The working relationship between Megan Ganz and Danny Pudi goes back to the second season of Community, when Ganz penned the episode “Cooperative Calligraphy,” which trapped Pudi’s socially awkward Abed and his six co-stars in their library study room for a classic sitcom bottle episode. Years later, Ganz and Pudi are together again for AppleTV+’s workplace ensemble Mythic Quest, which chronicles the rabid dysfunction behind the scenes of a massive online video game.
Ganz, who co-created the series along with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, knew she wanted to bring Pudi on board as soon as the show’s first season was coming together. In an interview ahead of the Season 2 premiere this Friday, she makes it clear that he was the first, and only, choice for playing Brad Bakshi, the game’s head of monetization/office villain.
“When we started developing this character of Brad, I texted Danny and said, ‘I think I’ve got this fun character that you might like playing. It’s very against type for you,'” Ganz explains. “But, because we had worked together, I knew his ability to act, he was going to be able to bring us that character. Part of the thing that you want when you’re looking for people is not only people that are going to be good actors, but just good people to hang around with. You’re going to spend lots and lots of time with these people. I already knew I’d done many long nights onset with Danny, so, I knew that even on minimal sleep, he was still a really nice person.”
Along with their established camaraderie, she says that Pudi “has really changed the character of Brad” since the moment he was brought onboard, and they’ve been able to explore that more this season. “We were able to take him to interesting places where we start peeling back the layers of him a little bit and seeing what makes Brad tick. It was great to lean into some of his abilities.”
Like Ganz, Pudi also has fond memories of their time on the beloved NBC-turned-Yahoo! Screen sitcom, which has gone on to find new fans in streaming. “I remember as we went on through Community, I could easily talk to her about jokes or character, and it transitioned naturally into this,” Pudi says. “When she texted me about this and just said, ‘There’s this great character. No one likes them in the office.’ I was like, ‘Sign me up.’ It’s great! ‘You’re going to get the villain. You’re going to get to do all this different stuff with the character.'”
While Brad’s nefarious office villainy was present throughout the first season, it reached new heights with the Mythic Quest standalone episode, “Quarantine.” As the title suggests, it was filmed remotely and released months after the first season had concluded, and also stands as one of the best pop culture testaments to life in the pandemic. Like much of the show’s humor, it grew out of collaboration.
“Something fun that kind of happened organically was that at the end of the last season, in the episode where they fight the masked man, there was a little improv bit that kind of came out in one of the scenes where Brad says to Poppy [Charlotte Nicdao] that he wants to bet her hair on something,” Ganz explains. “I don’t know why that specific detail we just found so funny. So then, in the quarantine episode, we just really leaned into it. I think it was a mutual thing where we were both like, ‘What if his thing is just he weirdly likes hair?’ He knows that’s the source of people’s power and that’s what he’s going after. Watching Danny lean into the camera and say, ‘I want your essence,’ to David [David Hornsby] was a real, real joy.”
“The great thing is Danny’s game for everything,” she adds. “So, there’s not a lot of pushback when we say, ‘Hey, we need you close to tears in this episode. And then in this one, we are going to put you in horns,’ and he’s ready for it.”
Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Mythic Quest also released another standalone episode, “Everlight,” Penned by writer and star Ashly Burch, it serves as a kind of bookend “Quarantine.” It was also, as Pudi explains, a chance “to go even further with Brad’s villainous interior,” complete with some pretty elaborate costume and makeup work for the episode’s over-the-top third act.
“I finally got to wear horns! It was thrilling! As an actor, this is what you want,” Pudi says. “You want to show up to a workplace comedy, and then the next week be in a makeup chair for two hours, having your horns placed on your head, wearing color contact lenses, putting in fake fangs, lifted on some kind of crane because you can’t walk or see anything and having your complete soundstage transform into a forest, it’s really exciting. And to be able to go to all these places in our show, I think it’s really special. I’m very, very grateful for that.”
“It brings me such great joy to be disliked,” Pudi adds. “I’m always looking for more situations in the office where I could create chaos. Then to be paired with the Jessie [Ennis], who’s so funny, we become this pair, this chaotic pair that is forcing its way through the office.” Ennis herself describes the shift her character, Jo, makes as her “getting hooked on the hard stuff with Brad Bakshi.”
Pudi calls the dynamic between the new pairing “such a fun wild card element through the office,” which helps the show dive deeper into the enigma that is his character. “I’m always game for anything, especially diving deeper into the world of Brad. And so we really get to see a little bit more about where he comes from and get to see some of his insecurities and get to see some of, even more of his quirks as well.”
Some of these shakeups come as part of a common sentiment when a show returns for a sophomore season, which Ganz likens to “the difference between building a house and decorating a house.”
“We got the walls up the first season, we knew where everything was and now we got to have fun with moving characters around, pairing them up in fun, different ways you haven’t seen before, and just exploring our ensemble a little bit more,” Ganz explains. “The first season we focused on Poppy and Ian [McElhenney], and everyone else got their little moments. But this year, it was really fun to give full episodes where we really delve into them. Be it C.W.’s [F. Murray Abraham] backstory or Brad’s family life. It was a real joy.” She also notes that “the episode ideas came quick and fast this season,” and even teases that she expects “season three will be just as fun and easy.”
Similarly, Pudi says that the second season was more ambitious, in part, because they “already know how we work with each other” in the an environment that fosters collaboration. “Now it’s just kind of like, ‘All right, we kind of know these things, how else can we stretch? What’s it like when we try this way?’ And tonally, what’s it like when we shift from Brad talking about human hair to Brad talking about his fractured relationship with his brother, which can get very raw and real and can also get very over the top and funny.”
Some of these new relationships are teased in “Everlight.” While “Quarantine” was both an ode to and a lamentation of life in lockdown, “Everlight” celebrates the tenuous return of day-to-day normalcy — by Mythic Quest standards, at least.
“We specifically picked that episode to be a workplace party, because we thought it’s just going to be such a joyous moment for so many people when they get to return to their workplaces and their work family,” Ganz says. “For a lot of us, our workplaces are our chosen family. They’re the ones that we pick and we see day after day and we go through a lot of struggles with them. We tried to capture the joy that we felt like people would have when they went back.”
While (most of) the show’s cast is back working under one roof, “Everlight” also leans heavily into the show’s fantasy elements, which ends up creeping into the show’s narrative in a way it hasn’t before. Which includes narration by Sir Anthony Hopkins. “This is just a very cinematic episode,” Pudi says. “It’s very special in that way. It’s got this layer to it. And sir, Anthony Hopkins, come on! It’s a nice special episode with a lot of joy.”
Mythic Quest Season 2 premieres Friday, May 7th on AppleTV+. Season 1, along with two standalone episodes, is available to stream now.
