Digman! Star Andy Samberg And Co-Creator Neil Campbell Wanted To Blow Out Jokes But Be Cinematic [Exclusive Interview]

This month, Comedy Central is bringing a new adult animated adventure comedy series to television. "Digman!" stars Andy Samberg as the titular archaeologist, a blend of Nicolas Cage's "National Treasure" character (complete with an eccentric variation of Samberg's trusty Cage impression from "Saturday Night Live") and Indiana Jones. Once a celebrated hero in the world of archaeology, the death of his wife over a decade before and a harsh betrayal by his sidekick has sent Rip Digman into a pathetic spiral. Today, he finds himself aging and out of shape, living an unhappy existence taking little jobs for rinky-dink museums around the world. But adventure is still out there, and so are plenty of laughs.

"Digman!" is co-created by Samberg himself along with "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" writer and producer Neil Campbell, and the two have brought an absurd sense of humor and a surprising dose of sci-fi to the classic adventure formula. The series has flairs of "Rick and Morty" without venturing into alien or multiverse territory, but it's Digman's taste for adventure in the face of sheer inadequacy and an endless stream of dated colloquialisms that make him endlessly entertaining. Plus, there's an outstanding ensemble cast and assembly of guest stars surrounding the adventurer that will hopefully turn "Digman!" into the next adult animated hit. If you need any more convincing, you can watch the "Digman!" trailer right here.

Leading up to the show's premiere on March 22, we spoke with Andy Samberg and Neil Campbell about the series, including some surprising influences from classic cinema, trying to stand out from the influx of adult animated shows, making a comedy series that feels truly cinematic, planting plenty of Easter eggs, and much more.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Campbell: All right, /Film, one of my bookmarks.

Oh, amazing! Perfect. I love hearing that. So how long has this idea been percolating between you guys? Obviously you worked on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" together, and part of me thinks this would've made a hilarious movie in the vein of "MacGruber," but I imagine it's probably cheaper and easier to execute as animation.

Samberg: Well, I'm not going to say what the budget on "MacGruber" was, but I think probably still this was less. [laughs] We wanted to make an adult animation show together because while working on "Brooklyn," we kept talking about wanting to collaborate on something, because we always just love each other's comedy, basically. The baseline idea was wanting to make something where we never had to cut any of the jokes that we liked. So adult animation sprang to mind. Pretty sure sprang is a word. That kind of set us in motion, and then we ended up here.

Campbell: Yeah, and I think we also would talk about how sometimes you're just limited by physical production and budget and stuff in live-action. We had a great time working on "Brooklyn," and we learned a lot too, but I think we were like, "Let's try to do something where we can just blow out jokes and bits and stuff to an insane degree."

Samberg: And have someone hanging out of a helicopter.

Campbell: Yeah.

Is there any significant difference between creating comedy for live-action and animation? I feel like animation opens up the comedy potential along with the set pieces, because you can basically do anything.

Samberg: Yeah, the set pieces can definitely be a lot bigger. There's things we can do in animation that if you did it live-action would cost like $20 million for a stunt. And in animation, it costs the same as doing a scene with two people in a room talking, essentially.

Do you feel like there are still limitations, though, where you find out maybe there are things that you can't do just because maybe it's too big or too outlandish?

Campbell: Yeah, there's always a little bit of that. Like we can't make every episode have a hundred scenes with 500 extras and stuff like that. There's little things you keep in mind. We also had to learn throughout the process, too. As we write stuff, we kind of work with our great producers and animators.

Samberg: We would learn when we had asked for too much when a lot of people would be shadows and silhouettes. We'd be like, "Oh yeah, we pushed it too far."

Campbell: Getting someone in the foreground. It's like there's a big crowd. Now most of them are blocked off because it's over the shoulder in the foreground.

Samberg: Be like, "Yeah, we should probably check ourselves here. We're asking for too much."

Campbell: Yeah, yeah.

Andy, correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like you dusted off your "SNL" Nic Cage impression for Digman, but just with a little more eccentricity in his speech patterns. How did that voice decision come along?

Samberg: I would say you're not wrong. It definitely was the jumping off point for this. And then we obviously changed everything else. So it's not him, it's this new character in this new world in this new universe, but there was certain things about the pitch and tenor and rhythm of it that transferred over. That was one of my favorite things that I did on "SNL," and it culminated in actual Nic Cage coming on the show and doing it with me, which was a career highlight. So I wanted to continue doing something like that without actually doing that, and this ended up being the perfect vehicle for it.

You guys include Indiana Jones for a gag here. Is there ever any hope or chance you think you could properly have Indiana Jones on screen or even Nic Cage's "National Treasure" character Benjamin Gates for a crossover?

Campbell: Indiana will pop up on the screen, but it's sort of our universe's version of Indiana Jones.

Samberg: Yeah, and I think we sort of have Gates walk through in the foreground of a shot. Right?

Campbell: Yeah, you might need to have the pause button ready, but you might see him.

Oh, perfect. Yeah, because the one character I did notice like that was a background extra dressed exactly like Laura Dern's character from "Jurassic Park."

Samberg: Yes!

Campbell: Exactly, yes.

Samberg: Very astute!

Campbell: Yeah. There's little nods to some of the stuff we love throughout the show.

That's great. During the writing process, do you guys have just a huge list of those dated colloquialisms and phrases that Digman spouts off at any given moment? Because that was some of my favorite stuff throughout the episodes that were provided.

Samberg: Yeah, we've definitely been doing some Googling.

Campbell: Sometimes it's a hybrid of a real thing meets a fake thing, or we find a real one and then we kind of take one step to the side and kind of come up with an analogous version of something. But yes, definitely a lot of digging into old text.

Samberg: That was a big cornerstone of why we loved the character, all of his sort of old-timey-isms. "Giving me a case of the Zorros," and stuff like that. That makes me laugh every time. It's just, all the old phrases are so cool and weird and specific, and I never would've in a million years known about them, unless I watched every movie from that era and happened upon one, or if we actually did what we're doing here, which is research them to bring them back.

Speaking of which, did you guys have a frame of reference for other media that you were referencing, whether it was other animated series or old time adventure movies and serials? Obviously Indiana Jones and "National Treasure" are big influences, but any other ones that people might not realize?

Campbell: There are a bunch throughout. I would say the pilot even has a little bit of John Huston's "The Man who Would Be King," as a little bit of an inspiration for that. When you get to episode 5, it has some design inspiration from "Logan's Run." It has some Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" inspiration. There's a character based on Jacqueline deWit's character in "All That Heaven Allows." But I would say, as opposed to "The Simpsons," where sometimes you're like, here is a parody of "2001" or whatever, it's more of like, "Oh, sometimes this would inspire us and we take it in our own direction." But there's not a lot of specific film parody scenes. There's definitely a lot of inspiration throughout the whole thing, for sure.

I was really surprised that there was so much sci-fi in the show, because I was expecting more of just the classic old-school adventure with the archeological kind of stuff. But you guys really inject a lot of sci-fi in here.

Samberg: Yeah, I can't help it. I just love it.

Campbell: We sort of had some internal rules where we would be no aliens and no multiverses and stuff like that, but definitely we just love so much genre type stuff. Sci-fi, horror, fantasy — and a lot of that stuff creeps into the show, inspiring us in different ways.

I also wanted to ask, who is the "Mad Magazine" nerd on the writing staff? Because there are two oddly specific "Mad Magazine" references. I looked them up and they are real deep cut references.

[Campbell and Samberg laugh]

Campbell: They're real, yeah. I think those might both have come from me, but that doesn't mean I'm the only "Mad Magazine" nerd on staff.

Samberg: Well, this will give you an idea of how in sync Neil and I are. I was not privy to that joke at all until I saw it in an outline or script. But I had that issue of "Mad Magazine" with the California Raisins on the cover. I was like, "Oh yeah, I know the one he's talking about." [laughs] Oh, right, "RoboSlop," yeah, yeah, yeah.

What was the character design process for the series? I know in animation, typically, you have concept art before you have the cast assembled. But were there any changes made to the characters once you had voice actors attached?

Campbell: One thing that was nice, Andy and I just wrote this together before we even pitched it, because we wanted it to just be exactly the type of show that we would want to see and want to make and not anything beyond that. So we wrote it together, and we were really happy with the script. Then we had seen this artist's work online, and we really liked it. We reached out to him, and he worked with us to do the initial character designs and got them into a place where everyone was really happy and excited. So that became part of the pitch. That was before the cast was involved, so once everyone was cast, and once they needed to figure out how we were actually animating these characters, there were some slight changes, but they're pretty close, to be honest, to what it originally was.

Were there any previous shows that had a kind of animation style that you wanted to emulate?

Samberg: We were hoping to have it feel like its own thing, but I know that's hard because there's such an influx of adult animation.

Campbell: Well, we wanted to have a cinematic style. I know we'd say this to the animators, we were like, "I'm sure every f***ing writer you ever meet with says, 'I want it to be cinematic.' But we want it to be cinematic with a real Amblin, '80s sort of feel to it.'" So that was a part of it. Beyond that, it was kind of action sort of cartoons, action animation, but with something where, if you've just seen it on a billboard, they have big eyes and it's clear that it's a comedy. So I think it was finding that blend of like, "Oh, there's actual physics and people can fall and get hurt. And it's not pure 'Looney Tunes' reality." But also giving it so that our characters can be really expressive and unhinged.

You guys have a massive list of guest stars on this show. It's great to hear whoever pops up on in each episode. The one I'm most curious about is Edgar Wright. Can you tell me who he's playing and how that came about?

Samberg: So Edgar's a friend of mine, and I made this thing for HBO called the "Tour De Pharmacy," which was about the Tour de France. It was a mockumentary, and he played the sports announcer in that who was sportscasting the Tour de France. So we have an episode of this show where there's another sporting event that happens in the UK. So I was like, "Oh, I gotta ask Edgar again. He's my go-to British friend who does sports announcing for some reason." He understood why that was stupid and funny and found the time to come do it again, and he was great, of course.

Campbell: And then he pops up as a couple other sort of minor characters throughout the episode, too, like one-line roles, and he was very funny doing those as well.

That's awesome. Speaking of which, Neil, I saw you're credited as a voice on every episode that we previewed. What are the voices that you provide?

Campbell: I do many one-line roles as well, kind of filling the blanks. That was another thing as we were writing, we were like, "It's animation. You can have a bunch of characters." Then you sort of get in the process, and you're like, "So every actor can do three roles." We're like, "Oh, whoops. We need to cast people." So a lot of it was filling in the blanks here and there. But I do Fleety the monkey, a lot of his squeaks. Sometimes it's actual animal speak. Sometimes if it's a little more, if we need something specific, it's me.

Samberg: Neil is Fleety, the cat's out of the bag!

Campbell: I'm Fleety and Snerdly Twobottom later on, that's my other kind of showstopper role.

Excellent.

Andy, as I wrap up here, I wanted to ask, what are the odds that we might see another Lonely Island project again in the future, whether it's an album, a movie or whatever? I know everyone has been busy with their other projects, but I hope that there's a reunion coming sometime in the future.

Samberg: Yeah, me too. It's funny, we did our first ever tour a little bit before Covid started.

Yeah, I saw you guys in Detroit. It was amazing.

Samberg: Oh, awesome. Yeah, that was a fun show. Who opened? [Tim] Meadows opened, right?

Yeah.

Samberg: Yeah, Detroit's own! We don't have an immediate plan, but we're running our company together. So for us, off-camera, it feels like we're working together all the time. But every time one of us finishes something, they start texting the other two, being like, "When are we going to make another album? What are you guys doing?" Then as soon as they start something else, then it's someone else's turn. So between kids, and Jorma [Taccone] lives on the East Coast, and projects and eight years of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," we're doing our best. But it has been hard, and we know that we're dumbasses for not doing it more, because it's always our favorite stuff in a lot of ways. But even this, they're producers on "Digman!," so we get feedback. But yeah, I don't have a good answer. I'm hoping soon is the short answer.

Have you heard, is there any potential for doing a "Chip 'n Dale" sequel? Because that was something I loved seeing, and I hope you guys get to do that again.

Samberg: Oh, awesome. Thanks. I really hope so. I am not sure how Disney decides what their barometer is for that. I know I'm down. I had so much fun doing that. I'm doing it with Akiva [Shaffer] and [John] Mulaney and just riffing it out. It ended up looking so cool. Going into it, their hope was to sort of pay a homage to "Roger Rabbit" a little bit, and maybe in an even more updated meta kind of way. And I thought Akiva and the writers and everyone did such a cool job. It really made me laugh.

Right on. Well, this was awesome. I'm so excited to see the rest of the episodes of "Digman!" because what I've seen so far is just hilarious.

Samberg: Awesome. Thank you.

Campbell: You're Ethan on /Film, right? Ethan Anderton?

I am, I am. Yeah, that's right.

Campbell: Awesome. Great work, man. I love your stuff.

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate it. Thanks for reading.

Campbell: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Samberg: I also enjoy /Film!

Thank you, thank you!

"Digman!" premieres on Comedy Central on March 22, 2023 at 10:30pm ET/9:30pm CT.