INTERVIEW: Nick Rutherford dreams a little dream on hit Adult Swim show
Photo: Dream Corp LLC features the antics of staff members at a dream therapy facility. Usually everything goes wrong. Photo courtesy of Adult Swim / Provided by press team with permission.
Dream Corp LLC, the hit Adult Swim show, is back for a third season, and that means more dream therapy, plenty of rotoscope animation and bizarrely hilarious humor. The series, which plays Sundays at 12:30 a.m., follows the adventures of Dr. Roberts (Jon Gries) and his staff at the dream clinic. This new set of episodes features such guest stars as Rupert Friend, Sam Richardson, Bobby Lee, Karan Soni, Thomas Middleditch, Mindy Sterling, Jimmi Simpson and Baron Vaughn.
One of the most beloved characters on the show is 88, played by Nick Rutherford, an accomplished comedy performer and writer. He has been working with series’ creator, Daniel Stessen, since day one and loves the transformation that his “patient” character has gone through.
“We’re stoked,” Rutherford said about the new season. “We love this show so much, and everybody who sees it seems to love it as well. … I love playing 88. Without getting too heavy about it, I think he represents the audience’s way into the show. The show has so many of these outlandish, extreme characters of every shade, and I think 88 is the guy who holds up the magnifying glass for people to say, this is crazy, right? It’s OK if you think this is crazy because this is crazy. That’s what I do a lot in my daily life, so it works out.”
Rutherford auditioned for the role of 88 a few years ago, and he believes what won Stessen over was his dryness and ability to run a “pretty even-keeled ship.” Those qualities have bled over into the role. Even though there is outlandishness everywhere — like The Office on acid, as Rutherford put it — 88 stays pulled back.
“[He] goes through a lot of really fun things, like a drug trip,” the actor said. “There’s something else that happens to him in this season that I don’t want to spoil, but it’s even crazier. So I do get to dip into those worlds, but Danny the director always pulls it back. Nope, 88 is going to be more level-headed. He’s trying to keep it together. He just wants to get through the day. He just wants to keep your head down, maybe mutter something to yourself, but keep moving. It’s like a shark. Keep moving, and you can’t drown.”
When the series breaks into rotoscoping animation sequences, Rutherford and the rest of the live-action cast have a challenge they must overcome. In season one, for example, the dream scenes were so new and bizarre that it was difficult for them to understand what was happening and how they could alter their respective performances.
“But this is the third season now,” he said. “We’ve done it a bunch of times. Now I just fully trust the animation team, the editors. I’ll be riding around on a gym mat in a warehouse, inching my body along like an inchworm while smiling, and then somebody off-camera will feed me a piece of lettuce. They’re like, ‘You’re a tiny caterpillar on a giant woman’s hand, and you’re happy because you’re getting your lettuce. And then she’s going to swallow you, but you’re OK because you’re going to go down your slide.’ It’s pretty ridiculous stuff if you take yourself too seriously. I think you can easily start judging that. I’ve seen so much of it. I’ve been a part of so much of it, at this point I just can’t wait to see what they’re going to do with this animation and adding the 3-D effects to it. Early on, you’re like, OK, I’m an elf, and my tongue is very long. And I’m making out with Joey from Full House. OK, that’s good to know. I hope it works.”
Rutherford said that he and Stessen have different senses of humor, but they work well together. When they started collaborating on Dream Corp LLC, they became fast friends and realized their styles were complementary.
“I love puns,” Rutherford said. “Really dumb wordplay tickles me. We both kind of really enjoy physical humor, and as the seasons have gone on, we’ve kind of leaned less on the rotoscope element of it, mostly because I think we and the audience fell in love with the employees of Dream Corp LLC with all of our recurring cast members.”
He added: “As we got to know them, we started to write more and more following the inner-workings of this therapy facility. … Now all these non-animated, live-action comedic moments got very physical as well. It’s an aging scientific facility. Things are blowing up all the time. … It’s already part cartoon, so how do we bring cartoon elements into the live world? A lot of times in the show it becomes these very big physical comedy moments, like crazy stunts, explosions, blood cannon, lots of fire, too many fires. Burbank, California, where we shot it, wasn’t very excited about all the fires we had.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dream Corp LLC continues with new episodes Sundays at 12:30 a.m. on Adult Swim. Click here for more information.
