Aubrey Plaza once morphed into a cat during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that her new series “Kevin,” which centers on a cat, is close to her heart. In fact, according to the actress, the show is “the most personal project I’ve ever done.”
Now streaming on Prime Video, “Kevin” tells the story of, well, Kevin (Jason Schwartzman). He’s a cat who decides to consciously uncouple from his human owners — one of whom is voiced by Plaza — after they break up. Instead, he heads to a local shelter to figure out who he is outside of just someone’s pet, and if he even wants to live with humans again at all. And as it happens, the entire premise is inspired by real pieces of Plaza’s life.
“It’s a very personal show for me, in all the ways,” she told TheWrap.
Plaza co-created the show with Joe Wengert, who she actually lived with for five years. They dated, and owned a cat named Kevin (he also had a brother named Howard, who he alludes to in the show) and yes, Kevin really had a distended butthole. But the show wasn’t always going to be such a window into their life.
Like many shows, “Kevin” took years to come into existence. As Wengert tells it, he and Plaza weren’t just sitting around for almost 20 years now discussing how their past relationship could make a good series and waiting for their opportunity. Instead, it ended up being a happy coincidence.
Wengert was working on “Big Mouth,” fell in love with animation and wanted to do more. He was volunteering at a pet rescue in LA at the time, and thought it could make a fun setting for an animal workplace comedy. Out of the blue, Plaza called him and said she was looking to do a show about a cat.
“I will say, embarrassingly, we didn’t make it personal until kind of late in the development process, really,” Wengert told TheWrap.
It was Titmouse Studios president Chris Prynoski who encouraged the personal touch, after explaining that pitches for shows about cats come around a lot. When Plaza and Wengert revealed that the general story idea was based on their own past relationship, and showed photos of the real Kevin, Prynoski immediately advised them to make that the emotional core.
For Plaza, the personal elements only get deeper from there. In many ways, “Kevin” is an amalgamation of her whole career.
In Episode 3, there’s a joke about a “Happiest Season” sequel starring Plaza and Kristen Stewart, which is a direct response to how fans felt about the ending of that movie; Plaza went out of her way to put it in there. “Kevin” also boasts a voice cast full of her heroes and past co-stars, dating back years.
“I’ve been so lucky to work with so many talented people and remain friends with a lot of them, and so it’s a delight for me to be the person that gets to go, ‘How about this person?’ ” Plaza said. “That was one of the most fun parts of the job, assembling this crew.”
Jason Schwartzman voices the titular feline and is a longtime friend of Plaza’s, after they first worked together on “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” The two even share a birthday.
John Waters voices a Persian cat named Armando, who hates humans. Plaza has long been vocal about how Waters’ films inspired her comedy, and the two were once set to adapt his novel “Liarmouth” to the big screen, with Plaza starring. Wengert was quite sure that Waters either wouldn’t want to do it or would be too busy. But in the end, the famed director ended up going “above and beyond” for the team.
Whoopi Goldberg voices Cupcake, a feral cat who is inarguably the raunchiest of the show’s characters. She and Plaza had previously only met on “The View,” but her performance in “Corrina, Corrina” directly inspired choices Plaza made in her “Safety Not Guaranteed” performance.
The core cast also includes Amy Sedaris, Gil Ozeri and Aparna Nancherla. Guest performances in the show include Plaza’s “Agatha All Along” co-stars Patti LuPone and Joe Locke, “Animal Friends” co-star Addison Rae, “Parks and Rec” co-star Jim O’Heir and more.
“It was all kind of surprisingly easy, especially considering the names, and I think that is due, well, I know it is due all to Aubrey,” Wengert said of the stacked cast. “And Aubrey’s either relationships with people, or, you know, people are excited to work with her because she’s so funny and so great.”
During one of her recording sessions for “Kevin,” Plaza ran into her “Parks and Rec” pal Adam Scott, who was recording for another show. She tried to pull him in, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out — this time. She’d also love to get Kathryn Hahn and Amy Poehler in too, if “Kevin” were to continue.
“I mean, I want everybody. It was very hard,” Plaza said. “It’s like, you got to be strategic and selective, you know, because everyone’s busy and all these things. But yeah, I mean, my dream is that the show continues on and I get to stack it with all my favorite people, for sure. I’m so psyched I got Jim O’Heir in there. I mean, that was important to me to have this kind of Jerry easter egg reference.”
Wengert gets a bit stressed if you ask him who he’d like to see show up in a potential Season 2, just because he’s still flabbergasted by who Plaza was able to pull for Season 1.
“I’m like, paranoid. I don’t want to jinx anything like that happening,” he admitted. “But we have some ideas for Season 2. You know, we sort of hinted Kevin’s brother, and so we would like to eventually meet Kevin’s brother at some point. We’ve tossed around some names there that would be fun. We’ve talked about Danny McBride. We’ve talked about Owen Wilson.”
Admittedly, Plaza still doesn’t feel like she’s a great voice actor. Assembling the cast that she did was intimidating, but also a good learning experience for where she currently is in her career.
“When you’re around people like Amy Sedaris, and Gil Ozeri, and Aparna, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow. Voiceover acting is an actual skill that I do not have,’ but I try! It’s good for me to, you know, challenge myself in that way,” she said. “And I do feel like I’m getting better, but for me, it’s a challenge. It’s a different form.”
As the cherry on top, and one final layer of Plaza’s style and personality, she got to infuse the show with the comedy style and lessons she learned from her time with the Upright Citizens Brigade. Wengert was teaching at the UCB school when they started dating, and the duo filled the writers room of “Kevin” with people they met during that time.
“We all had the same sensibility, which is like, you learn at UCB that A) truth in comedy. That the funniest things are the most truthful,” Plaza explained. “And to always play at the top of your intelligence. And so a lot of those things unconsciously, I think, infused into the writing, because I wanted the show to be funny and insane.”
“But there were many times that we were also like, ‘But let’s try to do something different than most animated shows,’ which are like, so fast,” she continued. “There’s like 30 jokes a second, and it’s just over-stimulation, and just the pacing is so crazy. And I was like, ‘I kind of want to slow it down a little bit and infuse this kind of groundedness into this show that you wouldn’t expect when you’re dealing with, like, animals talking about their buttholes.”
Really, you’re getting all sides of Aubrey Plaza in “Kevin.”
“Kevin” is now streaming on Prime Video.
