.
And then it was kind of like, "Well, maybe we could walk this into Adult Swim and get this thing made!" We were able to make a pilot and then got picked up and then kind of just started rolling from there.
Benjamin Martian: Blake was our guardian hell angel.
Blake Anderson: Yeah, I help navigate the network world! It's still a lot of these guys doing a bunch of the work.
I definitely sit in on the writer's room. I love being there to help with the story and all that. And any time they ask me to do a voice, I'm more than willing to do that as well.
Benjamin Martian: You do more than just sit in on the writer's room, man. You're a contributing writer to the process. You're always the one who is pushing for character and story motivation, I think.
Darth Lexii: Can You Feel The Love Tonight, by Lion King.
Blake Anderson: Yeah! I'm, oddly enough, always pitching that song to be in every episode! (Laughs)
Literary Joe: That makes sense.
Benjamin Martian: (Laughs) And you wear a Lion King shirt every day, and it's just this weird obsession. It's weird. Yeah.
So this whole thing started many, many, many years ago in like 2004 or 2005. So Andrew and I were writing these fantasy scripts together, and it was kind of an obsession that we had. And we literally, for a couple of years, would just obsess over this universe that we were creating, and it was always live-action.
But in those very early days, it was definitely the combination of both Andrew and me, and our sensibilities coming together. And there's a lot of rules in Tigtone that he and I have kind of laid out and understand but don't ever talk about really, but it just sort of creates the vibe of the thing.
And so when we started, we wrote the pilot together, and then when we started bringing in more people, it was a little bit of a learning curve to get them on the Tigtone page.
And then once that clicked, everybody in the writer's room contributes their own specialty to the process, and that just creates the flow. It's like a caste or creating a band or something, where you have everybody with a specific skillset, and sensibilities, and sense of comedy, and stuff.
So, yeah, Andrew and I are very much involved in all the writing. He and I write scripts, but, I mean, the name on the page is one thing, but we really all just work together on writing and the writing process.
And once the script is written by any one of the writers, then we all sort of go through it and take passes at it and help each other out. It's a very supportive group of writers. And then as far as the rest of our duties go, Andrew and I are both directing the voice actors when we record. We do voices on the show, only because in Season 1, we were like wanting to cast all of these awesome people that we love. Really, for selfish reasons, like, "Hey, we want to meet Paul Reubens; let's cast him." And then our producer at the time was like, "You know, you guys can be in your own show." And we're like, "Oh yeah, I didn't realize that."
So we did a few voices last season, and this season, I think Andrew and I actually have a voice in every episode. I don't think it's ever really like a main, main character. Cause we usually reserve that for like actual voice actors. But yeah. And then, of course, every meeting, that is every art decision, every character design decision, every edit decision, like we're involved in and very hands-on with everything. Even into the marketing stuff, which has been really awesome with Adult Swim and they're really welcoming us into the process, and we're giving notes on the billboard design, you know, stuff like that, which is amazing.
*This interview has been edited for clarity. Audio is co-hosted by fellow writer Nick Brooks and cosplay actress Darth Lexii.*
With their once idyllic fantasy land now reduced to an idyllic fantasy wasteland, Tigtone the master-questerer and his magically regenerative sidekick Helpy must face all new mischievous monsters, all new enchanted chaos, and all new irresistible quests in their all new baffling adventures!
Tigtone airs on Adult Swim on Sundays at midnight!