The creators and voice stars behind the cult-favorite Adult Swim animated series Smiling Friends are happy to have found their groove.
Smiling Friends aired its season three finale Sunday, focusing on the green and mysterious Glep. Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel co-created the project that debuted in 2022 and centers on co-workers Charlie (voiced by Hadel) and Pim (Cusack) attempting to bring positivity into the lives of others. The show has become a buzzy breakout for Adult Swim, which has already renewed it for two more seasons.
During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Cusack and Hadel discuss how the differing rhythms of the first two seasons helped to inform the third one, their reactions when fans appear to read too much into certain show moments and why the Beatles serve as inspiration for how long the series will ultimately run.
Why did the season three finale feel like the right time to explore Glep’s past?
ZACH HADEL Three seasons in feels about right to explain what one of the main characters does. (Laughs.) Why is he here? What does he do? We have a throwaway line in the first episode of season two where a guy says, “What does the green thing do?” and since then, people have been quoting that. It just felt like a good time to answer.
Were there other potential flashbacks to Glep’s past that you had considered for the episode?
HADEL We’ve had in our minds since whenever we started thinking of the show, the idea that Glep would be thousands of years old. We had some other ideas [and] might use those for a later season. An interesting idea was that Glep went back to his home country, [and] what are the other Glep guys like? We went in a lot of different directions, and everything just felt like it didn’t scratch the itch. A big chunk of the episode is just flashbacks, but that works well because it’s funny, it’s unique and it keeps it from being a serious lore episode.
MICHAEL CUSACK We wanted to do a time travel episode through the Smiling Friends universe. The Founding Fathers stuff is just funny to us that they’re bro-y and speak modern-day.
How has Charlie and Pim’s relationship evolved this season?
CUSACK It always evolves just naturally of what we find funny with them. “Squim” was a good example of Pim maybe realizing that he doesn’t have the best partner in his work and questioning it, but he always goes back, and he loves Charlie. It’s questionable what Charlie thinks of Pim. (Laughs.) It’s a little bit unclear.
HADEL My feeling is Charlie’s a recluse, and he likes Pim. He wouldn’t work there if he didn’t like him. But it’s definitely lopsided.
CUSACK Charlie probably sees Pim as a colleague. Pim sees Charlie as his best friend. Charlie is a little like, “I like you, but don’t go too far on me.”
This season has delved into fans’ relationships with favorite projects. There was some social media chatter about the anime con tag for the Squim episode.
CUSACK That cracked me up, to be honest, when I saw that trending on Twitter. First of all, that’s just a guy dressing up as a Sailor Moon thing. People read into it too much. But I actually loved that it became a controversy because it was funny. It was a dumb moment. By the way, it wasn’t even a controversy. There was Bluesky versus Twitter stuff — that’s classic. [The difference between the platforms is] becoming more of a thing now.
HADEL It’s also that classic thing where more people are talking about it being a controversy than [actual backlash]. One person said something. That certainly wasn’t a commentary on fans. If you go to a convention, especially around the beautiful cosplay babes, some gentlemen really have no hygiene sensibilities. Also, guys go to the X-rated conventions. I’d say 99.999 percent of the people that I’ve run into that are fans of Smiling Friends have been great. So it’s not a commentary. No one’s done that to us yet.
CUSACK It’s not in Smiling Friends’ nature to be topical or political or anything like that. Like Zach said, anytime there’s anything like that, it’s one percent backlash on something that they’re reading into, and most people are like, “You’re reading too much into it.” It’s always funny to observe.
HADEL It’s baked into the show where we’ve hidden all these fun little things that we do want people to find. But it’s almost like we’ve turned up people’s schizophrenia pattern recognition, where they’re now looking for something everywhere. I’ll have some people go, “That’s a reference to Bomberman 64!” You’re like, “What are you talking about?”
You do have Mr. Frog becoming a disastrous president and references to assassinations. Do you have real-life politics on your minds when you’re working on episodes?
HADEL Probably yes, in the sense of, while we’re making the show, shit’s going on around us, and sometimes in the writer’s room, it’s like, “Oh, my God, did you see fucking North Korea just launched an ICBM over Japan? Jesus Christ.” Sometimes the stress of that stuff or COVID will make it in. Speaking about Charlie’s phone background [showing an image of Mr. Frog surviving an assassination attempt], that level of real-world, political-touching on that stuff — first of all, it’s not real life. But in that office of Smiling Friends, they would all have different politics. One of them would be a quote, unquote more Democrat voter. One would be slightly more Republican. A friend group having different POVs, that was really more where that was coming from. Charlie is more the friend that goes on weird websites and looks at conspiracy shit on TikTok. Pim is not. Pim’s feed is probably flowers and nice songs.
CUSACK We love a lot of things, like history, politics and just the interests of the world. Obviously, it’s going around our head, but we make sure that the show is apolitical in that way. We don’t want to be one of those shows that chooses sides or endorses someone. Someone told me very early on, and it’s a really good lesson: “Why would you split your audience in half?” Our personal politics are all over the place, so we just try to be funny.
With Brian [O’Halloran] from Clerks appearing this season, was he a fan of the show?
HADEL I will not speak for Brian, but I would bet that he’s not a fan of the show. I don’t think he knew what it was. But he was very gracious. He was an angel. He did a million takes when he didn’t have to. But I don’t think he knows what the fuck Smiling Friends is. (Laughs.)
CUSACK Zach and I grew up as huge fans of Clerks. It got me into filmmaking. So it was a dream to get him. That’s why when I watch that scene, there’s a bit of me that’s like, “Let Brian talk about Clerks.” If I was The Boss, I’d want to hear him giving trivia. (Hadel laughs.) Brian seems like a really great guy, and he shouldn’t have died in Clerks III. He should have lived on for Clerks 4, in my opinion.
HADEL [Clerks 4] could start with, he wakes up from a bad dream where he died.
Send that to Kevin [Smith]. Were there other options for that scene if Brian had said no?
CUSACK We’ve always had [an idea for] this joke where The Boss would say, “Hey, do you guys want to hang out with Randal from Clerks?” The joke to us was like, “Are you talking about Randal, the character from Clerks, or the actor?” He’s like, “Yeah, Randal.” That just evolved into us getting Brian because I think we just assumed that the actor [Jeff Anderson] who plays Randal in Clerks doesn’t really say yes to many things. I don’t even think we asked him. I think we just went to Brian.
HADEL Yeah, the original bit was The Boss is like, “If you do a good job — I’m not going to say it, but maybe Randal from Clerks might hang out with us later.” That was going to be the whole thread of the episode. I also think at some point we did consider Kevin Smith himself.
CUSACK Kevin Smith was definitely an option at some point as well.
HADEL All three of them. It rotated.
CUSACK We went to Brian because we just knew he says yes to fun stuff like this.
Were there key takeaways for you now that the new season has aired?
HADEL I really am proud of the whole season. Season two, it had some really good highs. We learned some lessons writing-wise. Season twos are always the hardest because you’re trying to replicate season one but not make it the exact same. [For season three,] we hit a stride in the way that we understand the characters better, and I like that every episode’s different. The Shmaloogle one is completely fucking different, and then you’ve got Silly Sam. Nothing feels like we’re doing anything too same-y.
CUSACK We’ve finally gotten to the point where it’s coming out more naturally. Scripts can flow out easier. What I want to take away for the future seasons is, no matter how big the show gets or how much spotlight is on the scripts, I do want to always keep in mind just to have fun with Zach with writing. At the end of the day, it is an excuse and a playground for us to come up with fun, dumb stuff.
HADEL Not taking it too seriously. If you’re really looking at it zoomed-out, season one was very plot-heavy. Season two meandered a little bit more. It was a little bit less plot and more improv. To us, the core of Smiling Friends is the really improv-y stuff. Season three does a good job of weaving in improv moments. You get 10 seconds of that, rather than big 30-second or minute-long improv scenes.
Have you written new episodes yet?
CUSACK We’ve written two scripts. We’ve got a third in the making. Super happy with it so far. It’s always fun to jump back into getting fresh again with ideas.
Hollywood seems to be trying to create comedy series that appeal to Gen Z. What’s the secret?
CUSACK We don’t follow the pipeline of a Hollywood show. We don’t have table reads. We don’t have a big writer’s room. We’re just being ourselves. Shows should come from a vision of a person, duo or group. There’s so many Hollywood shows that’s this weird machine.
HADEL A network gets partnered with some comedian or a random artist that they found. The fucked-up thing is, everybody involved is talented in their own right, but nothing is being made for a passion. They literally sit down and say, “How do we make a hit show?”
This season included commentary about The Simpsons having run for so long. What are your latest thoughts on when you might hang it up?
CUSACK We’ll see how we feel after four and five, and then Zach and I will get into the war room and decide what the next plan is. We pretty much can guarantee it’s not going to go on as much as these other shows.
HADEL Even if we had a thousand ideas at the end of season five, we’re not going to go on long. I will say that much. We’re not going to put a number up, but five is getting close to probably where we’ll want to wrap it up.
Is Adult Swim arm-twisting you to keep it going?
CUSACK Even our agents think we’re going to go to season 80. (Laughs.) Our reps and Adult Swim are like, “Surely, we’ll go on forever.” But Zach and I know what’s best for the show. The Beatles are so cool. They ended with Abbey Road on a peak, and it’s like this nice little discography you can go back to watch. Leaving the audience wanting more is the best.
Wings had some good songs.
CUSACK Yeah, but that was good because it was like a reset. If Zach and I made another show after Smiling Friends, that would be an excuse to be refreshed again. That’s why Wings were good because Paul McCartney was like, “All right, now I can start again.”
