Seth Green

Know who’s one degree away from Kevin Bacon? Thanks to the new season of "Robot Chicken," it’s Seth Green.

Green, known for playing characters that make a lasting impression on pop culture (like Oz from the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Scott Evil from the "Austin Powers" movies and Chris Griffin from the irreverent animated series "Family Guy") has found critical acclaim with "Robot Chicken."

The stop-motion animated series he created with Matt Senreich won an Emmy last year for Outstanding Short-Format Animated Program and has earned Green multiple nominations for his voice work. Their "Star Wars" parody/tribute specials are endorsed by George Lucas.

Green spoke with CNN about the upcoming season. The fifth season of "Robot Chicken" premieres on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on Sunday, January 9. (Cartoon Network, like CNN is a Time Warner company.)

CNN: You’re pretty much cornering the market on stop-motion television. How hard is that?

Seth Green: The show’s tricky. We do 20 episodes in a year, basically. It’s 11 months from the time we start doing our writing to the time we deliver our post [production].

This year was longer because we folded an hourlong "Star Wars" special into the middle of our production, so it will wind up being 15 months when it’s all over. It’s a long, long process.

But we love stop-motion, and it’s a really communicative medium. It looks just like film, and you see real shadows, and you see light and your brain registers something that’s tactile that you’ve maybe interacted with. That helps you to believe that what’s on film is actually happening, which makes it funnier. It’s a medium that’s rarely used for comedy, and I think that’s a mistake. ’Robot Chicken’ tackles Oompa-Loompas Seth Green talks ControlTV

CNN: Are you debuting any new action figures or characters this season?

Green: We got some Charlie Brown, some Harry Potter, some He-Man. Gobots, Matrix, Avatar, Buck Rogers, Transformers, RoboCop, it’s a good one.

Oh! The "Back to the Future" — I don’t want to tease this too hard because it’s so late in the season, but we have a "Back to the Future" crossover with Jay-Z ... it’s not the real Jay-Z. It’s pretty cool, we got Christopher Lloyd to do it.

I’m really excited about this season. We had Jon Hamm, Bryan Cranston, Kevin Bacon, Megan Fox, what a crazy year!

CNN: Do you ever have any guest "cluckers" on the show?

Green: In the closing credits? We’ve never re-recorded that since the first season, except for "Star Wars," and it was all the same people. In our post department, when Chris McKay was editing the show before he was directing it, he came up with that song and got everybody together to cluck it, and we’ve just kept it. No one’s ever asked for that!

CNN: How awesome is it, knowing that George Lucas likes your work? How hard is it to control your fanboi around him?

Green: It’s crazy. It’s crazy stuff. We’re getting to work with him now on this new animated thing, and get to spend time with him actually writing stuff, and it is one of the more surreal experiences I’ve ever had.

And you have to just tune all that out and really focus on the work you’ve got to do to make what you’re working on good. And not be overwhelmed by the fact that you’re actually getting to do it. You just have to dig down and say, "All right, what are we trying to accomplish here, make this funny and good," and we can worry about the fact that we’re, like, creating "Star Wars" together, later. [Lucasfilm has not yet formally announced the upcoming animated "Star Wars" comedy series project.]

CNN: Who’s your dream "Robot Chicken" guest star? Maybe we can help get that out there.

Green: We’ve been targeting Harrison Ford pretty hard for a while now, and whenever people ask us who we’re trying to get, we always go after him. Just because eventually he’s going to hear it and either think we’re so obnoxious that he’s going to tell us to f*** off or he’s going to come do the show.