Vic Michaelis recounted the creation of the 'Brennan Lee Mulligan quits Dropout' concept for a Game Changer episode, explaining the intention behind making the bit obviously comedic and the research involved in choosing American Girl dolls for the joke.

Vic Michaelis recounted the creation of the 'Brennan Lee Mulligan quits Dropout' concept for a Game Changer episode, explaining the intention behind making the bit obviously comedic and the research involved in choosing American Girl dolls for the joke. Michaelis also discussed their comedic approach, which blends playful deception with commitment, and reflected on the impact such humor can have on public perception.

The conversation shifted to Michaelis's acting roles, particularly the transformation for the Peacock show Ponies, where elaborate costumes and character work were highlighted. Michaelis described the character Cheryl as a competent but powerless antagonist, and revealed that their real-life martial arts skills inspired a scene involving Taekwondo that was filmed for the show.

Vic Michaelis on masterminding Brennan Lee Mulligan quitting 'Dropout'

My intro to Dropout was TikTok and like, eventually it was just like, I need to see these things in context and it's so fun. But also like, you guys, there's such a reflexive nature in the way those shows were. Cause like the Game Changer episode where you guys were shark tanking. Yeah. Like you came up with hands down the best concept. Producers, I think my pitch should be pretty obvious at this point. My pitch is that Brennan Lee Mulligan quits Dropout. In this video, Brennan will claim not to only be leaving Dropout, but also be leaving D&D altogether to focus on his first love, which is making American Girl doll shoes. Okay. God bless ya. Thank you. I mean, do you not feel that that's the vibe? Cause I feel like, I feel like that's not a controversial opinion. I mean, like I thought I had the best idea, which is why I pitched it. Sam said, pitch three to five ideas. And I said, I have one. And if you don't want to do it, then I don't want to come on the show. But you, I mean, like, you're like Brennan quits. And I was like, this is amazing. It's you take the thing that people love most and the thing they fear most. Yeah. You combine them in one. And then Brennan sort of had another idea. He wanted to make like, his pitch on my pitch was like, cause as we were doing it, his big thing was just like, he didn't want it to like mess with D&D too much or anything like that. So he was just like, as opposed to it being just quitting, going to do something that was like a little bit silly. So hopefully people would recognize that it was not a real thing. And he had pitched something and I was like, I still, especially if I'm going to be the one pitching it in the episode, would love it to be in my voice. And so I ended up doing a bunch of research on what brand I thought was most likely to interact with the video. And so I had, I narrowed it down to Sylvian dolls and American Girl dolls. And thank God I picked American Girl dolls. Cause they're litigious. Sylvian's litigious. And it happened, that lawsuit against that amazing Sylvian drama creator happened immediately after the episode dropped. Like right before it was supposed to come out. So I was like, thank God. Oh my God. As of today, I have dedicated myself to the craft and profession of making custom shoes for American Girl dolls. I think at any point to have that kind of an impact on somebody's public image is like simultaneously terrifying and as a comedian, the most satisfying thing that could possibly happen. Like that's my sense of humor and it always has been. My sense of humor is like a little bit of lying tickled in with just like commitment. You know what I mean? Like, and if people don't find something funny at once, maybe they'll find it funny 15 times. Like there's a much higher likelihood they'll find something funnier down the line. Sure. And it was like, there was like, somebody sent me a thing a few months ago where it's like, if you Google Stanley Tucci's grandmother, like I did a bit about him having a fake grandmother named Evelyn Tucci. Evelyn Tucci, the paternal grandmother of Stanley Tucci. And that pops up in his bio. I'm like, it just is a gift and I hope nobody's mad. And if they are, I'm sorry. It's so fun watching your stuff because like, whether it's Dropout or whether it's Ponies, the new Peacock show, like you have such a- That was beautiful. Thank you. That was a beautiful transition. I like, it was fun watching it because I was like, I knew you were in it and I purposefully didn't do a lot of research on it. So I was like, I want to see like how this plays out. And you walk onto screen and it's like, I feel like on Dropout, you have a 70s sensibility in a lot of your attire, but this is like so high femme and such big hair that it feels like a Vic Michaela's character pushed like to this nth degree. Oh man, that's so kind of you to say, because honestly that was my first thought, especially like, I truly was for a show, was painted head to toe black and white and the hair took longer than that process. Wow. The hair for Ponies. It just is like, it's art. It's like, she would like meticulously like spray, that was glued down. One time I fell asleep in that hair and I woke up and it looked exactly the same. It just was like, it was art. It was truly art. But it was like, it really did feel like such a costume. It was so easy just to like sink into it and no way did it feel like weird. It literally was just like, it felt like drag in the best way possible. I love that. Cheryl was kind of like an antagonist for this first half of the season where these girls are like trying to be spies. She doesn't know that and they're in her mind just bad at their jobs around the office. There was part of me that was like, look, I get that she's a bitch, but she's not wrong. Justice for Cheryl. I feel pretty strongly about that. She's not wrong. And I think it's like pretty, like in any other work circumstance, and especially like today, she'd just be able to be like, yeah, you're fired. But she's just in a circumstance where she has no power to fire anybody. She's too competent and has no power. Yeah, I think it was really fun for me because every time she popped up, I was excited to see kind of like, how is her clear frustration in like being a woman in 1970s Russia working for the American government were clearly tons of opportunities for women. Tons of opportunities. From cooking for the men to like doing secretary work for the men to just sort of dressing up, looking pretty. And there is a point in there where they mentioned kind of offhanded, like, oh, she's a karate lesson. I know that you are a black belt in Taekwondo. Is there a chance we will eventually see your martial arts skills on this show? Okay. Hoping. Would love that. That would rock. How much have you seen? I've seen everything. Okay, yeah. So like, this is kind of like a bit of a, this is a spoiler. There was the scene at the end where I go into Evie's room. There was a version of that that got filmed because on set, David Iverson and Susanna found out that I did Taekwondo. And so that got written in as a way that like, then maybe they could utilize it later on. So there is a version of that scene where Anders comes in and I kick her in the throat. Did you get to shoot that? Yep. Oh my God. I went into stunt lessons for it. Oh my God. That's amazing. Yeah, it was great.

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Breakdown