Tooning Out The News Showrunner Dishes on Viral Interviews With Dershowitz, Rick Wilson: When They Get Mad, ‘They’re Getting Upset at a Cartoon Character’

From Tooning Out the News

Tooning Out The News, CBS All Access’ animated political satire has been parodying top news stories and interviewing real-life guests throughout the 2020 election, overcoming challenges brought on by the global pandemic — often to viral success.

Executive produced by Stephen Colbert, RJ Fried, Tim Luecke, and Chris Licht, the series provides daily segments and interviews featuring a group of cartoon hosts led by mock anchor James Smartwood — voiced by Fried.

The daily episodes feature short interviews from the series’ mock news programs, which include Big News, Hot Take, Inside the Hill, and Virtue Signal. The segments ultimately lead up to a full weekly episode, paralleling a typical cable news channel. Fried, who used to work at MSNBC, essentially wanted to make a cable news show with a twist. He approached Luecke to see if they could create a series where cartoon hosts paralleled actual news anchors, and interviewed real politicians, pundits, and media figures — ultimately shaping the mold for Tooning Out the News.

The genesis of the cartoon program was well-timed, given the direction of the entertainment industry in 2020. “The show is kind of a peanut butter and chocolate situation,” Luecke told guests at a virtual Tooning Out the News live event in late July. “RJ was developing this pitch for basically a mirror of cable news… Separately, Chris [Licht] and I were having conversations about more animated content we could create that would live within the Late Show brand and be part of that topical, political umbrella.”

Luecke decided that any additional cartoon content could compliment Fried’s news segments in the form of cold opens — explaining that the animation team would take footage from the past 24 hours and heighten it with surreal animation. But just as the series creators were perfecting their daily animation process, which included complementing each mock news cable segment with political cartoons created that day, the coronavirus pandemic hit — forcing the cast and crew to adapt some plans.

“We had this whole studio set up in the Ed Sullivan Theater, once Covid hit, obviously that was off the table,” Fried told Mediaite. “And so, we had to switch up our process, where now we create a radio play and then it’s shipped off to animators who are in their homes to animate it.”

Fried revealed that not only did they have to delay the series due to the pandemic, but also that continuing production of an irreverent cartoon remotely was not always a guarantee, particularly considering they would be debuting at such a fraught time.

“There was another week of just the fact that it’s a really tough time. And how do you make people laugh in this sort of unprecedented environment?” Fried said. “And it was another week of just trying to fit out the creative, and how do we make sure our characters aren’t being flippant about it, that the issues are engaging in the right way and the jokes are coming from the right place.”

But fortunately for the series, social distancing came with its own silver lining: It allowed the cartoon anchors to interview a range of guests, regardless of location.

The series has produced several viral interviews, including one where mock anchor Jonathan Keene asks Alan Dershowitz if he hates it when “Prince Andrew’s ass knocks over your drink?” Another infamous ambush is one between the hosts of Inside the Hill and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, during which the Never Trump pundit was pressed on questionable past tweets and support for President George W. Bush.

“In news media, there’s a certain politeness that I would say allows certain people to keep doing the wrong thing because they know that retribution probably will not come from polite media. We feel a comedic responsibility to break through that,” Fried said of potentially unhappy guests.

He noted that despite toeing the line, they’re always fair and never take guests out of context — adding that their goal is just to get to the truth in the funniest way possible. “Also, our cartoon characters can’t get sick,” he pointed out, giving these ‘journalists’  free rein to cover the 2020 presidential election, without the restrictions faced by real reporters on the campaign trail.

The show also plans on providing live coverage of the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions, which are set to start next week. “We are going to be animating it and performing it in real-time, with animators who are actually puppeteering as the performers are talking,” he said. “So, it requires a whole big team all at once. And then that goes right into edit. So we are getting our turnaround time to faster than we’ve ever gotten it. We’ll be taping and starting at 11:30 p.m., and have the segment off by 7:00 a.m. the next morning. A lot of late nights.”

Tooning Out has lined up several prime political guests in preparation for the election, including  Sarah McBride, national secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and the first transgender speaker at a major party convention. They have also booked Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Hillary Clinton, and from the RNC, conservative actor Dean Cain and conservative author and columnist Dick Morris.

As for dream guests? Fried would love if Smartwood could get the chance to interview Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“Joe has yet to appeal to the cartoon loving audience, and that’s what we’re here to accomplish,” Fried joked. “The thing about Joe, Joe is a fellow bro to Smartwood. Smartwood and Donny Deutsch had a great time. Mark Cuban, it was amazing. It was like looking in the mirror. So, you gotta imagine Smartwood and Joe Biden have a lot to talk about.”

President Donald Trump, on the other hand, would likely be featured on Tooning Out’s conservative-leaning segment Hot Take, just as he typically gravitates towards interviews with Fox News.

“It’s always a very long discussion of which show should we do. And it really all depends. Sometimes there’s just great contrast if there’s a very intellectual person. Putting them with the Hot Take crew is always just really fun. Because they’re just so much further ahead of the characters,” he explained.

Fried joked that Trump is living in his own “parallel universe,” so the characters would have to just get in as many shots as they could — hoping that viewers would laugh but also move forward with the information provided in a productive manner.

“I’m sure he would do just as fine as he does with any other cable news network,” he added. “The funniest thing though, like the Rick Wilsons of the world, is when people get upset, at the end of the day they’re getting upset at a cartoon character. And it comes across much sillier than it would, I would say, than a live-action show.”