Smiling Friends

Adult Swim SVP of Creative Jacob Escobedo spoke with IndieWire about the network's latest April Fool's Day stunt and his ongoing commitment to handmade art.

“The overall idea was there would be a progression, a kind of stepping down in quality of puppets over the course of the night,” Escobedo told IndieWire over Zoom after the surprise episodes aired. “So it kind of started off with a bang with these felted Muppet-style puppets for the first episode. The second was more of a sock puppet with live action characters, and the third was our handmade papier-mâché puppets that we hand-puppeted ourselves.”

“We sat in a room and ordered a shit ton of art supplies and sat in there for weeks and just made ourselves laugh,” he said. “What’s funny is, when we first set out to do it we were like ‘Everybody, you need to make really shitty puppets.’ And we have a lot of creative people who just couldn’t make shitty puppets. All the puppets turned out really incredibly, so our original concept of stepping down the quality of the puppets didn’t really take because the in-house team did such a good job.”

The Renaissance Men are coming. Smiling Friends S2 double-premiere May 12 @ midnight - next day on Max

Smiling Friends premieres begin globally starting May 12th!

Watch Smiling Friends in the US on Adult Swim every Sunday starting May 12th at midnight, next day Max.

• Smiling Friends Season 2 set to premiere March 31st, midnight on Adult Swim.
• Mini-teaser for Smiling Friends Season 2 released on social media.
• WonderCon 2024 to host panel with creators for special Season 2 sneak peek.
• New York Comic Con revealed some details on the upcoming season.

Michael Cusack & Zach Hadel will offer a special look at Adult Swim's Smiling Friends Season 2 on Saturday, March 30th, during WonderCon.

On Saturday, March 30th, WonderCon (Room North 200A) will be the home to an official panel where Cusack & Hadel will offer a "special look" at the upcoming season. Here's the official overview for the session: "Adult Swim's SMILING FRIENDS – Get ready for the return of Pim, Charlie, and the rest of the gang dedicated to bringing happiness to their bizarre and colorful world in the second season of SMILING FRIENDS! Join series co-creators and stars Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel for a special look at the new season of the weirdly warm and oddly relatable workplace comedy that could only exist on Adult Swim.