Adult Swim's new animated series Common Side Effects follows a world where, when eaten, a blue mushroom can cure everything—including death itself.
The story sees Dave King's Marshall reuniting with his old high school lab partner Frances (played by Emily Pendergast) for help after discovering the mysterious blue mushroom.
It turns out that an object with such intense medicinal powers is something that Big Pharma doesn't want to see come to light, and they'll do anything in their power to keep that from happening.
The Direct sat down with Common Side Effects co-creators Steve Hely and Joe Bennet, where they revealed why they chose a blue mushroom to be their mystical MacGuffin for the series.
Why a Magic Mushroom of All Things?
"Mushrooms Are Very Interesting and Weird..."
- The Direct: "The plot obviously revolves around a miracle blue mushroom that, when eating it, can cure anything. Why a blue mushroom?"
Steve Hely: Well, mushrooms are very interesting and weird, and I don't think we've begun to know everything about them. There are some that'll kill you, some that are delicious, and some that make you have strange mental experiences. And so it seemed like, close to plausible, that a mushroom could have this much power.
As for blue, it's just kind of visually interesting and exciting. And in the show, there's a little bit of backstory on how this mushroom evolved and came to be. And it just seemed like we wanted to indicate visually that this is something special and new that no one has seen before and that Marshall, our main character, discovers in this strange place as he's on this quest to try and find the weird cures that might still be out there.
Joe Bennet: And I think that mushrooms, in particular, have always kind of been sort of written off as, sort of fringe alternative kind of medicine. And so, and a lot of the characters... They're a little bit of a pariah in the science community. You know, they're not sort of taken seriously. I think that was another part of why it was like, okay, a mushroom makes sense, as opposed to, you know, a nut or something.
Hely: They've been around for longer than, like plants, [no one knows] where they came from, and the way they reproduce is very odd, and they're sort of mysterious, and they appear a lot in mythology, probably for these reasons.
- The Direct: "Were there any other variations considered, whether it be a red mushroom?... What were maybe some other options that were close but didn't make a cut?"
Hely: Well, there might be more to come on that, Russ.
- The Direct: "When they eat the mushroom, there's this really cool tripping scene every time it's used. Can you talk about designing that and figuring out how that was going to look on screen?"
Bennet: We were sort of cherry-picking from a lot of different things. One part of it was one of the first hangs I had with Steve was [we] went to his, he has a spot in Joshua Tree, right along the park. And it sort of has that, like desert terrain, I think that was a big influence on it.
And then also just kind of like trying to do something a little original with the sort of psychedelic approach to it all, and trying to be careful about not doing anything super cliche, and not avoiding the sort of tie-dye, kind of, you know, direction, and doing something on its own. But, yeah, a lot of those little motifs in the shapes and all that stuff was, I don't know, just random exploration. We pull it from a lot of different things.
What Was the Mission Statement for Common Side Effects?
"We Wanted to Say Something About the Way the World Is In 2025."
- The Direct: "When approaching this series, what was your mission statement?"
Steve Hely: I think we wanted to say something about the way the world is in 2025. We wanted to be real and natural and feel honest and true. We wanted it to be funny but with the comedy coming out of the real ways that people behave and not feel scripted and written.
We wanted the characters to really come to life. We wanted it to be an animated show that animation fans would be into, but it would also appeal to people who like 'Succession' and 'Breaking Bad,' and the cool prestige kind of shows that are out there.
And we just wanted to express something of this crazy thought experiment of, if people had a mushroom that could cure almost anything, what would happen? Who would be after them? Where would it take us? And be true to that. And we felt that if we did that, we'd make something that was funny and exciting and compelling.
- The Direct: "What were some key elements you wanted to make sure you baked into this series that aren't really in other adult animated shows?"
Joe Bennet: I think one part was just leaning into the naturalism and thinking about not only the way that the characters are talking to each other and that sort of thing, but even their postures, their poses, just feeling natural. They're setting up certain scenarios, situations that feel a little bit more real and grounded, which, you know, takes a lot of work and a lot of research.
It's all really fun stuff, but yeah, it was a challenge. And I think, to use the acting is a good example. I think a lot of the actors were kind of used to doing something that sounds a little bit more rehearsed, and for us to kind of be like, 'Well, no, we want you to just use your own voice, your own natural voice,' you know, like, I think that was a big goal of ours, and we wanted to lean into that as much as possible.
Steve Hely: Not making, cartoony is sort of a bad word for us, even though we love a lot of cartoons, but like to have that little stumbly, rough quality that real life has, and to try and get that into an animated show, seemed like a cool challenge.
Balancing the Heavy Messages and Themes
"We Did Not Want This to Feel Like a Soap Boxy Kind of Show."
- The Direct: "There are some heavy messages and themes woven throughout the show. How did you work to maintain that balance of still making sure that it didn't feel too preachy or take away from the humor too much?"
Joe Bennet: Another thing, we did not want this to feel like a soap boxy kind of a show. This is not a PSA... We wanted to kind of show all different angles and all different sides and make this sort of as as multi-dimensional as possible.
And have, with all the characters, for instance, there are, you could call them villains, but people that make bad decisions, but ultimately, our people, and there are many sides to them. I think that was a really important thing to go back to that we felt like it was sort of our anchor in the show.
Steve Hely: I mean, Big Pharma as this bad, it's warping that companies make profit off medicine, but on the other hand, like, who isn't happy to have Penicillin and medicine for when you're really sick. To see both sides and try and get the whole richness of it was a goal for us.
Casting the Perfect Lead Characters for Common Side Effects
The Creators Went Through a Ton of People Before Finding the Perfect Fit.
- The Direct: "The story follows Marshall and Frances, two former high school lab partners. Can you talk about casting both the perfect voices for those characters and also the challenge of crafting kind of the best duel you could on a narrative level?"
Steve Hely: Yeah, Dave [King], who plays Marshall, is a guy I've known for a long time, and he's not really, he's done some acting, but he's not really a professional actor, but he just had the right kind of voice. Joe had heard him talk quite a few times.
We have a podcast we do together, so Joe had heard him a lot. And then Emily Pendergast, who plays Frances I'd worked with on 'Veep,' and she just has a very natural, real, down-to-earth kind of sweetheart quality that didn't feel acting.
And we tried out tons of other people, and a lot of them were really great. But just trying to make these characters come to life with a vulnerability, and a sensitivity, and a range to them. They were just the right people to embody the designs that Joe had created.
Joe Bennet: I would just add that another part of it, too, is just that, you know, finding a lot of these actors, we would just because we were really trying to get them to do their natural voices.
A lot of the times during the casting process, we would sort of lookup instead of watching them play roles in certain movies, we'd watch interviews about them talking about the movies, you know, just to really get a sense.
And I think that Emily was so it was so easy for her to kind of like do that sort of natural and same with Dave, you know, it's just kind of they could get into this natural flow and have that natural cadence that we were looking for.
The entire spoiler-free interview can be viewed below:
The new animated series Common Side Effects debuts its first episode on Adult Swim on February 2.
