Forget the cookie. The crackers crumble with reckless abandon in Adult Swim’s latest animated comedy, Royal Crackers. Created by and starring Jason Ruiz (Murder Police), the hilarious new outing also features the voice talents of Andrew Santino (Dave), Jessica St. Clair (Veep, Review, Avenue 5), David Gborie (Exploding Kittens), and Maile Flanagan (Tiger and Bunny, Not Dead Yet).
There’s no shortage of wit, verve, and dark comedy in Royal Crackers. The premise revolves around a Bakersfield family’s once-thriving cracker company dynasty that’s now suddenly up for grabs. Seems the titular Royal Crackers — the cracker corporation in the show — was once the big king of snacks, but things have gone stale. When the family patriarch and prickly company founder Theodore Hornsby Sr. winds up in a “super coma,” the Hornsby clan use their lack of real talent and business panache to make Royal Crackers the mega success it once was.
Ruiz, always on the mark, said of the show: “Like most kids, when I was a young child, I had the stereotypical dream of making an animated television program about a mediocre cracker company and the family of desperate weirdos who run it. In this childhood dream, I wanted it to air on linear TV and then stream on an app the following day. Thank you to Adult Swim and HBO Max for making that little pipe dream come true.”
The stars of Royal Crackers, Jessica St. Clair, David Gborie, and Maile Flanagan, shared more about the series and their characters in this exclusive MovieWeb interview.
Royal Crackers Is Succession on Steroids
A quick peek at the trailer says it all. Royal Crackers seems to raise the creative stakes for shows about family businesses. Think an amped-up version of Succession by way of Family Guy here. “The only thing that you run,” quips one family member in the show, “is that stupid mouth of yours!” Meanwhile, another barks, “Say it with me: We are part of the upper crust.” (Wink, wink.)
“Nothing against a lot of the comedy out right now, but it has this specific voice or tag,” said David Gborie, who plays Darby in the show, the clan’s off-kilter lawyer. “I think that there’s a place for that, but I think right now a lot of people just want to laugh at silly, weird, goofy stuff. They want to laugh at a family fighting a bunch of mutant chickens, and battling over the stakes of, quite honestly, a mid-level of cracker company.”
One scene early on finds Gborie’s Darby using the restroom and instead of using toilet paper resorts to using the last will and testament of the family patriarch. You read that right.
“Everybody’s got their freak on here,” added Gborie. “Basically, the message of this show is like, embrace the weirdo that you are, and at the end of the day your family has your back, because they’re probably even weirder than you.”
They’re Royally Screwed
Jessica St. Clair and Maile Flanagan beam with joy when talking about Royal Crackers, immediately noting its fiery comedic twists. For St. Clair, the outing was relatively a brand-new experience for her because she came from live-action television.
“When I first read the script for the audition, I was like, ‘I have to get this part!’” shared St. Clair of her standout character Deb. “It was hilariously funny. And that’s the thing — the scripts are just really, really good. And that’s very rare, honestly, that you get a script which is that well written. Creator Jason Ruiz has such a clear vision, and it’s unique. It’s cool when people use the animated form right because you can do anything, so many more things you can’t do with live action, which is what I do mostly. It was really exciting to be part of something where you can literally go anywhere creatively.”
She noted that one other impressive thing about the show in her eyes is, “that you can watch it over and over again. There are so many jokes packed into such a short amount of time. I think it’s going to become a cult favorite in that way where you can just want to watch it. What’s lovely about this show is at the end of the day, this very weird family really does love each other. And I think right now, with all the insanity that’s going on in the world, like […] this is kind of cozy. They may be fighting zombie chickens, but at the end of the day, they have each other’s back and I think we need that energy right now.”
Maile Flanagan on Animation
Maile Flanagan is no stranger to lending her unique voice acting talents to passionate endeavors. The actor won an Emmy for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks back in 2006. Here she takes on the character of Matt, a young boy. While the actor has played a lot of boy characters before, of different ages, with this one, the context was, “so out there.”
“To me, it was just perfect,” said Flanagan. “But I knew we had to be sort of steady and grounded in the middle of a train wreck. And I’m not even sure I got the whole script at first [prior to production]. But I do remember saying to my agent, ‘I have to read the whole script.’ Because it was really funny, and I had to understand this whole crazy, outrageous world Jason created. As Matt, I’m sort of watching the whole thing, and, you know, laughing my ass off. He’s an observer. I feel like I’m in this show, but observing it as a fan, which is kind of a weird, unique place to be.”
When asked if there was a certain art or “trick” to successfully capturing the voice of an animated character, Flanagan mused: “At first you just give your own spin. They [the creators] will lead you through the process, and then there’s that unique collaboration. Like when I was doing the episode with the dummy, where I took over the ventriloquist dummy, I always begged to get those scripts early, because they’re so dense. And if you don’t pay attention to the script, you have no idea what’s happening. It’s so out there — he has the dummy, and then… what’s the dummy voice?
“I think we were all very fortunate because Jason just dove right in with collaborating,” said Flanagan. A collaborative comedy conconction with a great cast, Royal Crackers airs Sundays at 11 p.m. on Adult Swim and debuts on HBO Max April 3.
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