Our Set Visit to the Sketch Show of the Summer, “Friends of the People”

friends-of-the-people-set-visit

*FOTP makes its mid-season premiere on Thursday, July 16th at 10:30pm on TruTV*

May 15, 2015 Friends of the People Set Visit

In May, when the opportunity came up to visit the set of our favorite shows, we ran at the chance.  TruTV’s Friends of the People is one of the best sketch shows on television right now.

The show brings together seven young up and coming brutally funny talents. Lil Rel Howery, Keith and Kenny Lucas, Jennifer Bartels, Jermaine Fowler, Kevin Barnett and Josh Rabinowitz are not a sketch team.  They’re seven performers with stand up comedy and improv backgrounds, who got together in 2012 to pitch a sketch show. Season One was completely fresh and young and addictive, creating comedy sketches and man in the street pieces that combine social commentary with plenty of flat-out silliness and nonstop 90s references.  Season Two (well, season one and a half) premieres this Thursday, and the talent is promising that everything is bigger and better the second time around.  We’ve seen a few episodes and they’re exactly right.

The day of our set visit, the Friends of the People were shooting a courtroom scene in a chapel at Saint Josephs College in Brooklyn. It’s the perfect day for a set visit because the scene is a complicated shoot with Keith and Kenny Lucas playing multiple characters each, so the scene needs to be shot over and over again with costume and character changes. It’s also a perfect day to visit because behind the camera was a surprise – Bobcat Goldthwait is directing.

Watching a sketch show shoot is a blast. To see it all come together, being treated as straight as a film shoot with take after take, knowing in the end it will only last minutes, is as fun as it sounds. And to do it all without laughing out loud, challenging. After all, it’s the Lucas Brothers, and even when they’re playing it straight, it’s hysterical. Jen Bartels is playing the judge, and its hard to decide whether she’s a great actor or incredibly funny, because she’s also playing it pretty straight with a dead on Judge Marilyn Milian impression. And its also madly funny. It’s a toss-up.

It’s particularly cool to watch Bobcat direct. He’s mostly hands off, letting Jen Keith and Kenny find their rhythm, but even the smallest suggestions enhance the scene. Try this joke, a little more energy, and it might be funny if we try something a little different. Punching up the crowd reaction from the background actors, making a gasp louder, and even noticing that the performances are better when the actors who aren’t in the shot read their own lines instead of having a stand in do it, all add to the scene. The first take looked great from the back row, and honestly most of the subsequent takes had their own charms.

Everyone on the show is underrated, and they all work as a team, often hanging out on set even when they’re not needed, just in case they can help punch up a joke or just support.  And that’s saying a lot because their shooting days are long, and many of their pieces are pretty complex.  Everyone pays attention to even the smallest details. Jermaine had an idea for Josh who was playing the bailiff.  Jen thought it would be more authentic if she was holding papers.  Should she wear a ring or no ring? Should the background actors react? And then there’s the band…but to give any more detail would be giving too much away.

The scene was pretty brilliant, even in pieces.  No word yet on where in the season the courtroom sketch will land, but we can’t wait to check it out.

Watch FOTP’s  mid-season premiere on Thursday, July 16th at 10:30pm on TruTV

Twenty Things We Learned Talking to the Cast of Friends of the People

We also got to talk to the whole cast throughout the day- except for Rel who was out in Los Angeles doing some shooting for other projects. Here are 20 things we learned talking to the cast of Friends of the People.

1. Season two is crazier, weirder and has more of a budget than season one. There’s also a lot more action.  People get shot, people get run over, people fall off buildings. Some of the sketches will be more elaborate and involve longer storylines.

2.  Brian McKnight has a killer cameo in the first episode of season two as The Dark McKnight.

3. Kevin’s going to be back doing his Obama impression and it gets better. Keep an eye out for his ever-growing ears.

4.  The reason you see so many cameos from 90’s television stars, is that all seven castmembers grew up in the 90’s and love 90’s nostalgia. Everyone’s favorite cameo appearances so far have been Kel Mitchell (from Keenan and Kel) and Jaleel White (who played Urkel on Family Matters).

5.  The show in some ways owes its existence to the failure of an In Living Color reboot to get picked up. Kevin Barnett, Josh Rabinowitz, the Lucas Brothers and Jermaine Fowler all knew each other from doing stand up in New York City together. Then Jen Bartels and Rel Howery came in when they met Jermaine while working on the In Living Color reboot pilot.  After that didn’t work out, the seven got together and pitched FOTP.  It’s worked out great for them because now they get to do the same type of work, but now they are their own Executive Producers and writers, so there’s no big dog making all the decisions for them.

6.  Unlike SNL, they are writing and filming months before their episodes air, so they have to pick and choose their social and topical ideas carefully to makes sure they will still resonate in six months, which can be challenging.

7.  Josh Rabinowitz and Kevin Barnett are the head writers but all seven cast members write, and they have three other writers who aren’t in the cast– Halle Kiefer, George Anagnostakos and Hugh Moore. They all write for each other, and they all collaborate to help bring together ideas. They have pitch meetings to riff ideas, but their pitch meetings quickly turn to everyone making fun of Kevin, at least according to Jen.

8. Bobcat Goldthwait loves the show, and directed episodes in both season one and two. He had directed some of Chappelle’s show, and FOTP EP Michelle Armour had been a producer on Chappelle. When they were talking about possible directors, Michelle showed them a list of ideas, and everyone thought it would be pretty amazing if they could reach out to Bobcat. They sent him the pilot and he responded pretty quickly that he was down to direct some episodes. Jermaine describes him as ‘relaxing’ to work with, because he’s patient and lets you get your vibe down with a few takes before giving notes. Every day on the set Bobcat tells stories about things he’s done back in the day including some great Kimmel show stories. Extra fun fact, Bobcat jokes that FOTP has the most setups he’s ever seen.

9. Kevin Barnett had one night where he got high and watched a bunch of ghost movies and the next day pitched eight ghost sketches, one after the other. For some reason, everyone thought eight ghost sketches might be too many ghost sketches. Kevin discovered that the challenge of writing a ghost sketch is that apparently ghost logic is tough to write.

10. They shoot about 100 sketches each season and it takes about 10 weeks to shoot a season, so they’re shooting an average of 10 sketches a week, two a day.

11. Some of the funniest moments of the show have come about when a new joke pops up while shooting that wasn’t planned.

12. Jen majored in theater in college with a Meisner concentration. When she moved to New York, she planned to do Broadway but then found comedy when she thought she’d try a UCB class. UCB wasn’t as well known as it is now, but she was a huge Amy Poehler fan, and decided to take a shot. She fell in love with comedy, and it changed her life.

13.  A sketch called ‘Obviously Guilty’ was created for first season but it didn’t run, about a guy in court who is just obviously guilty. He looks like Paul Dano from Prisoners, with weird sweatpants and windbreaker jacket and hair like a creep from the 90’s.

14.  Jermaine is responsible for a lot of the pranks on the set and getting other castmembers to break. According to Josh, the worst break the cast ever had, took place while shooting season one when five of them broke at the same time. They were supposed to all be dead but were laughing the entire time and nobody could get it under control. After ten takes they still didn’t have a single usable one. Extra fun fact, Kevin says he bites his lip and pictures horrible things when he’s trying not to break.

15. Jen will be playing a male country singer for a season two sketch. The idea to have Jen play the male singer came from one of the assistants.

16. Some of the street pieces are done to tag a joke that was done for a scripted piece. They become bumper pieces rather than just ending on a graphic. Shooting the street pieces can take a long time and sometimes don’t work out. They use about 60% of what they go out to shoot.

17.  Jermaine Fowler character Mr. Huffton returns, this time as a swimming coach who has a fear of water. At first Jermaine resisted bringing Huffton back but the Network really liked it, and he ended up loving the sketch. Unfortunately, Jermaine forgot that he doesn’t know how to swim, so floaties got written into the scene. Mr. Huffton originally came from an idea Jermaine had when he was 19 years old.

18.  In season one, there was a scene where Kevin drops a container of fried rice and the fried rice had to fall in a very precise way. They got the shot in one take, and it was perfect.

19. Kevin worries that if he doesn’t knock on wood after saying how lucky they are, everything will crumble and his life will fall apart.

20. Nobody can tell the Lucas Bros apart easily.

FOTP makes its mid-season premiere on Thursday, July 16th at 10:30pm on TruTV.  Season two features guest appearances from Seaton Smith, David Alan Grier, Rachel Dratch, Ellen Cleghorne, Jim Norton, Jeff Ross, Doug E. Doug, and Ed Lover.

 

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