Paul Reiser Gets Animated

Paul Reiser has been acting for the screen since Barry Levinson’s Diner over 40 years ago, and performing as a stand-up comic even longer than that. But today, he’ll enter a new arena: starring* in an adult animation show. It’s called Long Story Short, and it’s from creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg (BoJack Horseman). It follows the Schwooper family, moving forward and back in time: a bar mitzvah for son Yoshi (voice of Max Greenfield); eldest son Avi (Ben Feldman) getting defensive that his daughter Hannah (Michaela Dietz) is participating in a “winter-themed” recital at her school that’s clearly all about Christmas; middle child Shira (Abbi Jacobson) falling out with her friend “Baby” Feldstein (Gina Rodriguez). Reiser voices Elliot, the family’s steady and patient patriarch, counter-balancing his much more assertive wife Naomi (Lisa Edelstein), but occasionally getting caught up in lunacy like Yoshi’s gig selling mattresses in tubes, or an obsession with fixing the insufficiently hot Jacuzzi at a beachside Airbnb.

Reiser is so busy that we weren’t even able to touch on all the movies he was in last year (sorry, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F). We did get to the other two: The Gutter, a filthy comedy set in the world of professional bowling, which puts him opposite a chain-smoking Susan Sarandon; and The Problem With People, a comedy he also co-wrote, about estranged distant cousins whose reunion in Ireland goes well, and then horribly. 

Along the way, Reiser mentions his work with James Cameron (Aliens), Chuck Lorre (The Kominsky Method) and the Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things). We discuss the Aliens comic book he co-wrote with The Goldbergs creator Adam F. Goldberg and Reiser’s son Leon (among others), which led to a forthcoming sitcom project at Fox. We couldn’t skip Mad About You, the seven-season sitcom Reiser co-created and starred in opposite Helen Hunt, and which is newly arrived on Hulu. Reiser even floats a suggestion for how Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) could have rescued their Italian vacation in Season Two of The White Lotus. There actually may be nothing he can’t do — except repair a Jacuzzi in real life: “I’m the last guy to try to fix anything.”

*Reiser previously appeared in 10 episodes (of 28) of Comedy Central’s animated TripTank.

How did Long Story Short come to you?

I think I met with Raphael. I had seen BoJack Horseman, and I was very impressed with it, so I was already inclined to work on this, and the script was great. It was very moving and very different. It’s a very narrow needle that he threaded here. It’s really funny. It’s really deep. It’s really offbeat, and the structure of doing three different time periods can be confusing. So I thought it was very impressive, and I had never done an animated show before. It’s sort of light lifting. You go in every once in a while to do a few minutes, and then they do some magic and it’s not your problem. So I liked that.

What was the process in terms of interaction with the rest of the cast?

The table reads were fine because you get to see all the other really funny people. Some of them were cast members, and sometimes when cast was unavailable, they’d have somebody talented to read it. So that was when you got a nice sense of what this show really was. I haven’t seen it yet, by the way. I’ve seen the trailer, and I’ve seen little pieces, but I haven’t seen it all cut together. So I’m looking forward to seeing it. It’s one thing to sit and talk words. It’s another thing to see what they can do with animation. You can write anything; anything can happen. You can have somebody turn into a truck. It’s like, “All right, there it is.” So yeah, I’m as excited as anyone to see it.

There’s a lot of overlapping dialogue, too; a lot of fights. Was there any opportunity to record those scenes with other actors?

No. That's part of the fun. Every line you would do it, and (Bob-Waksberg) would ask for it four or five different ways. Usually when the director says, “Can you do that again?,” it’s to say you haven’t done it correctly. But in this case, you’re really isolated, and so you want to do colors that match up with what the other person in the scene is doing, but you’re never together. So you just get used to giving him choices. You have great flexibility with animation. You can pause as long as you want. You can overlap, you can speed things up, slow them down. And he’s obviously really funny and really talented, so it’s very nice to go and play in somebody else’s sandbox when they have really control of their craft.

I know from other interviews that you sometimes like to tweak a line or a scene. Was it hard to know you couldn’t do that this time?

I didn’t have my hands around this whole thing. I just said, “Here’s my little thing.” A couple of lines I might’ve changed or said it a different way. But I certainly couldn’t endeavor to try and change the script of the story. It’s his baby. And there’s a bunch of talented writers too, I know. I’m sure (Bob-Waksberg) did a lot of writing, but there was a very talented crew of writers as well.

Sometimes, yeah, I do like to play with something, and if I’ve written something, I certainly would like to play with it and tweak it and get it right, get it how I like it. But having said that, it’s really a great treat to throw all that responsibility away and just say, “Where do you want me? Point me. Tell me what to do, tell me what to say.” And even if I didn’t understand it or I might not have done it that way, it’s like, “You have something in mind. Let’s go for it. Tell me.” I’ve been lucky enough to have that experience many times, where you trust, whether it’s Barry Levinson or James Cameron or Chuck Lorre, it’s like, “Go ahead. You have earned the right to tell me what to do.”

Fox just announced that you’re developing a new sitcom with your son, Leon. What are you allowed to say about it?

Just that it’s really fun. We haven’t sat down to actually start writing. We just sort of got the green light to go ahead. It’s very surreal. He’s really funny, and he’s really talented. He’s never written a script before, and it’s a really interesting trio. It’s Adam F. Goldberg, Leon and myself, and Leon and Adam have a history. They really worked on the Aliens comic book together, which I had minimal involvement with. They did the heavy lifting. 

And so, it’s interesting. It’s like, yeah, he’s my son, but he has even more experience working with this other partner. And it’s surreal in that it’s the first time he’s working with me, and the show is about a kid who has to reluctantly go to work with his father. I said to him going in, I said, “Here’s the rule — nothing is off-limits, whatever you want to draw from in your life as a son. And I will draw from my life as a father. And the second rule is we can’t take anything personally because it’s all fiction, even if it comes from a real place.” So it remains to be seen how good we are about reading a line and going, “Why would you say that about your father, your fictitious father?”

You’ve given Leon a lot of credit over the years for his taste — that he recommended that you do Stranger Things and The Boys. I’m sure it helps that you know he’s solid.

Oh yeah. I wasn’t surprised, but I was prepared for him to not want to do this because he’s doing his own thing. He’s developing his own comic books, and he lives across the country. I said, “I got this offer to write a thing. You want to do it with me?” “Yeah.” I said, “Really? Okay.” So that felt good. There’s a layer to it obviously that I never had with anybody else. There’s an extra level of pride and enjoyment as a father that, personally, I have to try to sit on and not make a big deal, because he’s really funny. 

So writing that is a new challenge for me. It’s like, how do you manage in the room, in the writing process? Like, oh, you’re the father, but you’re also the partner and you’re also the star of the show. It remains to be seen how successful we can be at navigating those waters.

This is one of a couple of multi-cam shows that Fox is developing. Having worked in both modes in TV comedy, what is the appeal for you of doing this show that way?

It’s certainly faster. When we originally did Mad About You, I had in mind to do it as a single-camera, and they actually threw me a bone and let me. I think we shot the pilot one and a half times. We shot it half a time as a single-camera, and I went, “Well, you’re just doing this to keep me happy. There’s no reason to do it.” And I learned. I wasn’t sure that a lot of the comedy that appeals to me or the moments that appeal to me would work in a multi-cam, but we kind of forged our own path on Mad About You. It was as funny as it needed to be, and it was successful in comedy. But we also were able to sort of establish our language and go, “We can take long pauses and we can have poignant moments and we can get a laugh from a look.” And that wasn’t always the case. In a lot of comedies — sitcoms, multi-cams — the temptation is to joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. And I don’t write that way. I don’t think that way.

This will be its own little beast. This is the challenge — to write a really funny script. There’s plenty of universal themes in this. It’s parenting and family dysfunction, and that’s going to be fun to write. The challenge is, how do you get the funny and how do you make it? How do you get the mortar between the bricks, those moments? Because that’s ultimately what people come for. You can get laughs in a lot of ways, but what people warm to is the human connection. They go, “Oh, that was a really tender moment.” Or: “That was a really relatable moment that reminds me of how it is in my house, or how I wish it was in my house.” 

That’s our goal here: to make it really funny — much like Long Story Short, make it really funny and make it emotionally solid.

Speaking of Mad About You, that was just added on Hulu last month. Are you hearing from people who are discovering it for the first time, or watching it again? 

Yeah. I’m laughing because Helen and I were always scratching our heads going, “Where is it?” And people would say, “Where can we find it?” I said, “I wish I had an answer.” And I’d try to get an answer, and I never could get a clear answer from Sony. And so I’d stay on them. They were working on it. I didn’t hear from them. I just heard from somebody on Instagram: “Hey, it’s on Hulu.” I went, “Really? Nobody told me.” It would’ve been nice if they’d told us. We could have done a little promotion. Helen and I were both at this fan expo this past weekend in Chicago — I was there with the Aliens cast and Helen was there as well, so I had my feet in both waters. And yeah, so many people came up, and they said they were just watching it again. And that’s all I was actually looking for — can we just make it available? 

We had a little event where we screened one of the episodes from the original run and then the first episode of the Spectrum reboot-ish. Neither of us had seen it in 30 years, and we sat in the back of this auditorium going, “This is good. This is really good.” It was the episode where we did a whole show in one shot, no cuts. We’re sitting there, and we both went, “There’s no way we’re going to remember all these words.” Relax. It’s been filmed already, and it’s 30 years ago. But it was fun how it holds up.

A no-cuts episode — now The Studio is doing that.

Oh really? The Studio, is that a series? 

Yes, on Apple.

Oh yeah. But I thought it was a limited thing. See, I haven’t watched it because to me that’s not going to be entertaining — watching networks argue. Yeah, I can have that any afternoon. But the interesting thing was when we were remembering, Helen and I, when we first met. I had sent her the script, and we talked about the show that I wanted to do. And she was saying, “Well, here’s what I’d want to do as well.” We both had this idea from the very beginning, before we even shot the pilot: “Someday it’d be great to do a one-shot.” I thought, “Well, you could easily shoot a couple sitting up in bed, just have a little two-shot.” Then we thought, “Yeah, that’s going to get dull.” You need a story. So it took us six seasons to find a story that could hold that. But we finally did it. We found a show that made sense to do in one shot.

The Boys is ending next year, but they have a prequel coming. If your character The Legend is in it, is there anyone you would wish to play him in his younger days?

I would play it, but I’d just pull my face so tight that I’d be unrecognizable. They’d just suck me all in. I dunno. Well, they do that now, right? In The Irishman — you can just do that. I don’t know how they do it. They put little dots on your face, and then they computerize and they make you smaller and younger. I’m going to vote for that, should it happen.

You’re coming off a busy 2024, including the release of Life, Death & Rice Pudding, your first stand-up special since the ‘90s. I know you’ve been doing stand-up that whole time, but what made you want to do another special now?

It was interesting for me to find that so many people who were familiar with me had no idea that I did comedy. More than once, I’d hear people say that their kids who knew me from Stranger Things said, “Wait a second, the doctor from Stranger Things is going to tell jokes now?” And I’d go, “Some message has been lost here.” I was like, “Tell him A) I’m not really a doctor; and B) I was a comedian before I was a pretend doctor.” 

So part of that was to establish my credentials and to give myself the challenge of taking material and shaping it and making an hour as tight as I could get it, and then hopefully moving on and pushing myself to write the next hour. So it was a twofold purpose, almost.

The first thing you say is that you’re going to talk about a lot of stuff, none of it important. Do you feel from audiences that they want to know going in that you’re not talking about current events?

It’s funny, I said that one night literally for my own protection. I don’t know what was in the news that day, but there’s so much going on and everything is so important and such high stakes that I’d often feel, “See, this is so inconsequential. I’m just talking about silly fun things.” And so, I said that almost as a disclaimer. Just: “I’m aware. I watched the news too. But I’m not going to talk about anything.” 

To my surprise, audiences laughed and would applaud, like, “Thank you.” Like that’s something they’re here for. They’re here. Can we not watch the news for an hour and a half? Can we just have fun? And so, I accidentally stumbled into something that felt really good, which was validation of what comedy can do.

It’s like, “Yeah, I don’t have a solution for the politics or for a war, but if we can talk about something really human, you’ll all leave going, ‘All right, so there is something good out there. We’re all in this together.’” 

Even that is a good reminder. I always tell people I’m not smart enough to make anything up, so I only talk about what happened in my house, but fortunately it happens in other people’s houses too. So the audience and I both benefit. They’re laughing because they go, “Oh, this guy has that same problem,” but I’m relieved, going, “Oh, they’re laughing. So it’s not just me. That’s good to know.” Everybody goes home a winner.

You were also in The Gutter last year playing a bigger dirtbag than I think I’ve seen from you before.

Yes. I’m surprised that movie didn’t have more of an impact. I thought it was so funny. It was so stupid in the best sense, in the Dumb and Dumber Farrelly brothers world. When I saw it, I said, “This is going to be a huge hit.” I was surprised it didn’t make the dent I thought it would. Even on streaming, I haven’t heard people in the street go, “Hey, I watched that. It was funny.” But rarely do you get a script and you’re laughing reading it. And I was just laughing: “Oh, this is really funny.” Even not the stuff necessarily that I was in, but the character was so out-of-touch and said such outrageous things. Wildly politically incorrect, but really funny. 

You also co-wrote and starred in The Problem With People, which you had been developing for a while. What was it like to premiere it in Ireland?

That was sort of the homecoming. We had a premiere here, and then we had one in Ireland. I just loved the place. I still hunger to go back, and I jokingly say, “I want to move there.” I was like, “Do I really?” I don’t know. I’ve had Irish friends go, “You know what? Try coming back in the winter before you commit.” Because we were there in the summer, and it was a particularly beautiful summer. It was beautiful weather. It’s just lush and green, and the people were so warm and funny. I have no connection to Ireland other than I loved being there. But I said, “This movie is my love letter to Ireland as a fan.”

The way you and Cole Meaney’s character Ciáran are both giving master classes in nonverbal irritation, I could really buy that these guys are related, even distantly.

Yeah, we did too. It was from the beginning. He responded to the script and said yes right away, which I was tickled about. He said he usually winces when he reads a script written by Americans. They do sort of cartoonish Ireland, and we nailed it in his eyes, which meant the world to me. But being irritated by your relatives and by strangers is a universal language. So that’s what made the premise of the movie so fun to write and to play: Both these guys mean really well and they have a really noble intention and they just can’t do it. Because that’s the problem with people. We’re just not wired to be trusting or generous. So start there. Do you want to know why there are big wars? Take the smallest group you can: Two idiots who want to shake hands and can’t pull it off. 

My co-writer, Wally (Marzano-Lesnevich) and I, originally all I had is “New Yorker goes to Ireland.” “Why?” “I don’t know. Family.” And then when we stumbled on this story, I said, “Okay, now we have something that we can write. Because it’s sort of like when I say, “I’m not going to say anything important tonight.” The movie really was about something very important. It’s very big. How do you solve worldwide conflicts? Well, reduce it to the smallest scale you can and you’ll see the problem, and it’s still there. That felt like it was right up my comedic alley. It's like, I’m thinking about something big, but I can only tackle it on a very small scale.

What was interesting about it too, watching it back-to-back with Long Story Short, is how the two are sort of in conversation. There’s the animated segment in the middle of The Problem With People where the story of the family’s old schism is told. These are different yet similar ways of talking about generational trauma.

Thank you. Again, it wasn’t widely seen, but the response from those who found it was overwhelmingly warm. The comment I heard that meant so much to me was, “There aren’t enough movies like this.” Nobody got hurt. It was about decent people — flawed but decent. And those are the kind of movies that I like to write and the kind of movies I like to watch. I don’t necessarily like big action-y movies. This was about as small as you can get it. And even then, when we ended up in the hospital, it’s like, “Okay, now you’re in a room. We can’t get the world smaller than that now. We still need a wall.” Somebody said to me, “You built the wall — was that a reference to Trump's wall?” I went, “No, it wasn’t.” 

Then, after the script was written, and maybe even after we shot it, I came across an article about how Mar-a-Lago got bought. Trump offered really low, they declined, and he either bought or threatened to buy the piece of land between Mar-a-Lago and the water, and to build a wall. And they went, “Oh, don’t do that.” And they sold. And I went, “That’s my idea. We had that idea. He got it from me 10 years earlier!” I was like, “Oh, okay. So that’s pretty evil. We came up with a perfectly evil crappy thing to do.”

If you like a working vacation like you had on The Problem With People, you’ve got to get on The White Lotus. 

Yeah, believe me, I made the call. I said, “Where are they going? I’d like to go there.” I thought the last season was great in Thailand. The second season. I remember thinking as a writer or as a tourist, I go, “You don’t want to have breakfast with them? Well, just don’t sit with them,” and then you got no show. That was the oddest tension. “We have to sit with these people”? Don’t, because I wouldn’t. If I was on vacation, I’d go, “My wife and I are going to sit outside.” 

I don’t know if I’d have the patience to go somewhere. That’s like a six-month commitment. It’s a long time. 

And they make you pay for your own room service, apparently.

That’s not right. Soon as I get the job, I’m going to talk to them.

They’ve said they’re not going anywhere cold, so you’ll be fine. 

I heard a rumor they were going to New York. I went, “Great. Put me there.”

There was a viral tweet a few years ago when Chris Pratt was cast as Mario in the Mario Brothers movie. The Twitter user Bobby Big Wheel wrote, “Chris Pratt is a gentile, and as such is not party to the 1947 treaty between Jews and Italians that allows us to play each other in movies. He does not come from a yelling-based culture.” 

Now that you’ve spent so much time in Ireland, should the Irish be included in the treaty?

Oh yeah. They’re a very yelling culture, but they’re more artful about it. It’s not necessarily volume. It’s linguistics, subtlety and sarcasm. A lot of times people would say something and only 40 minutes later: “Oh, I understand what you mean now. You said it with such a smile and with such beautiful language. I think you were mocking me! I get it now.” 

That’s part of what I loved. People say, “What’s your thing with Ireland?” I say, “I don’t know.” Hey, it’s beautiful. But to me, the people and the culture are equal parts funny and melancholy. I mean, there’s such a legacy of brutal history and brutal poverty and literature, very similar to the Jewish ethic. It’s like finding the comedy and finding the nuggets of warmth in what’s otherwise pretty bleak. So that’s part of what I think I subtly, unconsciously was responding to. 

But I dunno. I think it’s also the gray. I like a gray sky. I like autumn more than spring. There’s something gray and threatening about it. They told us, “It’s going to rain every 40 minutes.” And I went, “I’m ready.” And then it didn’t. “I think you guys got it wrong. It’s kind of beautiful here.”