‘Universal Basic Guys’ Co-Creator Adam Malamut Talks Creating His Own Voiceover Acting Opportunities
If you’re an animation fan, and a fan of the NBA, then you almost certainly know who Adam Malamut is. The co-creator and one of the voices of Game of Zones, a series of shorts that recast the National Basketball Association and its players in a medieval realm, not unlike the famed HBO series from which it took its name. Created by Malamut and his brother Craig, the series — now airing all seven seasons on MAX — was much beloved and put the Malamut brothers on the map. Now, they have their very own animated network series, Universal Basic Guys, airing Sundays on Fox, which is, of course, the home of Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, and the king of them all, The Simpsons. Based on the raucous sports fans of Malamut’s hometown of Philadelphia, the hilarious series is a perfect fit on the network. The show, midway through its first season, has already been renewed for a second one. Malamut spoke to us from his home office in New Jersey.
How did you get started as an actor in the first place?
I just started making cartoons, and I cast myself. I had done some stuff, because I went to Emerson and everyone’s making films, and I would just be in those films with friends. Troma films and horror comedies, stuff I’m afraid to even watch now. [Laughs] Then I worked in reality TV, but there were opportunities for little sketches and other things, and I just enjoyed it and thought it was fun. I have no formal training, but I had always done impressions and things like that. Also, I could draw, and I like making people laugh. I put that all together and started making cartoons and little animations. Then, as my brother joined me, I started doing things a little more formally. It really was just me and my brother making stuff for a while, and so that’s kind of how I cut my teeth.
Seems like a pretty natural evolution to become a voice actor, if you’re creating your own stuff.
Yeah. It’s hard to even speak to that, because the stuff I did with my friends, it was very loose. Very improvisational, like in the Curb Your Enthusiasm mold, but way, way worse.
Adam, everything is worse than Curb Your Enthusiasm.
[Laughs] That’s true. Yeah, it was a sort of natural evolution. I wanted to make cartoons, and I just got into the mic and start doing it, and if it sounded good, I went with it. It was really just a lot of experimentation on my own, is how I honed my voice.
What was the learning curve like, going from the DIY thing that you had to this ultra-professional situation you’re in now, doing a show for the Fox network?
At the beginning, there was maybe a little nerves. Like, Alright, here we go. This is the real deal. But you know, my brother’s sitting there, and the engineer is this guy, Ian, who we had worked with on Game of Zones, so it’s very comfortable, and very quickly I was like, It’s my show. Let’s just do this. I’m the writer of the thing, so it’s a lot easier than coming in cold with all new people and all the eyeballs are on you. I was probably way more nervous for the table reads, to be honest, than the actual recording.
Let’s talk about Universal Basic Guys. Where did the idea come from? And what’s it like working with your brother?
It’s a character and a voice that we developed a long time ago, and it’s based on growing up listening to all the Philadelphia Sports Radio callers who were like, “[Former Eagles Quarterback Donovan] McNab sucks. Get him out of there.” This voice kind of absorbed a little bit of my dad and some of the things he says. With my impulsiveness and tendency to start a lot of things and not necessarily finish, that segues into working with my brother, because he’s the finisher. He grew up as my younger brother, seeing me saying inappropriate things at the dinner table trying to make people laugh, and he developed a pretty good sense of what was really funny and what was dumb. So in many ways, I’m the creative explosion that tries a million things, and he’s the editor and the filter that can pick and choose the good stuff.
So it’s a good yin and yang fit.
I think it’s a good fit in terms of output, but it’s not frictionless in the process. We are brothers. We get very frustrated. We get very emotional. Now that we have a bigger process, there’s a lot more people to blame for things going wrong, so it’s actually been a little healthier for our relationship. (Laughs) With a bigger team, we find that we’re more aligned creatively on what we want to do and where things are going wrong. But it’s been a real meat grinder, and it’s really put our relationship through the wringer. There are some challenges working together, but we really love each other, and we both have a strong foundation of appreciation for each other.
Can you walk me through the feeling of climbing this mountain?
I think climbing a mountain is a pretty good analogy. We took a big risk after the last season of Game of Zones, which was a big success and a very safe situation for us. We always wanted to create something where we didn’t have the benefit of LeBron James being our main character. We had these characters, Mark and Hank Hoagies, so we decided to leave Bleacher Board and go on to the open ocean and hope that our track record would carry us, and if it didn’t, at least we tried. When we got picked up by Sony, we honed our pitch and put together a little pilot presentation on our own, which, by the way, anyone pitching animation, you have to do that. In my opinion, that was what sold it more than anything. Fox said yes, in large part thanks to Michael Thorne, the top dog at Fox Entertainment. He had the presentation in his hands, watched it, showed it to his son, who said, “You gotta make this show, Dad.”
And that was it?
Well, now we have to write a 22-minute script, which we’ve never done before. We wrote it, and it was rough around the edges, and they loved it, but because it was so rough, they had us write two more. Then it got green-lit, and oh my god, we’re gonna have a show on Fox. That was an incredible moment, but then it became, Okay, now we’ve got to write 10 more of these. It very quickly went from “We’re going to make the best show ever” to “We just have to survive this process and hope that it’s better than average.” Then we were lucky enough to get a pickup for a second season before it even aired, and now we’re finishing writing the second season.
Do you have any interest in becoming a voice actor for other people?
Yeah. I mean, it’s a great gig. You can just come in for a couple hours and do some voices. That being said, it is a high-pressure job, but I really do enjoy it. I certainly don’t think about it in terms of auditioning for anything else, but if that is something that comes out of this, that’d be really exciting and cool. I’d love to do that.
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