Lauren Caspian is a god. Or, so he thinks.
In Peacock's new streaming comedy In The Know, Caspian is the protagonist and NPR's third most popular host. And although he's a claymation figure, the self-obsessed radio host persona that co-creator Zach Woods wants Caspian to embody is very real.
Woods, who also voices Caspian, has made a career of being a character actor and is best known for his roles on shows like The Office and more recently Silicon Valley, where he plays introverted supporting roles that stand out through their subtlety.
This latest role, however, serves as a fitting evolution of past characters into a comedic lead that has more of his personal touch.
Woods recently spoke to Larry Mantle on LAist's daily news program AirTalk about his appreciation for public radio and how he channeled it into the show.
Woods said he came up with the essence of the show and its characters through his work with co-creator Mike Judge on HBO's hit series Silicon Valley.
"He noticed. .. that there is an undeniable public radio essence that seems to waft around where I am, just in terms of my body type, my references, my non-confrontational personality, and I think he thought it would be good to combine those things into a show," he said.
Woods says another source of inspiration came from conversations with the show's other co-creator Brandon Gardner, about "inexcusable liberal hypocrisies." He mentioned an experience he had walking through Larchmont Village, where he passed by a multimillion dollar home that featured a "defund the police" sign next to a house noting it was protected by ADT Home Security.
"I thought that was so funny to be like, 'defund the police,' but also we have armed guards that patrol the neighborhood 24 hours and protect our palace," Woods said. "Then I went to some coffee shop and led my ridiculous privileged life and felt sanctimonious while being essentially the same person as whoever lives in that house."
When it came to finding Lauren Caspian's voice, Woods acknowledged that it was a simple turning of the dial as self-described avid listener to NPR programming and the New York Times podcast The Daily.
"When we were talking about promoting the show," Woods said, "we were like what if we made ... an NPR Instagram filter ... which gave everyone kind of a bulbous frontal cortex and inserted random pregnant pauses into whatever you're saying."
From there, he honed in on the monotonous speaking patterns many public radio hosts had — you may have heard it referred to as "NPR voice."
Woods said the speaking affectations would then build this dialect into more of what he called an "intellectual puckishness." In that process, he said he wanted to share with viewers a character whose personality was as self-centered as much as it was intellectually self-conscious.
"[The way that] it's about kind of tickling people's intellects as opposed to getting to the truth of a thing always drives me bananas. So I wanted to try to embody that as best I could," Woods said.
Woods said producing the interviews on the show, which feature Lauren's claymation character interviewing actual people like Mike Tyson, Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness and model Kaia Gerber was unique for the In The Know team.
"We thought if we can put them in strange enough circumstances, where they're talking for an hour to a stop-motion NPR host, perhaps that will take them outside of their comfort zone in a way that doesn't make them personally uncomfortable...and that happened a fair amount."
Woods said the production team still wanted the interviews to seem real, which meant researching guests, developing questions in advance and having a somewhat believable conversation, even though the real guests were talking to a fictional host. The goal, he said, was trying humanize the guests beyond just celebrities with talking points.
"I think a core assumption of the show is that people are more than one thing. And that hopefully goes for the characters and I think the guests also demonstrate that — your idea of a person lacks the dimensionality of the actual human being."
All six episodes of In The Know are now streaming on Peacock.
