Christopher Mintz-Plasse On Comedy Central's 'Blark And Son': 'There's Nothing Better Than Working With Your Friends'
(CBS Local)-- On Saturday, January 30 a new season of "Blark and Son" drops on the Comedy Central YouTube channel and actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse is excited for the animated comedy series to reach an even bigger audience in 2021. Mintz-Plasse is best known for playing McLovin in the movie "Superbad" and in this series, he provides the voice of the son.
MORE FROM CBS:
- Paramount+ Streaming Service Launches On March 4
- Folake Olowofoyeku On CBS' 'Bob Hearts Abishola': 'I'm Extremely Proud To Be A Part Of This Presentation Of Nigerian Culture'
"Blark and Son" started as a 30 second animated clip on Instagram from Mintz-Plasse and his friend Ben Bayouth and Comedy Central quickly wanted to turn the clip into an entire digital show.
"This is a really cool and special project to me and some of my friends because it was created by people I've known for 15 years," said Mintz-Plasse, in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "Ben Bayouth who voices Blark, is actually an incredible special effects artist. He is working on the Masked Singer right now and on every costume on that show, just to show his brilliance. He had an idea five years ago before Instagram TV and he wanted to make a puppet show strictly for Instagram. They were 30 second episodes with a father and a son and he asked me to be the son. We put it up on Instagram and Comedy Central saw it and they wanted to make it an actual show on their YouTube channel."
Season two of the series will feature voices from actors like Donald Faison, Jim Rash, Deborah Baker Jr. and Jane Lynch. Mintz-Plasse loves that show has built a small, niche following on the internet.
"That's kind of the dream. There's nothing better than working with your friends," said Mintz-Plasse. "We started it with no budget and no one was making any money from it. I think Ben put $5,000 of his own money in. As it slowly progressed, we brought more of our friends in. We brought one of our friends from high school in to write, direct, edit and make music for it. At the end of the day, we got nine of our friends we've known for 15 years involved and I think it kind of shows in the end product."
While Mintz-Plasse is a household name in Hollywood today, he was unknown until his breakout performance as McLovin aka Fogell in the 2007 hit "Superbad." The actor is forever grateful for how that movie changed his life.
"It's pretty surreal. Superbad came out 14 years ago and it was intense to be 17 years old and have a movie come out like that," said Mintz-Plasse. "I think it was the number one movie in America when it came out. It was very surreal and cool, but also really intense for a teenager to walk into an In-N-Out Burger and have everyone know your face. It was gnarly for a minute and I didn't understand how to carve out a career path and I was just reading whatever I connected to and whoever I wanted to work with. I was lucky enough to work with a bunch of talented people and I'm lucky enough to this day to be still doing it."
Watch all of DJ Sixsmith's interviews from "The Sit-Down" series here.
