The Point Radio: CASUAL Is Comedy Served Up Dark

CASUAL is the new dark comedy produced by Jason Reitman exclusively for Hulu. We talk to series stars Tommy Dewey and Michaela Watkins about how thy walk the fine line between comedy and drama. Then meet Lizzie Velasquez, branded “the world’s ugliest woman” by an online bully who turned that into an inspiring new documentary called A BRAVE HEART.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. It's Mike Rodd back and I'm packed from New York Comic Con with a couple of things to share including a brand new buzzworthy series on Hulu. Called Casual. You'll meet the stars Tommy Dewey and Mikayla Watkins. Plus you'll also meet Lizzie Velasquez. She's the subject of a new documentary called Braveheart and it all began when an anonymous bully online said some pretty mean things. So how'd she react to that? Let's get to The Point.

This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Casual is the new dark comedy produced by Jason Reitman exclusively for Hulu. And one of the stars is Tommy Dewey who told me what the show's all about. This series is about a highly dysfunctional very needy brother and sister pair set against the backdrop of modern dating, sex, romantic relationships. And that provides a lot of the comedic fun of it. But at the heart of it is this really unique thing that I don't think people have seen before which is the relationship that my character has with Mikayla's character.

The Alex Valerie dynamic is really strange and open and honest and sometimes good and sometimes horrible. And we kind of explore every corner of it. Tommy's co-star is the very funny Mikayla Watkins who's entertained us on everything from Saturday Night Live to The Trophy Wife. And I asked her going from broadcast TV to Hulu, were there differences? I do. I mean I've been lucky I've gotten to do in the past some really fun roles and I wouldn't change that.

And I love those shows. They do an amazing thing. They're sometimes a little broader or whatever. But when you get into these digital platforms you can sort of do a show like ours which has such a different kind of a pace. And it's a slower way of telling a story. It takes its time. It doesn't feel like it needs to jam a bunch of information quickly. It sort of trusts the viewership that if they find the show then it's because it's totally the kind of show that they're into. So for me this is absolutely the kind of show I would watch. And creatively I don't think I would even be able to be sitting in such a juicy role with so much meat on the bone

if it wasn't for the fact that it was on Hulu because Jason Reitman who's our director and our executive producer, along with Sandra Lehman who wrote the incredible script, they decided Tommy, Dooley, Mikayla Watkins, those are the voices of these two people. And Hulu and Lionsgate got on board and said if that's what you feel then that's what you shall have. And it's not always that easy on other networks. Brad and Angelina are usually beating us out for those roles.

So is casual a comedy or a drama? I mean Tommy and I both know exactly where all the jokes are because we both do comedy but this was an exercise in almost avoiding those because the comedy is really born out of the character and their circumstances. Less about the written joke, joke, joke or the gag. And so even though there's plenty of jokes written in, they're very underplayed and they're very subtle. And this is just more, I would call this show more of a dramedy, you know, and it deals with very real situations and very relatable situations.

When we meet my character, she's at the status low point of her life and she's luckily, you know, this is a show about family, it's a show about hating, it's a show about sex. And so it makes for interesting content but it's all done in a very natural way. It's not, there's no sight tag. I also talked to Tommy about how he got started in show business. I kind of felt, when I was in college, I kind of fell backwards into a manager and ended up, you know, making a run at it in New York City, the Big Apple.

I started doing commercials, ended up on a few episodes of Guiding Lights. I love that show. And it actually took a play that I had written to Los Angeles and ended up with an agent on the West Coast. And I was subletting that place in Venice Beach and was like, just send me my furniture. I took it to the beach lifestyle.

And, you know, luckily it picked up from there and has remained consistent. But, you know, it was kind of by accident that someone said, hey, you know, I like doing this play, I'll give you a shot. And I decided to forego taking the LSAT and see what I could make of an acting career. Michaela's word was some of the funniest people in the business. So I asked her, what makes her laugh?

Oh, what makes me laugh? Me. Tommy Dooley makes me laugh. Tommy Dooley makes me laugh. He is twisting my arm real hard right now.

I'm getting a real blood burn here. He, what makes me laugh? Just, I have to say, this is a strange thing, but just catching off, being surprised by very honest moments. That's me. I'm trying to think of a good example.

I mean, the shows that I love to watch right now, you know, I just watched Glinder last night. You left my push-up. What makes me laugh, Tommy? What makes me laugh? I don't know.

We've been all day laughing. We've been all day laughing. Our job makes us laugh. We've blown a lot of film on this job. Pretending to be terrible people.

We have a lot of time in between, you know, takes where we take on these other personalities, and we pretend to be these awful people who are either visiting this set or we pretend to be each other's food sponsors because there's so much food on set that we have these all three of those that try to school each other on what is healthy to eat. And we have a good time doing it. This is not funny or interesting to anybody but us. New episodes of Casual turn up every week exclusively on Hulu.

Already some winners and losers in the new TV season. That's just part of what's going on in the world of pop culture. Of all the news to come out of Comic-Con, there's one tidbit that seems to be discussed over and over the past couple of days, and that is the addition of Paul Rubens to the cast of Gotham as a penguin's father. Rubens, better known to a lot of us as Pee-Wee Herman, actually played the penguin's father in the 1992 Tim Burton Batman Returns film then, and will do it again on the Gotham TV series with episodes set to debut in a few weeks. Key and Pee-Lor back, well, sort of.

They're executive producers on a new series that'll feature Vine star Andrew Batchelor playing an undercover cop that is determined to get back at the bullies that tormented him as a kid. The show, as we said, does not have a title yet, but it is scheduled to air on Fox. Pretty big dip for comic book sales in September and for what it looks like it's going to be kind of a week, third quarter for sales of comics within comic stores. Almost 20% is the dip when you compare it to what happened in September of last year. We'll give you all the numbers, including some of the best-selling comics in stores for the month of September coming up.

It's another new way to look at TV ratings, this time the shareable social TV ratings, the top US shows that are streaming on different services and how they rate overall by those people who tweeted and talked about them online over the past couple of weeks. In the top five, Orange is the New Black, Trailer Park Boys, Daredevil and House of Cards. Also in the top ten are Narcos and The Mindy Project from Hulu. ABC is looking to revive Fantasy Island, kind of. Well, you can start your jokes here because the pilot order includes a script that has not only a female Mr. Rourke, but also doesn't have an island at all.

Instead, it's a multinational corporation that caters to serving fantasies for its various clients. If this survives, we'll hear more about it coming up in pilot season. TV winners and losers this week include the Minority Report on the losing side, a 13 episode show. It's now been cut to 10 episodes by Fox. However, NBC gave Blind Spot a full season 22 episode order.

And over on CBS, they've decided to call an end to the summertime series, Extent, starring Halle Berry. Berry will continue with another project in the network with the show will have concluded with this past summer's second season. After a pretty good first half of 2015, comics took a dive when you look at the sales in comic stores for September. The number is almost a 20 percent dip when compared to where it was in September of 2014. And a lot of that blame goes to the people who were given the credit for the success for the first part of the year.

And that would be Marvel Comics. Some substantial delays in the Secret Wars titles are credited to giving the comic stores the problems they had with sales at the end of summer, which took away a lot of the shine for the success they had earlier in the year. All that being said, here is your top 10 best selling comics in comic stores for the month of September. And at number 10, it's Deadpool versus Thanos number two.

Number nine, Walking Dead number 146 from Image. Number eight, Justice League number 44, DC in again at number seven with Batman Annual number four. Amazing Spider-Man, Renew Your Vow's number five came in at number six. And number five, Darth Vader number nine from Marvel at number fourth, Deadpool versus Thanos number one. At number three, Batman number 44 from DC.

Number two, Star Wars number nine. And the biggest selling comic in the stores in the month of September from Marvel. Journey Star Wars Force Awakens, Shattered Empire number one. The point, the point. It was an online bully that labeled Lizzie Velasquez the world's ugliest woman.

And that began a story that's led to an award-winning documentary called A Brave Heart. Lizzie yourself filled in some of the details. I was born with a rare syndrome that doesn't allow me to gain weight. And with that, it caused me to look a lot different than the other kids. I was a lot smaller than the other kids.

So my eyes were definitely open to the world of being bullied at a very, very young age. Being called names and being stared at and whispered about was something that I had to deal with all through elementary school, middle school and high school. And as I was getting older and realizing more of the fact that I can't pull out my birthday candles and wish the syndrome would go away, it was never that easy.

So I had to find a way to how I was going to take control of the situation and make the best out of the cards that I was dealt. And that came in the form of becoming a motivational speaker, writing books, and now having a documentary. As far as the online bullying, when Lizzie stumbled onto that, well, almost accidentally. I was being a typical teenager, a typical 17-year-old, and procrastinating, getting homework, and really just looking for music to listen to on YouTube.

And I saw a photo on the right-hand side of the screen that looked a little bit familiar, and didn't realize when I would click on it, it would change my entire world. I went from finally building up enough confidence to where I was proud of who I was, to then within five seconds of seeing this video, it just completely was gone. When that happened, how did you react?

Did you try and – did you combat it? Did you comment against it? Did you try to reach out to the people who did this, or did you just take it all into yourself? I think my first initial reaction was total shock. I think if anyone imagined being in my position and unexpectedly finding a video with such a harsh title,

with over four million views and comments ranging from saying the world would be a better place if I wasn't in it. It was one of the most helpless feelings in the entire world. And I, of course, cried my eyes out. I went from being very upset to then being very angry to then, what am I going to do next? Because the video was actually multiplied many, many times.

And at the time, YouTube was fairly new, so all we knew what to do was flag the video. And I think the person that posted it got a notification or something, and he ended up contacting me, and basically just said, no matter how many times you try, I'm just going to keep posting this video over and over and over. So how did this lead into the documentary? I did a TED Talk in December of 2013, and Sarah Bordeaux directed and produced that event.

And after I did the talk, it went viral pretty quickly, and it was very exciting and overwhelming. And I finally was able to have one-on-one time with Sarah. We went to lunch, and I was just expressing that I had finished college. I was wanting to figure out what was the next step for me. And we just continued talking for hours, and she called me a couple days later and said, I have this crazy idea,

but I think I'm meant to shine a light on your story, and I want to do it through a documentary. And I right away said, I'm in life to do this. So why is it we don't realize that cyberbullying truly is a major crime? I mean, I think the easiest answer would be that social media now and hiding behind the computer screen is just so easy at any age. I don't think a lot of adults realize that kids are being bullied online 24-7.

It doesn't just happen in schools. And one of the things I noticed after my talk had went viral was there would be 10 super positive comments on one photo, and one person would say something not so nice. And all of a sudden, those 10 people would go right back to them and bully the bully back, basically. So I think being aware of that situation and starting to have an open dialogue about that is very, very, very important.

A Braveheart, the Lizzie Velasquez story. You can catch it in theaters all around the country and even at Video One Demand as well. And for more information, go to tugtugg.com. Good point. That's it for the podcast, but there are bunches away to stay in touch with us.

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