Elijah Wood’s new series on FX, Wilfred, premiers Thursday June 23rd at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific right before the Season Two premiere of Louie at 10:30. The show is based off an Australian comedy created by co-star Jason Gann about Wilfred, a man in a dog costume who’s really a regular size dog…but the man size alter ego can only be seen by the hapless Ryan (Elijah Wood).
Wilfred isn’t a nice cuddly puppy by any means. He’s crude, rude, and he’s starting to make Ryan doubt his sanity. If this sounds like something you’ve never seen before, you are right. FX has become the home to some pretty daring shows that audiences are amazed and glad to see come to their screens here in the states. Shows like Sons of Anarchy, Justified, and Nip/Tuck are some of the heavy hitters the network has served up that are edgy and have become hits. Wilfred looks to join that family in a leg humping, funny and hillarious way.
Fangirl Magazine’s Danni Stinger joined in on a Q and A with the stars of the show, Elijah Wood and Jason Gann, to discuss the unique series. Here are some of the highlights:
Amy Harrington from PopCulturePassionistas.
A. Harrington: Elijah, we imagine that you get offered a lot of TV roles and we’re wondering why you chose this one?
E. Wood I actually don’t get offered a lot of TV roles. I read a few scripts, mainly dramas. I was just interested in taking a look at television because I really had never seen what was kind of available and what people were making on television. It’s changed so much even in the last five years. I don’t know, I read this script … the last scripts that I was sent, and my manager sent it to me and said it was the funniest thing that she’d ever read. I loved it and it kind of blew my mind. It was unlike anything I’ve read or seen on television. A perfect extreme in funny but also sort of cerebral and strange and difficult to describe, which I think is always a good thing.
Jamie Ruby from Media Blvd.
J. Ruby Can you kind of talk to us about your characters in the show and kind of give us a little bit on them?
E. Wood Yes, Jason, you want to chime in on it?
J. Gann Well “Wilfred” is a dog. The world sees a dog. “Ryan” sees a man in a cheap dog suit who smokes bongs and pretty much terrorizes him. But you know, we sort of think that after a while that maybe “Wilfred” is an angel and a devil on his shoulder, giving him advice and trying to bring him back into the real world. That’s “Wilfred’s” character. Elijah?
E. Wood Yes, “Ryan” is essentially a guy who had followed a path that was ultimately not of his choosing for far too long. He listened to his family, listened to his father, did kind of what he thought everyone else wanted him to do as opposed to following his own interests. As a result of that in this pilot, we find him in a place where he’s hit a wall, essentially, and it’s made him suicidal.
He’s kind of a broken individual. He’s someone that hasn’t really busted out of himself to live freely and to live with confidence and to define himself, and ultimately that’s where “Wilfred” arrives. He arrives sort of in that moment of crisis to push “Ryan” outside of the self-imposed and sort of family-imposed boundaries that have been created around him.
Andrea Towers from VoiceofTV.
A. Towers There’s a huge influx of shows from Europe that have been brought overseas throughout the past few years. Some are successful. Some aren’t so successful. I’m curious to know how you think your show will be received over in the U.S. in terms of—I know it’s darker. It’s probably a little more unconventional than what normal audiences are used to.
J. Gann Despite the fact that the show is called Wilfred, and there’s a dog called “Wilfred” in it, and I’m in the suit playing “Wilfred,” it’s a really different show. Maybe the reason why some of those reboots don’t work is because they’re trying to just translate something from one territory into another and the only thing that’s different is sort of some accents and stuff, whereas this is a completely new show.
David Zuckerman, the show runner, had a completely new vision for it. When he first told me about it he said he saw a different vehicle for this great character that he loved. So I don’t even compare the two shows. This show really stands on its own, and so, look, I’m not worried about any comparisons or failed reboot of the successful show because they’re two different creatures.
Sheldon Wiebe from EclipseMagazine.com
S. Wiebe I, like most of the people on the call today, have never seen the Australian version, and I’m just wondering—now you say this is a totally different animal, Jason. How so?
J. Gann Well originally in November of this year will have been ten years since I wrote the seven-minute short film that won festivals around the world and went to Sundance. So that seven-minute short was already very popular, and so we just set up a premise in essentially a seven-minute short. So for the Australian series, we just used the first seven minutes in the pilot as the first seven minutes of the show.
So we didn’t go into a lot about what the psychology of the show, of the relationship between the guy and the dog. There was no background story for the guy. We didn’t go into his psychology at all. It was really a love triangle between the guy, the dog, and the girl. Whereas this show is, for starters, a buddy comedy more so than—it does have love triangle elements in it, but each episode is about “Ryan.” “Wilfred” kind of drives the stories and the audience is constantly left to argue with each other or with themselves as to whether this is all happening inside “Ryan’s” mind. Are we going crazy? What’s really going on?
In the Australian version, we just sort of said, “The guy can see the dog.” We said it in the first minute of the show, and then we just went on with it. The Australian show had more of a British kind of sensibility and the style of The Young Ones or The Mighty Boosh where things are a bit more abstract and absurdist. So this show goes into the psychology more, and I think it’s smarter … about “Ryan” rather than about a love triangle.
Jim Napier from GeekTyrant.com.
J. Napier So I can really tell that your chemistry on the phone call and from what I’ve seen of the show is amazing, and I’m really excited for the entirety of the season. One thing that sticks out to me when I first thought of this show is the fact that it reminds me of Jimmy Stewart’s Harvey. There’s obviously a big difference between Wilfred and that, but did you pull from any films or life experiences, obviously probably more life experience when crafting this show?
J. Gann Personally it is a role a lot of life experiences that poured into the creation of the Wilfred character, but it’s interesting. The Harvey reference has come up quite a bit. That wasn’t in our minds when we first created the character or the Australian version. But it’s interesting, like I just had a thought then like about like Jimmy Stewart like just how much—what it is I love about him as an actor and how he brings this incredible authenticity to his characters, unique authenticity that we actually as an audience. We’re sort of prompted to believe in him even though we can see that there’s no rabbit. We can see what everyone else is thinking, but we believe in him.
I don’t want to embarrass Elijah, but I think that Elijah brings something really similar and he really makes my job as playing “Wilfred” a lot easier, because seeing through his eyes it’s easier to believe it and so we’re ready, as an audience, hopefully ready to suspend our disbelief.
E. Wood Thanks, Jason. Yes that’s interesting that reference to Harvey. Jason and I immediately thought of that as well. I’m a huge fan of that film. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, and it was interesting the parallel. I mean the parallel, it’s obviously similar but it’s extremely different, but that notion of our sort of imagined friend is quite similar and I think there’s something kind of beautiful about that.
Daniella Stinger from Fan Girl Magazine.
D. Stinger Elijah, the character of “Ryan” starts out fairly depressed. Do you feel that he’s essentially the straight man in a comedy double act or does he really fit that definition?
E. Wood Do I feel he’s a straight man? Yes, I think he is. I mean ultimately I think “Ryan’s” just trying to get everything together constantly. So he’s essentially reacting to the world around him and to the scenarios that “Wilfred” is trying to put him into and the direction that he’s being pulled constantly. So straight man, yes, but he’s also just in this time of crisis in his life and he’s just trying to hold it all together all the time. Having a genuine relationship with this man in a dog suit and then also trying to balance that relationship with the real people who he knows can’t see that man in a dog suit, and then in the midst of all that trying to rebuild himself and to be the best person that he can be.
