E! is apparently sparing no cost to make sure its new series, “The Soup Investigates,” has what it needs to dig deep into American pop culture.
“Like [the reporters] fly places,” Joel McHale joked with TheWrap. “We went to Missouri for this duck thing… Oh, it’s a whole thing. No, [E!] actually gave us money for these plane tickets.”
“Yeah, it’s like we have camera crews and stuff. We have like a set… It’s great!” he continued while on-set at his other gig, NBC’s “Community.”
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A spinoff of his long-running weekly pop culture rundown, “The Soup,” the new satiric news magazine show takes on everything from One Direction fans to riffs on the popularity of “Duck Dynasty” or TLC’s special on the man with the 132-pound scrotum.
“It takes some premise and explores it in depth with really funny correspondents,” McHale said. “We’re actually not getting to the bottom of anything and hopefully making you laugh.”
TheWrap: What was the genesis of the show?
Joel McHale: E! was looking for a companion to go with ‘The Soup’ and [producer] K.P. Anderson threw out the idea and everyone went, ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ And I said, ‘I’ll be in it and we’ll get really great reporters and these guys named Boyd Vico and Brad Stevens who are brilliant writers, who write almost all the stuff I do outside of ‘The Soup,’ as far as personal appearances and all that stuff. They write all of it.
What makes the perfect “Soup Investigates” segment?
Really good writing… and people like Michael Kosta, who was doing spoilers. He just wondered why people don’t like spoilers and then he began to spoil every show on television, which pissed off a number of people. But for the most part, it was very positive. That was like a perfect piece to me. But, you know, it really comes down to the talent that we are using and I think we’re there… I think we are more than there.
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We found a guy that does duck calls that does not have a reality show. And we investigated why women dress like sluts for Halloween. We did cosplay where we did a whole thing on why nerds dress up like Dothraki. It’s exploring. ‘The Soup’ is very quick and very fast and this will take a premise and kind of explore it.
“The Soup Investigates” airs Wednesdays at 10:30/9:30c following “The Soup” at 10/9c on E!.
Watch McHale’s rant on Hollywood’s obsession with weight and fad diets below.