BoJack Horseman Archive

Tam Nguyen

Jul 8, 2023 • 48 min read

I. Preface, A note from Editor.

So this is my second time already dedicating a whole article to BoJack Horseman, a Netflix original show about a depressed talking horse trying to find a way to be happy in a satirical depiction of Hollywood, or Hollywoo, as referred to in the show. Well, speaking of that, the first time this show appeared in my article What is Reality?, I questioned whether we are living and experiencing the truth, or it is some kind of scenario that our two brain systems, unconscious and conscious, collided to distort reality. Natural evolution-wise, the majority of people’s brains are the same. Human neuron networks are inherently wired in a certain way to indulge the ultimate purpose of natural selection, that is to survive and reproduce the next offspring. For example, when we go to our friend's house, we don't bang in their door with our car, we ring the bell instead. Because bang in someone door is bad, and it probably will result in hatred and hostility. In ancient time when human lived in small tribe, being hated would decrease your chance of survival.

So it isn’t a surprise, that our brains also twirl and twist reality to match with the expectation of natural selection. Using the same example above, your brain learns the lesson of how important it is to be likable and sociable, in order to increase the chance of survival. Even though in today society it's not that deep if a classmate hates you at school, the brain still has the biological habit of becoming hyper-awareness and overanalyzed the signals of people around, and very often, it'd come up with a false and extreme conclusion.

I used BoJack as an analogy and inspiration for the article, because the show really makes me think about some very abstract concepts such as morality and reality. It all started when BoJack, sitting on the rooftop of Mr.Peanutbutter’s house, asks Diane if she thinks he’s a good person deep down, and she says “That’s the thing, I don’t think I believe in deep down. I kind of think all you are is just the things that you do.”

As a matter of fact, the show passing-by silhouette actually appeared in most of my other articles, in one way or another. It’s the theme of life and death, existentialism and nihilism, that ingrains deeply in my thoughts and my writing process for the last half year. I feel like for me, BH is more than just an animated show about talking animals, cause every time you rewatch it, you feel more a bit of this thing and more of that thing. I rewatch the show from scratch a total of 4 times, both when I was happy and when I hit rock bottom. And I must admit that, when I was happy, I sorted feel like, I didn’t like it, not like I hated it or something. But I didn’t love it the way when I was sad. I felt like I outgrew it. Maybe it’s a good thing that I stop relating to self-destructive behaviors of BoJack, or to Diane’s frivolous idea of wanting to be great and be remembered in this great grand scheme of things.

But eventually, when it finally got me again, I sat down and watched the show, and I felt everything. Sometimes you feel like your pain is beyond in this world, then BoJack comes along, and words are futile devices. Here’s an interesting story. I was kinda sad another day, and I’m about to make some Bagels and pizza dough when I’m sad, but then I realize, I was out of flour. So instead, I turned on the episode ‘Free Churro’, and handwrittently transcripted it into my notebook. It was therapeutic in that way, it really was.

Every time I rewatch, I always think to myself, this is it, this is the end, this is the deepest level of consciousness and emotional I can lay a finger on, but just like a Russian Doll, there are more tiny little things hidden inside, waiting for you, after you open the larger ones. And I’m not gonna sugar-coated, BoJack Horseman is a difficult show. It’s full of metamorphosis, layers, complexity, and multiple-dimensional characters. It builds up momentum, lays out the characters, and tells the stories slowly. Characters on characters, spin-off episodes, the past intertwined with the present, reality twisted the delusion, it’s not an easy treat.

I don’t think you can just pick a random episode and watch, Bojack doesn’t work that way. Because of that topsy-turvy perspective and the confusing nature of the show, it takes time to get used to it. But once it gets you, it gets you hard. The most important element in BoJack Horseman is its philosophy of living a life. This philosophical element is so grounded, that when the show turns into a kaleidoscope and branches into other directions, and deals with many taboo and perpetual problems of modern days, it always circles around this root, this deep-down philosophy of pursuing happiness. And the creators of BoJack Horseman challenge the characters, by headfirst diving deep them into the unresolved issues that serve as a backbone for profound character development later on. Will BoJack sober up? will he have a final closure with his mother? Or will he ever stop feeling bad for doing shitty things, but keep doing them anyways? These problems, they never go away, they stuck with their characters for a long long time.

So anyways, there are hundreds of articles, Youtube videos, and podcasts, from Times to Gazette to famous Youtube channels out there, write about BoJack Horseman and explore the show in different contexts and perspectives. So in this article, I want to write something different. So I tracked Tumblr, Reddit threads, interviews, or any piece of content I could find, of the show creators - Raphael Bob-Walksberg, Lisa Hanawalt, and other episode writers and animators, to find out the process of making BoJack Horseman. From writing process to animating, from show creators explicitly expressing their opinions, to some random questions such as “What does Will Arnett (BoJack’s voice actor) smell like?” will be collected in this archive. The credits go to all the show creators who have spent time writing amazing and thoughtful answers, and also, the people who raised very good questions and challenged the creators to answer them in the most naked, truthful way ever.

I organize the references and provide context whenever needed, but all the original thoughts and answers will remain intact. I hope through this archive, hard-core fans like me can have more materials to obsess over, and other normal readers, you can get a glimpse of what working with Netflix, and creating an animated show in Hollywood is like. I’m not a fan of LA or whatsoever, I’m more of New York I must say, but it's very interesting find out about the movie industry. And the most important experience for me while writing this archive, is that I feel like I’m talking with the creators and other fans directly in person. It’s just a wonderful feeling, the connection between complete strangers, bonding with each other about something we’re all passionate about. I hope you guys can also find something useful for yourself, and who knows, some of you may get inspired and end up writing something great someday, cause life is full of possibilities!

If anyone wants to chat with me about this show, my DM is always open. Even greater if you post any opinions at the end of the discussion! The more, the merrier!

II. On The Theme of BJ Horseman

Question 1: Hey Raphael! You've talked about the first season of BoJack being "about" the fleeting nature of happiness, among other matters. Without spoiling anything and/or breaking NDA, is there any major theme/concept you're aiming for the second season to be "about"? - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: The general idea we were working with while writing this season is that season one is a story about a guy realizing he needs to change, and season two is about whether or not he CAN change. A lot of it comes from BoJack’s question to Diane in the end of episode 111: Is there a promise of a better us waiting to be fulfilled, or are we just doomed to be the people that we are? Of course there are a lot of other things going on in the season as well, but if season one was about being stuck in a rut, season two is about trying to get out of the rut, and the rut pulling back.

Question 2: First of all, thank you for BoJack. Without getting too personal, it's an incredibly important show to me, the world is a better place now that it exists, and god dammit, you should know your work means something to the people who watch it. My question, then, is: do you think any of the characters on the show are truly "good" people? (Vincent Adultman, as a perfect being, does not count.) - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: Thanks for the good word! I can’t tell you how great it is to hear that our weird little show has meant something to some people. To answer your question: I don’t believe in good people and bad people and I actually think that kind of labeling is damaging. We are all just people and the key is to try do more good things and fewer bad things. When people self-identify as “good,” they believe that their actions can’t possibly be bad, because they were actions done with the best of intentions by a “good” person, and any criticism of their actions becomes a criticism of them, a criticism they must ultimately dismiss to continue feeling like they are good. (e.g. “I am not a racist, therefore that joke I made wasn’t racist.”). So no, I don’t think any of the characters on BoJack are truly good or truly bad (other than maybe Beyonce). I think they’re all just trying in their own various ways. But, you know, that’s just what I think right now. Ask me again in six months. Sorry this answer wasn’t funnier!

Question 3: What is the story behind the name BJ Horseman? - Anonymous, Reddit

Raphael: I don't know! I wish I had a good answer for this! BoJack just sounded like a horse name to me. I don't know where I heard it or how I came up with it. Maybe you guys could pitch me some better answers so I'll have something to say next time someone asks?

Question 4: BoJack Horseman is such a painfully relateable character. How did you manage to make a cartoon horse into one of the most accurate portrayals of depression in any media? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: I always talk about our show as having two different feet in two very different worlds -- one foot is in crazy cartoon wacky world and one foot is in real grounded character world -- and the farther you go in one direction, the farther that allows you to go in the other direction. (This is a terrible metaphor, by the way, because that is the opposite of how feet work.) I always felt like BECAUSE BoJack was a goofy cartoon horse, we could explore darker, more real areas and emotions than we ever could if the show was live action, without feeling indulgent or maudlin.

I saw an interview with Shane Black a few years ago where he was talking about how he sets all his movies during Christmas, even if there's nothing Christmasy about the stories. He said he did this because if there's snow and lights and Santa Claus everywhere, everything feels more fun, and you can get away with more fucked up gory stuff, because everything feels FUN. I had a similar approach on this show, the more light everything FELT, the more real we could get.

Question 5: Secretariat jumping off the bridge IMHO is one of the greatest scenes in any show ever. How did you guys come up with the idea of taking something so dark and making it hilarious? Was this the original idea or did it go through iterations? - Anonymous, Reddit.

*Secretariat is BoJack's hero and father figure.*

Raphael: We always knew the season was going to end with BoJack getting the Secretariat movie, but it wasn't until I was actually writing the draft that I had the idea to actually see Secretariat. I would say the way we made it hilarious is we actually didn't make it hilarious, we played it very straight. Sometimes the funniest most surprising anti-joke is drama.

Question 6: It seems like a lot has been made about the shift from the more conventional first half of the season to the deeper, character driven second half of the season. I loved it all, but it was frustrating as a fan to read reviews from tv critics that gave it a few episodes and seemed to miss the point entirely. I guess I don't really have a question, maybe did this frustrate you as well? Did you learn anything new about the process once the project was finished and available for mass consumption? - Anonymous, Reddit

Lisa Hanawalt: I felt a little frustration at first, like, "eeeeek just watch more of it! it'll subvert your expectations I swear!" but we also knew to be patient and let the people it was created for discover it. Some people will watch one minute and give up and that's okay. A lot of people go into things with preconceived notions and that's also okay.

Raphael: For me, a lot of the fun of the show is setting up expectations for what kind of show it is and then subverting them. It's disappointing that so many people would get to the expectations part of the show, think, "Okay, I get where this is going," and then turn it off, but I totally understand why they would.

I thought we put enough hints in the early episode of the show's darkness that people would catch on (and some did!) but I think for most people, their expectations going in were SO hardened that they just saw what they were expecting to see and ignored the rest. It was weird to see reviews say things like, "For a show that aims to be just wall-to-wall jokes all the time, there are sure some scenes that don't have that many jokes in them." And I was just like, "Well, yeah..."

It's been really great to see how vocal the fans have been about, "Don't give up! Keep watching! It's not what you think!"

Question 7: I've never watched your show, but I've seen plenty of animated humorous shows that I've liked. I've seen the commercials and, forgive me, the show just looks stupid. Is there something you can tell me about the show that would turn someone like myself into a believer? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: You should watch it! You can knock the whole thing out in one afternoon. I think we're actually doing something really special and surprising with this show, but of course, I think that! I made it! Your mileage may vary, but I think if you go in expecting this to be a show you've seen a million times before, you'll see that it mostly is (until it isn't), but if you go in open to what's weird and different about it, you'll find there's a lot there to appreciate.

III. On Process of Making BJ Horseman

Question 1: Was everything planned out ahead of time, or did the story kind of progress and take shape as the episodes developed? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: A lot of the shape for the season was in the first pitch to Netflix (going to Boston, all the Herb stuff, most of the book stuff, including BoJack having a crazy drug trip and cornering Diane at Ghostwritercon) but we also came up with a TON of stuff in the room (the arc with the paparazzi birds, all Todd's rock opera stuff, Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane getting engaged, AND married). I had an AMAZING group of writers last season and we found a lot of cool stuff between the cracks of what was already figured out.

Question 2 : Hey Raphael! Big fan of the show here. I was curious about your writing process for an episode of BoJack. From inception -- to the production script. Do you find inspiration anywhere, or from anything? I know you work with a team of staff writers-- how is your dynamic with them when writing? Thanks! Keep up the good work. :) - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: Okay, hello, here we go, how does an episode of BoJack Horseman get written. I’m going to try to be thorough (read: LONG. VERY LONG.) with this answer, because I think some people are going to be interested in the whole process, so sorry if it gets a little boring to people who are not that interested in the whole process. I guess you can always just stop reading at any time. As if you needed my permission.

So, backtracking a little: When I pitched the show to Netflix, I pitched the whole season, one through twelve, one episode at a time, and we had that document in the writer’s room, so every episode had a place to start from. Some of those episodes are very close to the original pitch (103 and 105 for example), while some are entirely different (106 was pretty much entirely put together in the room with nothing from the original pitch in the final episode).

For 109, all I had was the Princess Carolyn story. I knew Princess Carolyn, fed up with being at BoJack’s beck and call all the time was going to start dating this guy that was very obviously (to BoJack and nobody else) three kids stacked on top of each other under a trench coat. Everyone would accuse BoJack of being jealous and we’d kind of play with that idea that when your ex starts dating someone new, you don’t get to point out his flaws even if they’re really obvious, because everyone else will assume you’re just still hung up on your ex. The episode would end with BoJack and Vincent finally having a conversation and BoJack would spill his guts to him. That was all we had at the start.

The first part of writing a script is the BRAINSTORMING phase, where we all just kind of spitball and talk about whatever and try to figure out what everybody’s doing in this episode. These conversations are usually pretty free-flowing. We sometimes think about where the characters have been and where they need to go. LIKE, FOR EXAMPLE:

In the previous episode BoJack tried to kiss Diane. We knew there would be some fallout from that, but we didn’t know what. Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane had gotten engaged three episodes earlier and we had no plan for what we were doing with that either; just at the time, it felt like they should get engaged. We also knew that in the next episode BoJack was going to read Diane’s book about him, so it felt like at some point in this episode we should mark the end of their interviewing process. Another thing is it felt like by this point in the season we needed to do something with the Decapathon receipt and Todd figuring out what BoJack did to his rock opera. We had set the receipt up in 104 with no real plan for what we were going to do with it. We had talked about Todd finding the receipt in 107 but there wasn’t really a good place for that, then we talked about him finding it in 108, but that didn’t make sense because none of the episode takes place at BoJack’s house. By 109 we knew we had to address this plot in some way.

A lot of episodes start from a prompt or a question of some sort. I think for a lot of shows early on that question is “What is [this character’s] deal?” You can really see that in the first half of season one of BoJack. The first three episodes are about getting to know BoJack and his world, and then each of our characters gets a spotlight episode— Todd in 4, Diane in 5, Mr. Peanutbutter in 6, and Princess Carolyn in 7. For 109, the original idea was: “What if we told a story that took place over a long period of time?” Episodes 5 through 8 all kind of took place one on top of the other and I remember thinking it would be nice to space things out a little. I had the idea of: What if we told a story that took place over twenty-eight days, and we saw a little something from each day?

What excited me about that is that it was a format you could play around with and tell different kind of jokes with. Like maybe one of the stories is Todd grows a mustache, and you see a little more of it every time you see Todd. One of the ideas was BoJack gets a tomato plant, and you see that plant wither and die in the background throughout the episode. And just format-wise, it would be a strikingly different kind of episode. At least twenty-eight scenes, each less than a minute long. What would that even feel like?

We drew up a grid and started filling in days. The big question immediately was how can we justify this format? What is the story that would have to be told in this way? It felt like if we were going to be counting days, we had to be counting to something. Diane finishing her book? Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter’s engagement party? We played around with that for a little bit, but it just felt so low stakes. Who cares about an engagement party? It felt like if we were going to do this, we had to go all the way: Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter should get married at the end of this episode. Suddenly that gave us a BoJack story: BoJack tries to break up Diane’s wedding.

This was also the point in the season that we started thinking about the endgame. I knew the larger story for the season was that gradually BoJack would push away all the people that cared about him. This felt like a good opportunity to really start to tell that story. We were already doing it with Princess Carolyn and Vincent, and that’s how we got the idea to have Todd start to befriend Mr. Peanutbutter.

Once we have a loose idea for what the story is we start BREAKING THE EPISODE — figuring out what scene goes where, in what order, what our act breaks are, etc. (On Netflix, we don’t really need act breaks— there are no commercials— but we write them into the script anyway because I find it’s easier to think about the story if you know you’re going to need these big turns one third and two thirds of the way into the episode.) Most of the conversations in the room are led by the writer of that episode, in this case Peter Knight. This is partially because I like the writers to feel some ownership over their own episodes, and partially because most of my writers have more room experience than I do. Also, because I am not actually in the room for a lot of these discussions! When we were breaking episode 109, I was also prepping 107 for the table read, recording dialogue for 106, in the editing room for the radioplays of 105 and 104, reviewing the thumbnail storyboards for 103, and finalizing the animatics of episodes 102 and 101. I have a PHENOMENAL staff of writers and if I give them a direction or an area to work in, I am always amazed by what they come up with when I get back. Seriously, so much of what makes this show special comes from the mix of great writers we assembled. I don’t understand how some people write entire TV shows themselves, or frankly why they would want to.

So, once the episode is broken the writer of the episode goes OFF TO OUTLINE and the room starts brainstorming the next episode. The outline is usually about eight-ten pages and describes everything that happens in the episode, divided into scenes with a few paragraphs per scene. The outline usually takes a few days to a week to write, depending on how thoroughly the episode was broken in the room and how under the gun we are to get this script out. Some networks ask to see outlines, Netflix doesn’t, so our outlines are just for internal purposes.

Usually what happens next is all the writers read the outline and we give the writer notes. I lead this conversation, because once I can see everything in writing I start to get real specific ideas of what I want in the episode, but everyone else contributes too, pitching jokes, or saying, “Do we need this scene?” — things like that.

HOWEVER, when I got the 109 outline, I realized: This isn’t going to work. The 28-Day structure was CRAZY. You couldn’t get any kind of momentum going on the story because we had to keep breaking up scenes. And all the fun stuff we had planned like BoJack’s dying tomato plant ended up just feeling like distraction. I talked with Peter about it and together we came up with a plan to re-break the story to only cover ONE WEEK. He spend the day in his office moving cards around on a bulletin board while the rest of the room continued working on 110. Once we had a new outline, we did our normal group discussion and then he was OFF TO SCRIPT.

(This is also the point in the process where I touch base with Netflix about the episode. I call them from Noel and Steve’s office and I spend ten-twenty minutes just talking through the story. OCCASIONALLY, they’ll raise some concerns, but much more often they’ll say, “Sounds great! Can’t wait to read it!” I remember Netflix was particularly excited about 109, because it was a more straightforward episode coming after the slightly more experimental 107 and 108 and because it featured Mr. Peanutbutter heavily after he sat two episodes out. I think their only note was, “It feels like a lot for one episode, but if you can get it all in, great!” I can only imagine what they would have thought about the 28 Days version.)

Writers take about a week to write their first draft, again depending on how far behind schedule we are and what kind of deadlines we have coming up. Then they come back and we all read the draft. We have another conversation about it, which again is mostly me talking, but the other writers chime in too. Then the writer spends a long weekend writing the SECOND DRAFT.

When I get the second draft, I lock myself in a room with it for a day or three and do my pass. A lot of times I’ll have trouble visualizing the episode until I can read it in a room by myself, so sometimes I’ll make big sweeping changes in this pass, but more often it’s just to get what I call “my shmegma” all over it, to make sure it matches the voice of all the other episodes and feels of a piece with the rest of the series. Once I do my shmegma pass, Noel and Steve, the other executive producers, take a look at it. Sometimes they’ll have a few notes before we send the draft to Netflix, but more often they’ll say, “Yeah, this looks good to go,” and we send it to Netflix. This is the PRE-TABLE DRAFT.

Our scripts usually end up being around forty pages. That sounds long and it is long. For some reason, animation scripts play faster than live action scripts, but even for that, forty pages is long. We record the show long and cut as we go. I’ve heard other shows punch up jokes that aren’t working in animatic. We just cut them out, contracting the episode as we go. If we have a 40-page record draft, that gives us lots of options when we get into the edit. However, if you are writing a spec of BoJack Horseman, I would NOT recommend making it forty pages, because I guarantee you no one is going to want to read that.

We usually get notes from Netflix the next day. Their notes are rarely severe. Occasionally they’ll say, “We don’t really like this joke,” and then we’ll cut the joke. Or they’ll say, “It’s unclear what BoJack’s drive is in Act One,” so we’ll clarify BoJack’s drive in Act One. I think we got the most substantial notes on 107, the Princess Carolyn episode, because that episode really felt like a pivot point for the show to everybody and we all wanted to make sure we got it right. If I remember correctly the notes on 109 were: “Really funny! This feels like a lot for one episode, but if you can fit it all in, great!”

After the Netflix notes, we do a ROOM PASS. All the writers get a copy of the draft, they take an hour or two, punching up jokes, and addressing the Netflix notes, then we all get in a room together and go through the script page by page. This is the first time most of the writers get to write jokes for the episode, except for whatever is loosely pitched during the story-breaking, or the notes on the outline and first draft, so we get a lot of really funny stuff from this pass. After the room pass, I’ll take another pass myself and that becomes the TABLE DRAFT.

The table reads are a lot of fun. We get most (sometimes all) of our regular cast, as well as some special guests (the 109 table read had Margo Martindale, as well as Alison Brie debuting her Vincent Adultman, which we all loved so much we immediately gave her the part). We get to hear what jokes work and don’t, which scenes fly by and which scenes drag. All the writers take notes during the read, and later that afternoon we do ANOTHER ROOM PASS. At some point, we also get another round of notes from Netflix, which we incorporate into our conversation. That night, I do a final pass on the script, and once it gets approved by Netflix it becomes our RECORD DRAFT.

Margo Martindale - Acclaimed Character Actress

The script can still go through a number of changes after that. In the edit, we’ve combined scenes, moved conversations from one location to another, added and subtracted characters from scenes. There’s a gag in 106 where Mr. Peanutbutter opens his trunk to reveal a pile of tennis balls, and says, “Hey…” That “Hey…” was taken from the scene in 109 where Mr. Peanutbutter calms down Diane about the biscuit warmer. You can play them back to back and you’ll see it’s the exact same “Hey.” We were in the sound mix for 107, which is the very last step of the process, when someone said, “I feel like Cate Blanchett should say Mm-hmm here when she nods,” so we threw one of our music editors into the booth to do her best Cate Blanchett impression.

I feel like this mostly answers your question, but let me know if you want a more detailed response.

Question 3: What’s the writing process? - Anonymous, Reddit

Raphael: Oh man, I don't know how much I can talk about the writing process, considering I still barely understand it myself. Every time we break a new episode I feel like I'm learning how to ride a bike all over again. But I WOULD like to take this opportunity to shout out the season one writers, because they are all incredible:

Peter Knight, who wrote about Todd's rock opera, and introduced the world to Vincent Adultman.
Caroline Williams, who dreams of being Chelsea Clinton, but with her hair.
Scott Marder, who agrees with the Latin Kings on social issues, but is fiscally more of an Aryan.
Joe Lawson, who remembered Princess Carolyn's birthday.
Mehar Sethi, who gave BoJack a telescope.
Laura Gutin, who understand the importance of a v-neck t-shirt.
Kate Purdy, who thinks that if she were a little kid, she and Harper would be friends.

III. On BJ's Inspiration

Question 1: Was BoJack inspired by Bob Saget? - Anonymous, Tumblr

Raphael: Nope! I definitely watched a lot of "Full House" and TGIF growing up, and I'm sure you can see the influence on "Horsin' Around" but BoJack himself is not based on any actual celebrity. The idea for BoJack came from two places for me:

I've been friends with Lisa for a long time and I wanted to work on a project with her. She'd been posting these animal people drawings on Tumblr, so I started brainstorming ideas for shows about animal people. When Lisa told me she was concerned my depressed talking horse show idea was "too sad":

Spruce Moose in the Juice Caboose Spruce Moose is a dapper fellow with his finger on the pulse (and he's also a moose). He works as a bartender in the bar car of a swingin' locomotive (The Juice Caboose) where he meets all sorts of people and solves their problems. Dig that crazy rhythm, baby, juice, baby, POW. It's Cheers! On a train! With a moose!

I feel like that idea mostly came from "What rhymes with moose?" but still I think there's something there. I remember the idea was that the train was the Slumberland Express where kids go when they're half asleep but not quite at Dreamville. It's a calm place with milk and cookies and things, but then in the back there's this raucous Juice Caboose with this Willy-Wonka-Beetlejuice type Spruce Moose always trying to get kids in trouble. Lisa had the idea that he would have these two sidekick cocktail waitresses called the Spicy Mice. Again, most of this idea was built around rhyming. Anyway, if anyone ever asks me to write a kid's movie, that's the first thing I'm pitching.

*Princess Carolyn has a lot of tongue twister and rythmic lines*

2. Anyway, the second thing is that I moved out to LA from New York, and I was staying with a friend of a friend of a friend in this tiny closet of a room in this gigantic fancy house in the Hollywood Hills. The people in the house claimed that A) it was the second-highest elevated house in all of Los Angeles, and B) Johnny Depp had once lived there, but I can't back either of those claims up. (Johnny Depp would be a great Spruce Moose by the way. Could we get him?) I had very few friends at that time and I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing, and I started thinking about how living in this beautiful house, basically on top of the world, I had never felt more lonely and isolated. I wanted to write a show about a character that has gotten everything he's wanted and still can't find a way to be happy.

Question 2: Was it always your plan for BoJack Horseman to become a dark character study, or was it something that developed as the series moved along? Also how much, if at all, did Netflix try to change the overall vision and direction of the series? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: That was always the plan! I really liked the idea of starting a show as a typical animated comedy and then gradually revealing the darkness underneath and ending up feeling more like a live action dramedy, but in a crazy cartoon universe. Netflix has been amazing to work with. They got the pitch, and every note they give is in service of that pitch. I've worked on other shows where the network buys one thing and then they try to turn it into something else (usually "more like Modern Family"), but that NEVER happened with Netflix. They really do buy shows from writers they like and then they trust those writers to make good shows.

IV. On Other Characters’s Inspiration

Question 1: Hi! Bojack came out right as I was starting college - it really helped me with a tough transition and makes me laugh still. You're a talented group of writers. Besides Bojack, who was the first character y'all came up with? Are any of them based off people you really know, or just archetypical Hollywood stock. - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: None of the characters are directly based on people I know, but Todd has gradually turned into a much stupider version of my good friend Kevin, who is always getting into ridiculous adventures and always has a good attitude no matter what. Kevin used to live in Pasadena in this gigantic mansion that was owned by a woman who I’m not even sure how he met. Anyway, one day the woman asked Kevin if he would drive her daughter to school, and he said sure because he figured since he was living there for free it was the least he could do. It turned out “school” was college on the east coast and Kevin had to drive her daughter across the country.

Diane is named after a girl I went to high school with. The last time I saw her was this big party the school threw our class after graduation. There was a table set up at the party with little cards and a pen. The idea was you could write a note to yourself as a high school graduate and then all the notes would be put in a box and redistributed at our ten-year reunion. (I don’t know if this actually happened or not, because I did not go to my high school’s ten-year reunion.) For some reason, Diane and I agreed to write notes to each other. I don’t remember what I wrote on her note — I’m sure it was something stupid (“What’s the future like? Are there flying cars?”) — but I remember her entire note to me. It said: “ARE YOU HAPPY?”

I remember being terrified to get that note in ten years, probably because I thought I already knew the answer, but I was also struck by how simple and straightforward the question was, while also being about so much. The moment really stuck with me, and I thought about it a lot while working on this show, so I named a character after her. The Diane of BoJack Horseman isn’t really based on the Diane I went to high school with in any real way, but it’s possible she might be based on that note.

Question 2: I know you're gone for now, but I'll ask a question in the off-chance you come back to answer: I'm really curious about the relationship between Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter. Did you intentionally show her love for Mr. Peanutbutter as lukewarm, or is that just a part of her character (someone who is unexpressive)? Are you subtly showing a different side to marriage - one that is based on so many other reasons besides love? Is Diane just as dysfunctional as BoJack, but expresses it in a different way? - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: I think Diane loves Mr. Peanutbutter a lot, but she doesn't show it in the same way he does.

V. On Raphael’s Opinions.

Tam’s Note: Raphael, is not only a talented writer and show creator himself, but he’s also very well-spoken and insightful when he expresses his thoughts and opinions. I feel like his personal beliefs and philosophy of life get reflected quite a lot in the show BoJack Horseman. Below here are some of his general opinions that I find very interesting!

On Gender in Comedy

Question: Rewatching s1 for like the 100th time--at what point does all the brilliant animal sight gag stuff (eg: the croc wearing crocs) get added? is it like, we need to have a croc wearing crocs, where can we fit this in? or do you start out by needing someone to guard the food and say let's do a crocodile--hey, he should wear crocs? or some kind of total afterthought, or something else entirely? thanks. love the show, my favorite of all time. - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: Hello! I am going to answer your question, and then I am going to talk a little bit about GENDER IN COMEDY, because this is my tumblr and I can talk about whatever I want!

The vast vast vast majority of the animal jokes on BoJack Horseman (specifically the visual gags) come from our brilliant supervising director Mike Hollingsworth and his team. Occasionally, we’ll write a joke like that into the script but I can promise you that your top ten favorite animal gags of the season came from the art and animation side of the show, not the writers room. Usually it happens more the second way you described— to take a couple examples from season 2, “Okay, we need to fill this hospital waiting room, what kind of animals would be in here?” or “Okay, we need some extras for this studio backlot, what would they be wearing?”

I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that the croc wearing crocs came from our head designer Lisa Hanawalt. Lisa is in charge of all the character designs, so most of the clothing you see on the show comes straight from her brain. (One of the many things I love about working with Lisa is that T-Shirts With Dumb Things Written On Them sits squarely in the center of our Venn diagram of interests.)

NOW, it struck me that you referred to the craft services crocodile as a “he” in your question. The character, voiced by Vilaysack, is a woman.

It’s possible that that was just a typo on your part, but I’m going to assume that it wasn’t because it helps me pivot into something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last year, which is the tendency for comedy writers, and audiences, and writers, and audiences (because it’s a cycle) to view comedy characters as inherently male, unless there is something specifically female about them. (I would guess this is mostly a problem for male comedy writers and audiences, but not exclusively.)

My first gut reaction to the designs was, “This feels weird.” I said to Lisa, “I feel like these characters should be guys.” She said, “Why?” I thought about it for a little bit, realized I didn’t have a good reason, and went back to her and said, “You’re right, let’s make them ladies.”

I am embarrassed to admit this conversation has happened between Lisa and me multiple times, about multiple characters.

The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the businessperson, but if you also have a thing where both of them ladies, then that’s an additional thing and it muddies up the joke. The audience will think, “Why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?” The underlying assumption there is that the default mode for any character is male, so to make the characters female is an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being a hundred percent clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it, and I’m proud to say I mostly don’t think this way anymore. Sometimes I still do, because this kind of stuff is baked into us by years of consuming media, but usually I’m able (with some help) to take a step back and not think this way, and one of the things I love about working with Lisa is she challenges these instincts in me.

I feel like I can confidently say that this isn’t just a me problem though— this kind of thing is everywhere. The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male.

You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster.

I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster

Tam's Note: I agree with Raphael about how male being the default in comedy. I hung out at a standup comedy club here in downtown Vancouver a few times, drinking rye beer and watching standup comedians perform. And 99% of them are white males. And most of the times, their jokes are very male-centered and sexist, and unfunny, then the audiences, again, mostly white males, started laughing like crazy and yelling like a bunch of gorillas. Meanwhile, when an Irish woman went on stage and made jokes about the recent death of queen Elizabeth and other interesting topics that didn't include dehumanizing a woman, or sucking a man's dick, the whole room went quiet immediately. I truly enjoyed her jokes and I felt so bad for her that no one clapped. Before the #MeToo movement, comedy was about making the most sexist and homophobic jokes ever, and telling women how over-reacting they were if they expressed any concerns or disagreed. Raphael summed up the sexist and male-centered scene of comedy very well, good job!

2. Are you a Zoe or a Zelda?

Tam’s Note: In Episode 4 of season 1 “Zoes and Zeldas”, the whole group including BoJack, Diane, Princess Caroline, Todd, and Mr. Peanutbutter have dinner at Elefante, where they ask each other if they are a Zoe or a Zelda. Zoe and Zelda is a reference to a pair of twin sisters Zoe and Zelda with opposite personalities - Zoe is cynical and judgemental, while Zelda is happy and carefree - on Mr. Peanutbutter’s 80s sitcom. Someone on Reddit asks Raphael, the show creator, whether he’s a Zoe or a Zelda. Below here is his answer, with explanation of where his inspiration for Zoe and Zelda come from!

*A group having dinner, with Wayne, a Buzzfeed writer in a bowtie.*

“Here’s a good first date question: Are you a Tia or a Tamera?” - By Raphael Bob-Walksberg, on 17th November 2010.

Tia and Tamera, inspiration for Zoe and Zelda

For those who don’t remember, Tia and Tamera were protagonists of the mid-90s sitcom Sister Sister. Identical twins separated at birth, they looked the same, but their personalities were so different! Tia got good grades, but Tamera liked to go to the mall!

It’s a false dichotomy of course, and I imagine most people like to think of themselves as being somewhere around the middle of the Tia-Tamera continuum, BUT IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE: ARE YOU A TIA OR ARE YOU A TAMERA?

It’s difficult to define, but you know a Tia or a Tamera when you see one. It’s Nixon vs. Kennedy. Hillary Clinton vs. Sarah Palin. Friedrich Nietzsche (classic Tia) first introduced the concept in The Birth of Tragedy, in which he wrote: “Apollo is a Tia. Dionysus is a Tamera. In the pilot episode of Sister Sister, Apollo and Dionysus meet for the first time in a clothing store– thus, the birth of tragedy.”

Being a Tia or a Tamera isn’t a good or bad thing: Pink and Katy Perry are both Tameras, even though one is fantastic and one is terrible. Fiona Apple is my favorite kind of Tia, but Celine Dion is a Tia too. Even though Tia was the smart one and Tamera was the fun one, Tameras are not, as a rule, stupid, and Tias are not, as a rule, no fun. George Clooney and Amy Poehler are brilliant Tameras; Jon Stewart and Tina Fey are hilarious Tias.

I’m a Tia, through and through, although I admit I have many Tamera qualities (like my grades in high school). I’m also very good at deciding which other people are Tias and Tameras, which is a very Tia thing to do (Tias are so judgmental).

My best friend is a Tia, but most of my friends are Tameras. I have two sisters: one is a Tia with the joyful soul of a Tamera, the other’s a Tamera with the sad, wise heart of a Tia. I think of my parents as hopeless Tias, but among their friends, they’re considered Tameras. My Grandma is a Tamera; my Nana is a Tia.

My girlfriends, in chronological order: Tamera, Tia, Tia, Tia, Tamera, Tia.

New York is a Tia; LA is a Tamera. San Francisco is a Tamera that acts like a Tia; Silicon Valley is a Tia that dresses like a Tamera.

Obama’s a Tia who won the presidency by convincing the country he was a Tamera. Bush, Clinton, and Reagan were all Tameras, and you can’t win an election as a Tia (just look at McCain, Kerry, Gore, or Dole). Bush Sr. did, but that’s just because he was running against Dukakis, an even bigger Tia than he was.

Groucho and Zeppo were Tias; Chico and Harpo were Tameras. Dorothy and Sophia were Tias; Rose and Blanche were Tameras. Jerry Seinfeld is a Tia but he played a Tamera on TV. John Lennon was a Tamera with a Tia’s sense of humor. Daryl Hall is a Tamera and John Oates is a Tia. Together they make a Tamera.

People who always look better in pictures are Tameras; people who always look better in real life are Tias. Tameras need to be with other people; Tias are more comfortable by themselves. Tameras are optimists; Tias are pessimists. Tameras are the ones who change the world, because they believe that they can; Tias secretly know it’s already too late.

Jeopardy? Tia. Wheel? Tamera.

Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln, and Adolf Hitler were all Tias, and they were killed because of it; Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, and Saddam Hussein were Tameras, and look where it got them.

Cats (the animal): Tia. Cats (the musical): Tamera.

Tias are outsiders. Tameras are rule breakers. A Tia looks for patterns; a Tamera looks for chaos. Stephen Sondheim? Tia. Steven Soderbergh? Tamera.

I don’t understand how people confuse Jesse Eisenberg for Michael Cera– Eisenberg’s clearly a Tia to Cera’s Tamera. Janeane Garofalo is a Tia; Sarah Silverman is a Tamera. David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon? Do I need to draw you a diagram?

The Jewish God is a Tia; the Christian God is a Tamera. Fate is Tia; Chance is Tamera. Anorexia and bulimia are the Tia and Tamera of eating disorders. The Spanish Inquisition and what’s happening right now in Darfur are the Tia and Tamera of genocides. ADHD is a Tamera; The autism spectrum is a Tia, which is funny because the notion of a spectrum is very Tamera. Tia’s all about the binary.

Tameras know that everyone– everyone– is both a Tia and a Tamera, that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. A Tia will claim to believe this as well, but try as she might, deep down she knows it’s a fiction– she’s a Tia, and there’s no cure for that.

VI. On Sketch Comedy and Writing Background

Question 1: How has a background in sketch comedy impacted the way you write Bojack? it feels very sharp, and there's a sense of comic timing I don't feel like a lot of animated shows have. Is that a focus of yours? - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: You’re very kind. It’s actually kind of the opposite of a focus. I really don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how funny the show is. (I know a couple critics who would say, “Yeah, no kidding.”) I’m much more interested in character and relationships and arcs and telling stories that are interesting to me. I think, mostly because of my experience with Olde English (which was like a comedy boot camp), I kind of just have faith that I can write funny and it’ll be funny and I try not to think about that. I also have a staff full of hilarious comedy writers punching up jokes and an amazing cast that can sell anything. And also, half of our characters are brightly colored talking animals.

Focusing on sketch comedy for seven years, I got really burnt out on the idea of comedy for the sake of comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sketch (or a whole show) that’s only focused on making me laugh and does that well. I just don’t think that’s what I want to be doing or what I’m especially good at.

Also, I know you know this already, but fans of BoJack who are interested in other things I’ve done should check out the movie my comedy group made a couple years back, The Exquisite Corpse Project. It is funny and weird and meta and strange and sentimental and awkward and sad, just like BoJack.

Question 2: How long after filming The Exquisite Corpse Project did you create the idea for BoJack Horseman? In the middle of the movie you had ended up moving to LA, were you already shopping the idea around by that time? Love BoJack and Olde English! - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: Do you remember that interview I did on the beach where I talk about how in Hollywood you come up with ideas and rework them and rework them and then they never go anywhere? Well, that's because at that very time I was developing BoJack with Tornante and I was SURE nothing was going to come of it. Shows what I know!

Question 3: How did working as a part of an ensemble sketch group prepare you for being writer/creator of your own show? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: Olde English is the best thing that ever happened to me as a writer. Working with other people teaches you how to not be too precious about your own ideas, but also really fight for the things that are important

VII. On Animation Design

Tam’s Note: Lisa Hanawalt is the creative mind behind the animation design of BoJack Horseman. Raphael said that it was Lisa that inspired his idea of making an animation show about anthromopomorphic animals, when he first saw her quirky sketches of talking horses. Personally, I would not say the animation design of BoJack Horseman is as aesthetic as Ghibli, rather, it’s unique and creative, and a bit disturbing in its own way. Here are some of my favorite scenes!

If you wanna discover deeper into the animation universe of BoJack Horseman, I recommend the book “BoJack Horseman: The Art before the Horse” written by Chris McDonnell and illustrated by Lisa Hanawalt. This book dives really deep into the process of animating the characters.

Question 1: Lisa, how much fun is it to come up with those character designs? They make my girlfriend cry out with glee, particularly the female characters - the clothes, the shop names! And we consider the way the 'animal' characters hold their heads up (Tom Jumbo-Grumbo, for example) to be pure genius. Thanks! - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: IT IS SO MUCH FUN. I love drawing crazy animals and weird clothes so this is a dream. The more awkward the characters look, the better. This show is also a great outlet for all of us to flaunt our worst puns. ALSO I want to give credit to our Supervising Director Mike Hollingsworth and the episode directors Joel, JC, Amy, and Martin and their teams for coming up with most of the amazing background animal jokes. Whenever you see an animal in the background or at the beginning of a scene doing something funny, it's usually because of them.

Question 2: What’s your process of drawing the show’s characters? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: From my perspective, first I get an early script draft and I read it feverishly because I can't wait to see what happens next. I make a lot of loud noises while reading. I am viscerally affected by what happens to these characters! Then I always start sketching the new characters that seem like the most fun and save the more boring/background/extra characters for last. Backgrounds get fleshed out after storyboards and I get to do a lot of google image searching and create parodies of paintings I like, etc.

Question 3: For Lisa: I know nothing about animation/production, but the design/art on this show is my favourite on any cartoon. It's pretty cool. How long does it take to get the work done for each episode? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: It depends on the complexity of the ep - we knew 11 (the drug/dream sequence) was going to be a big one and that it had to look AWESOME so we put extra time and energy into it! This is my first time working in animation/production so now I'm noticing the huge difference between episodes that take place mostly in BoJack's home, for example, vs. scenes in entirely brand-new locations.

Question 4: What software do you animate with? - Anonymous, Reddit

Lisa: I sketch in Photoshop, animators here use Flash. I keep trying to learn Flash but I suck at learning.

Question 5: A friend of mine who knows a lot about art pointed out that you parody a lot of famous art in your show.

She says that this is a parody of Matissè.

This is a parody of Keith Harring.

And I think the one on the floor in this one is a parody of Georgia O'Keeffe because it looks like a vagina (Shout out to Jesse Pinkman and Jane from Breaking Bad for teaching me that.) And she reckons, the one with the sunglasses could be parodying Warhol.

So my question is, what inspired you to do parody this art? And does it have any significance to the show? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: The one with sunglasses is a Patrick Nagel parody, and that's a 60's mod apple, not a Georgia O' Keefe. But the Matisse and Keith Haring are correct! Parodying is mostly a fun way to reference our favorite works of art but certain works do have significance. That Hockney painting over BoJack's desk is a personal fave of mine!

Question 6: Who was the easiest character to design? Who was the hardest? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: BoJack was actually one of the easiest characters to design. Raphael described him to me and I just immediately envisioned the sweater, the shoes, his grumpy expression, everything. The most difficult characters by far were Diane and Todd!

Question 7: Hi Lisa! I'm in love with the show! I've seen it all the way through 4 times. My friends say I have a problem. So I guess my question is, how much Bojack Horseman, is too much Bojack Horseman? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Lisa: Thank you! If you feel about BoJack the way Todd feels about Decapathon it might be time to give it a breather!

VIII. On Casting Voice’s Actors

Question 1: How'd you cast the voice actors? - Anonymous, Tumblr

Raphael: Thanks for your question! I’m not sure if you’re asking how did we decide who to cast, or how did we actually go about casting them, so I’ll try to answer both.

Every time a new character shows up in the script, we (the other EPs Noel and Steve and I) get on the phone with our amazing casting director Linda Lamontagne and brainstorm who to go out to. Occasionally I’ll already have an actor in mind (Diane’s mother is described in the script as “basically Melissa Leo from The Fighter”; Tom Jumbo-Grumbo is described as “Ketih Olbermann with a whale’s head”) but more often I’ll let Linda put together a list. Linda has a really good sense for who we can get— who’s looking to do animation, who’s a fan of the show, who we can afford, etc. Sometimes she’ll pitch a name and I’ll say, “No way we can get that person,” and she’ll say, “It never hurts to ask!” and then a couple weeks later I’m recording with Naomi Watts.

I think Aaron Paul was the first of our regular cast to sign on, and Alison Brie was the last. Will Arnett and Amy Sedaris are good friends in real life, so I know once we got her, that was a big selling point for him. Paul F. Tompkins was my idea. I had originally conceived of Mr. Peanutbutter as a meathead-Patrick-Warburton-type, but Will and Aaron have such deep voices, we decided someone with a more lilting joyful quality would provide a nice contrast, and I’ve been a fan of Paul’s for years.

I cannot say enough good things about my cast. Obviously, their joint resume contains some of the best shows of the last twenty years (Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad, Strangers With Candy, Community, Mad Men, Mr. Show, ET CETERA). Each one could easily carry his or her own show; it really feels like a team of all-stars.

I believe there are three kinds of actors: actors who are as good as the material you give them, actors you need to write around because they’re not as good as the material you give them, and actors who make everything better; every member of our cast is the third kind. When casting a comedy, it isn’t always easy to find people who can make the punchlines funny— but what you really need is people who can make the set-ups funny.

Question 2: How did you get so many big names to do voices for an animated show that hadn't even been created yet? - Anonymous, Reddit

Raphael: We have an amazing casting director, Linda Lamontagne, who has a good sense of who is looking to do animated stuff, and how to ask people who maybe hadn't considered it. I think a lot of actors enjoy doing voice over because it's nice change of pace from sitting in hair and makeup for hours and standing under hot lights. We keep thing very easy and fun. I think the Netflix brand helped us a lot, as did the names of the actors who had already done it. One guest actor said to me, "Well, I guess if Naomi Watts is willing to make a fool of herself like this, I can too."

IX. On Working with Netflix and Voice Actors

Question 1: What was the reaction when you guys found out you were getting picked up by Netflix vs. The traditional broadcast/cable model? Are you glad it worked out this way as opposed to the other? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: I am SO happy to be on Netflix. I honestly can't imagine making this show anywhere else. The coolest thing about their model to me, moreso even than the idea of people watching all the episodes together, is the idea that people are going to watch all the episodes IN ORDER. This is something I think we as audiences take for granted, but you CAN'T take it for granted when you're working on a show for a more traditional network. Traditionally, every episode needs to work as an entrance to the series even if you've never seen the show before. But here, we got to know that nobody's going to watch episode 7 unless they've already seen episodes 1-6, so we didn't have to constantly reintroduce the characters and the premise, AND we could have the characters and the premise CHANGE. This influenced EVERYTHING we did, from background stuff, like the burnt ottoman and the Hollywoo sign, to setting up jokes and stories in early episodes (like Vanessa Gekko, Dr. Hu, the Beast Buy receipt) that we knew would pay off MUCH later.

Question 2: Did you guys approach Netflix with the idea or was it the other way around? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: I pitched the idea to Tornante, developed it with them, and then we pitched it to Netflix. Netflix was definitely NOT on the lookout for weird sad adult cartoons about washed up celebrity talking horses.

Question 3: How much of a creative input did Aaron Paul (Voice actor of Todd Chavez and Producer) have? What's he like as a creative mind? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: Creatively, Aaron Paul mostly lets us do our thing -- obviously he would speak up if he felt the show was going in a weird direction, but he loves the show and is always excited to get the new scripts. He's been one of our biggest cheerleaders, which has been awesome. When we were trying to sell the show, he made a lot of phone calls and really threw his weight behind this. He is one hundred percent as gracious and lovely in person as you would think he is. My favorite fun fact about Aaron Paul is that he is a great-uncle. Not just an uncle, a great-uncle! Aaron Paul! Think of your great-uncle and imagine it was Jesse from Breaking Bad.

Question 4: And, how is it like working with stars such as Aaron Paul and Alison Brie (Voice actor for Diane Nguyen)? Any funny stories? - Anonymous, Reddit

Raphael: All of our actors are phenomenal to work with. In my experience there are three kinds of actors:

1) Actors that are as good as the material you give them.

2) Actors that aren't as good as the material you give them that you need to learn how to write to their strengths.

3) Actors who just elevate everything.

All of our actors are the third kind. You can give them setups to other people's punchlines, and they can make the setups funny.

Question 5: How much of BoJack's line delivery did Will Arnett influence? Did he have free reign (pun intended) to experiment with delivery? - Anonymous, Reddit.

Raphael: Always! Our actors are so good, they need very little direction. We go through the script one line at a time and they give me three or four different reads back to back. Then if there's something else I'm looking for, I'll try to nudge them in a different direction, but the first takes are always just their own instincts. If we have time, they can also play around a little with the words and add their own ad libs. For example, a lot of the stuff that Mr. Peanutbutter shouts at Erica was ad libbed by Paul F. Tompkins.

Question 6: What does Will Arnett smell like?? - Anonymous, Reddit

Raphael: He smells like whatever you want him to smell like, lol.

X. On BJ's Opening Credits

Question: Hi! So, I'm wondering, if the Bojack opening credits are in any way referencing the opening scene of Sunset Boulevard? Specifically I mean the camera angle of Bojack in the pool from his POV, staring out from inside up into the sky. That's almost exactly how SB opens, we see Joe dead in the pool, with the camera angle facing upward into the sky. Thank you for bringing amazing people together to make this show, I love it so much, the satire just gives me so much life. Have a great day :) - Anonymous, Tumblr.

Raphael: Hey! The opening credit sequence was conceived and directed by Mike Robers, so I passed your question along to him.

Mike Robers (Director): I’m worried that my answer might be a little boring. I’ve never actually seen Sunset Boulevard! But I have a feeling that that film is so a part of the zeitgeist that I’m inadvertently stealing it. It’s so often in films as a metaphor - The Graduate - or probably the most imprinted version for me is from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. I definitely feel like I’ve seen that shot a million times before. So I guess the visual reference to S.B. is inadvertent - but a fitting one nonetheless.

While we’re talking about the opening sequence, I’ve seen some people grumble online about how BoJack’s deck is seemingly too shallow to contain a pool that deep. My stock answer to that complaint is that BoJack’s pool, like BoJack himself, is deeper on the inside than it is on the outside.

X. On Interviews of Other Writers.

Tam’s Note: One of the main reason why the storytelling of BoJack Horseman is so good, is because the show has a board of amazing writers with diversed background and years of experience. Raphael gives the writers a lot of freedom and ownership to write the story they wanna tell, and together, they create this masterpiece. One of the hit-hardest episode is “The View from Halfway Down”, exploring the theme of life and death, in the last season, written by Alison Tafel. Below here is a poem, written by Alison for Secretariat. It’s about the moment when he’s about to jump off the bridge.