Robot Chicken's writers and producers seem to get away with almost anything on Adult Swim, but Breckin Meyer, Zeb Wells and Tim Root admit to pitching some sketches that even the brazenly controversial network won’t air.
Meyer, who currently stars on Franklin & Bash, recalls one sketch in particular that he came up with that was completely shutdown by the network. Though Meyer stands by the sketch having something to say behind its grotesque depiction, he can see why it got nixed in the pitching stage.
“There was one sketch I wrote where a rabbit was ****ing into a little boy’s sleeping mouth,” Meyer told uInterview exclusively at San Diego Comic-Con 2014. “They found problems with that, so…[laughing] They didn’t really get the internal logic of the skit, but yeah things like that.”
Meyer added with a laugh, imitating executives, “We cannot approve this sketch because… the rabbit **** in the boy’s mouth as he sleeps.”
Producer Tim Root recalls a sketch they were developing that involved Power Rangers and race relations. The network urged the writers not to air it – not because they found it too dangerous, but because they were working on a show with a similar concept.
“We did a sketch where there were two children playing with their Power Rangers toys, and one of the children thought it was funny if whatever color that Power Ranger was he would treat it with whatever racial stereotype went along with that color and it was a really—well as a viewer, we felt like we were on the side of the angels on this thing because you weren’t really supposed to be on this kid’s side,” explained Root.
“But it turns out [the network was] developing a show called Minoriteam, which was a superhero show about minorities banding together and they were all stereotypes,” Root told uInterview. “So it was too close to something else on Adult Swim; it wasn’t actually for content."
The Robot Chicken creators aren’t always on the losing end of disagreements with Adult Swim. Writer Zeb Wells recalls a Christmas sketch the network wasn’t keen on, but that they were able to defend on the grounds that it was a parody.
“We just had a sketch in our Christmas episode, and it’s the chipmunks singing their holiday songs, but Theodore keeps singing about how he ***** a homeless man,” Wells told uInterview at Comic-Con. “So every holiday song ends with him singing about ****ing a homeless man, and we have to defend the parody to our lawyers. So the serpentine way that we got that one through was by convincing them [it was a parody]."
Robot Chicken will next stream live on AdultSwim.com Aug. 13 at 12 a.m. EST.
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