By: Clare Daly/Staffwriter
The sophomore season of Netflix’s hit series American Vandal once again follows high school documentarians Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck). After the success of the Dylan Maxwell documentary in Season 1, Peter and Sam are asked to investigate a crime at St. Bernardine Catholic High School in Bellevue, Washington. The student body is asking “Who is the Turd Burglar?”, and it’s up to Peter and Sam to find out. I spoke with Dan Perrault, co-creator of the show, about awards, Pac-Man, and his process for crafting Season 2.
First things first, your Instagram bio says you’re the 3rd place champion in Pac-Man at the Hollywood Dave & Buster’s. Is that true?
I was at a time, I’m probably not anymore. When I got that record, that was very early at Dave & Buster’s Hollywood, it had only been open for 2 weeks, which is probably why I was able to nab that 3rd place record. Having said that, I am the number one all-time in a sandwich place in Pittsburgh now. I got that two days ago, and as soon as I got that, I went to my Instagram bio and was like, “I’m going to change it to “1st place at Mike and Tony’s Pittsburgh.”, but the joke didn’t work anymore, so I was like, “I’ll keep it as the Hollywood Dave & Buster’s”.
Good to know. It’s not often that show created by adults, even if they are millennials, portray Gen Z’s social media habits, general mannerisms, and slang so well. Did you receive any help from kids with this, or have you just kept up with the trends?
That’s a funny question. I would say it’s a combination of those things. Do I know younger people? Yes… and we’re personally on Instagram and Twitter, but yes, we talked to younger people as well. We just finished talking to a large group of high schoolers. Anyways, we did interview younger people. Our showrunner has a teenage stepson, so that helps. I guess another part of coming off as authentic is not doing the things that other shows do, like stereotyping kids and placing everyone into a convenient, archetypal box. We try to avoid both teen stereotypes and TV types. A lot of characters in Season 2 feel like they need to fit a certain type, so that’s where the element of stereotyping comes in, but the comment we’re trying to make is that kids feel they need to fit those stereotypes [in which] they might not truly feel like themselves.
Circling back to the social media element of the last question, is everything that’s viewed as social media or iPhone content on the show shot on an iPhone?
Everything that’s meant to look like it’s shot from an iPhone, is actually shot from an iPhone, and we rarely alter the audio; we want it to feel as authentic as possible.
As creators, how involved are you and co-creator Tony Yacenda with casting, especially in Season 2? Was there anyone who stood out?
From the casting office to us, what happens is for each major role they’ll send us a list of audition videos from their favorites. Tony and I, and other producers of the show, then watch those videos and then we talk about who are favorites are and who we want to come in for a callback. But we also keep people in mind who might not be perfect for the role they auditioned for but would be a good fit somewhere else. An example of that is the kid who played Paul Schnorrenberg, Miles J. Harvey. You spend so much time trying to cast your lead roles that sometimes…you realize you’re three or four weeks out from production and you still have to fill out your cast. A lot of the people we cast originally auditioned for something else.
Twitter icon and up-and-coming comedian Jaboukie Young-White was a writer this season! What was the hiring process like for him?
Jaboukie is a smart kid, and I shouldn’t call him a kid, but he is the youngest in the room. This is also kind of an answer to a question you asked earlier, how we get into the minds of young people… Jaboukie helps us with that, because not only is he young himself, but he’s very in tune with teenagers. He was super helpful and is a great comic. He’s a great joke writer and his social commentary is on point.
You attended your first Emmys this year!
It’s super fun! We did not win, nor did we expect to, but that’s okay! I actually loved the one that won [Black Mirror]. Netflix is nice enough to invite us to all the events surrounding it. “For Your Consideration” is somewhat of a campaigning season for award shows, and the billboards and they take over the whole city. We had a really fun event where we interviewed with Marcia Clark, the prosecutor of the O.J. case. She tweeted that she liked our show, so we asked if she’d moderate our FYC panel. This was our first Emmys, but there’s a long road of events that lead up to it.
What was it like finding out you were nominated?
It was interesting…we chose to submit as a limited series as opposed to a comedy series, because each season is its own story that really doesn’t connect to the previous season, except for Peter and Sam continuing to be our documentarians. We were not nominated for Best Limited Series, but then we got a very nice email from our PR team telling us that we’d been nominated for Outstanding Writing, and specifically, Matt and Kevin McManus who wrote the script to our finale last year.
Speaking of the Emmys, you met John Mulaney there! What was he like?
I’ve gone through about six years of constant comparisons to him, mostly just physically. When I was at the Netflix afterparty, I saw him, and I had to tell him that. We took a picture together, and I guess we look even more similar with our eyes closed!
Belated congrats on your Peabody Award!
Thanks! That was a really rewarding night. The difference between that and the Emmys show is with the Emmys, you know you’re nominated, but you don’t know what’s going to win. When you’re at the Peabody, everyone’s getting the equal award. It’s a very positive, nice atmosphere. We got to meet so many cool people who inspired our show.
You’ve said that American Vandal is inspired by podcasts like Serial and series like Making A Murderer. Were you able to meet the people behind those?
We got to meet a lot of the people behind Serial and S Town, including Sarah Koenig, and she couldn’t have been nicer. I don’t think there is an American Vandal without Serial.
With all the success and virality that came with Season 1, did you struggle at all with coming up with ideas for this season?
That’s a question you never want to ask yourself, as a writer, “how can we live up to the success of the first season?”. You just have to write what entertains you, what you find interesting and funny, and not worry about it being as good as the first go around. We never worried if Kevin was going to be as funny as Dylan, or is DeMarcus going to be as good as Alex, we never made those comparisons. We just tried to write the most compelling mystery we could and make people laugh along the way.
By this point, we had used up almost all of the time Dan had allotted for this interview, so I asked if he needed to hang up.
As long as [continuing the interview] is okay with you, I’ve been on a road trip with Tony the past seven days and he’s getting kind of boring, so don’t worry about it. [Laughs]
Did anything from your high school experience [in Hingham, Massachusetts] make it on screen?
Season 1’s Hanover High morning show was directly inspired by Hingham High’s Friday Show, which I was a part of. Tony and I were both part of the TV clubs at our high schools, so we knew what it was going to be like. I may have got this wrong, but I attempted to get the style of schedule pretty close to Hingham High, where in one episode Peter says something like, “Good morning. Today is a C day, and we have 3rd lunch today.” I remember there being numbered or lettered days. Nothing’s going to feel more real than your actual high school experience.
In Season 2 of American Vandal, The Great American Challenge is a drinking game where teams of 6 race to finish a 30 pack of beer, a handle of vodka, a full Juul pod, a large sausage and jalapeño pizza, and a 500-piece custom puzzle of St. Bernandine student Andrew Lundgarden’s mom. The puzzle must come last, regardless of the order of the other events. How was it created?
We often had discussions in the writer’s room where we would say, “My school had this kind of challenge…” and someone else will say, “We had something similar at our school.”. With a few exceptions, most of our ideas that people find relatable tend to be things that multiple writers had in their own high school experience. There are exceptions to that. For example, Nana’s party from Season 1 was literally a party that happened in just one writer’s high school experience.
One of the most unique characters this season was Kevin McClain, a student at St. Bernardine who is still dealing with the aftermath of an embarrassing moment in his childhood which gave him the nickname “Shit Stain McClain” and ruined his reputation. Every high school has a Kevin, and because of this, I wanted to know how he was created.
[Kevin was] inspired by a type of person that myself, Tony, and other writers experienced in high school. The kind of kid who didn’t fit in, and as a result decided to craft a personality to make it look like it was his choice not fit in. I don’t want to say it’s a type of person, but that it’s a common reaction to not fitting in. In terms of specific quirks, we just made a list of different options like pocket watches, and we landed on tea and EDM music. I actually chose the name Horsehead Collective [Kevin’s EDM group], because I wanted it to be a mask band, like Daft Punk or Marshmello. I thought what would be the cheapest, easiest mask for a high school kid to get? Well, horseheads. My thought was that they found cheap horsehead masks at a mall and based their band premise off that.
Was the “Shit Stain McClain” nickname created based off the name Kevin McClain, or the name based off the nickname?
That’s a great question. I think I was trying to think of a name that rhymed around a mean, poop-stained kind of term. It had to still be a realistic name, so McClain made sense.
Are there any plans for Season 3? Do you think Peter and Sam will go to college?
We don’t fully know at this point. We have a lot of ideas that we love about a potential third season, we don’t have a green light for that yet. Tony and I are deep into the process of coming up with what that Season 3 might look like. We don’t know what [Peter and Sam’s] future looks like. Obviously in Season 2 they’re seniors, and going to college is possible, but we’re looking at a lot of different options right now.
Seasons 1 and 2 of American Vandal are available now on Netflix. Dan Perrault can be found on Instagram and Twitter @danjperrault.
