WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
Will Arnett looked into his personal past when he wanted to create Netflix’s Flaked
They say always write what you know. That’s the approach Will Arnett took as he sat down to create Flaked.
The dry little comedy, which returned for a second season Friday on Netflix, is about a recovering alcoholic named Chip who lives in the quirky Los Angeles neighbourhood of Venice. Season 1 revealed Chip really isn’t recovering very well. Reduced to pedalling his bike around town (he’s lost his driver’s licence), he’s hitting on the object of his best friend’s desires and is back draining bottles of booze on the sly.
Netflix bills Chip in the new season as “a man doing his honest best to stay one step ahead of his own lies.”
Arnett co-wrote and co-created the series with Mark Chappell. The 47-year-old Toronto native lived in Venice, years ago, and admits he had a drinking problem back in the day.
“I leaned into it at various times, sometimes heavier than others, into experiences I had in my own life,” says Arnett of writing the show. He’s been quoted saying he “drank those years away” in describing his early experiences in Hollywood. Arnett made so many failed pilots before 2003 that he had to be talked into doing the one that turned out to be his big break: Arrested Development.
In writing Flaked with Chappell, Arnett says it was imperative “to make it as authentic as possible and to write what you know and what you identify with, and if we’re re-telling this story, we have to be honest and tell it this way.”
But season 2, he says, is “not my story.” Chip hits rock bottom but “we did want to make it about redemption. Not because I’m looking for my own personal redemption, but more because that’s the way we always wanted it to go.”
He says he also identifies with other characters on the series, including Chip’s best friend Dennis, played by David Sullivan. He started off writing characters “who embodied a lot of the traits in other people that I disliked.” The more he sketched out these characters, the more he started to realize: “Hey, wait, I do that too.”
Arnett admits critics were not kind in reviewing the first season.
“Sometimes the knock on season 1 — from certain people — would be, ‘Oh, it’s just these middle-aged guys cruising around dating young girls. It’s such B.S.,’ ” Arnett recalls.
“Well, it’s not B.S., it’s true. We’re not condoning it, we’re saying it happens and we always knew we wanted to see what the flip side of that was, and we get into it. Chip really finally hits his rock bottom.”
Arnett was fine with Netflix reducing the number of episodes this season from eight to six. The past year saw him scramble to record voice-overs for the fourth season of the animated comedy BoJack Horseman, which is trotting back to Netflix later this summer. He also had to record his vocals for The Lego Batman Movie while trying to help edit Flaked.
“There’s no way I could have done one more episode. I would have probably collapsed.”
The year doesn’t get any easier for Arnett. Netflix recently announced that it’s ordered a fifth season of Arrested Development, reuniting the entire original cast, which includes fellow Canadian Michael Cera.
Arnett is also the executive producer of a re-launch of The Gong Show, the notorious Chuck Barrisproduced anti-talent show from the ’70s.
The new series premières June 22 on ABC and City. Joining Arnett among the celebrity judges will be Zach Galifianakis, Andy Samberg, Elizabeth Banks, Joel McHale, Dana Carvey and others. Hosting will be somebody described as “legendary British comic Tommy Maitland,” although many suspect it is fellow Canuck Mike Myers under a lot of prosthetic makeup.
Arnett says in the release for that series that he’s been a “huge fan” of Maitland ever since he “first saw his standup in the U.K. while travelling as a teenager.”