Seth Green

Breckin Meyer and Seth Green are longtime friends, and have worked together several times in the past, in everything from Josie & the Pussycats to Can’t Hardly Wait and Rat Race. But they have another ongoing collaboration some people don’t realize on Robot Chicken.

Meyer — also known for films like Clueless and Garfield — is both a writer and voice actor for Robot Chicken, which Green co-created and produces with Matt Senreich. Meyer was also a big part of the recent Robot Chicken: Star Wars half-hour special, which came about after Robot Chicken had done several earlier Star Wars themed sketches, including one in which Emperor Palpatine gets a phone call from Darth Vader that was particularly popular.

I recently spoke to Meyer for IGN, during a visit to a recording session for FOX’s King of the Hill, which Meyers performs on as Joseph, Bobby Hill’s friend. Meyer discussed his work on Robot Chicken, which will be returning with Season 3 later this summer, and will include appearances from cast members from Battlestar Galactica, Firefly’s Nathan Fillion, and many more.

IGN TV: How long have you been involved in Robot Chicken?

Meyer: The last two years and then the whole Star Wars special as well. I’ve been a writer there for three years.

IGN TV: I remember hearing how you, Seth Green and Ryan Phillippe had an office you shared, and you’d make customized Star Wars figures together.

Meyer: That’s how it started, yeah. We’d sit around doing exactly what we’re doing now. Seth had the idea and we just ran with it.

IGN TV: Did you make any little movies with those early figures you made?

Meyer: No. Sethy’s like an artist with action figures, he really is. And he’d make these customized action figures, more just out of boredom. So he’d make Breckin-Wan Kenobi and Ryan Skywalker and all this stuff, and we have them still. But we wouldn’t film them or anything. We didn’t even open them. He’d put them in the blister pack. He’d change the back; he’d computerize the back cards. It was great. It was pretty funny.

IGN TV: You wrote the Emperor sketch, where he gets the phone call from Darth Vader, right?

Meyer: Yeah. That was the first sketch we ever did about Star Wars and we didn’t get sued. That was nice! [Family Guy creator] Seth MacFarlane was the Emperor voice in the sketch.

IGN TV: What was it like when you found out how well that sketch went over, including with Lucas himself?

Meyer: We heard these rumors it was on You Tube and it had a million hits or whatever, and I’m like, "Oh, that’s cool." And then someone’s like "Yeah, George Lucas is showing it at conferences now. I was like "S**t, that’s neat too!" And then Seth and Matt used like their Jedi mind trick and went up to Skywalker and George was like "Yeah, I really liked your guys’ sketch." Seth was like "Let us do a half hour show." They’re like "Okay," so we did. I told Sethy, when I was writing on the season, anytime he questioned anything on a sketch I wrote, I was like, "Okay, real quick; who wrote the Emperor sketch?" It doesn’t hold a lot of water, but I try.

IGN TV: Robot Chicken has one of the most star-studded guest casts imaginable.

Meyer: It’s insane, yeah.

IGN TV: What’s funny is how random the roles you give the guest stars are.

Meyer: Yeah, we had Hulk Hogan as Abe Lincoln!

IGN TV: That was great.

Meyer: Well the problem is, Sethy and I do, I think, together… He probably does 40 voices and I probably do 20 or 30… and we suck! So anytime we get a real person, it’s awesome. I walked in the other day and Mark Hamill was there. I was like, "That’s crazy… Mark Hamill is here! Neat!" But like we had Jon Heder do Napoleon Dynamite right before Napoleon Dynamite blew up crazy. It was great that we got to have him, because you could always have someone do his voice and sound like him but to actually get him was pretty cool.

IGN TV: Which voices did you do on the Star Wars special?

Meyer: On the Star Wars special I did Admiral Ackbar, which was my favorite in the history of the world. Well, the best thing I got to do — I got to rewrite this sketch, so I said "I’m not gonna rewrite it unless I can do it" — was Boba Fett, because every kid in the world wants to be Boba Fett. I also did some random Jedi. There’s a lot of like courtroom murmuring we have in the scenes and stuff.

IGN TV: Who came up with the idea that Boba Fett would get a little amorous with carbonite Han?

Meyer: [Raises hand]. I take credit for the really embarrassing parts of the show. We submitted a half hour’s worth of sketches to Lucasfim, and one of them got rejected. And of course it was the one I wrote! It was the one sketch that took it a little too far with Han and Luke.

IGN TV: [Laughs]. You guys did get away with Luke and Leia in bed together.

Meyer: [raises hand again]. I’ll take credit, because I’m really bad and all I do is make them sleep together!

IGN TV: Yeah, I was surprised they let that in.

Meyer: Me too! And actually, the head of Lucasfilm publicity said "Well, granted, if we had done the special ourselves, we may not have put that one in!’ There are a couple of things; the Luke & Leia thing, the Cinnabon haircut that Leia has… There are certain things that are just lore, you know, for all these years. When we were in the writers room, they were like, "Lucas isn’t gonna let us have Luke and Leia in bed together." And I was like "But everyone knows about it! It’s the creepiest part of Star Wars! Luke and Leia are brother and sister and have already made out." So we just had them f**k.

IGN TV: What was your scenario for Han and Luke?

Meyer: I can say it, because we didn’t produce it. There’s a line from Star Wars that if you’re a fan you should know; "You’re all clear kid. Let’s blow this thing and go home!"

IGN TV: [laughs]

Meyer: You know where it’s going! Essentially Han Solo is standing in an alley. And he looks down and says it and you pull back and Luke’s on his knees. Yeah, so that was the one where George was like "Yeah, I don’t think so."

IGN TV: What can you tell us about Robot Chicken Season 3?

Meyer: It’s just getting better. We’re kind of opening up with the properties that we use. We’re just branching out. We’re definitely branching out with the properties we’re messing around with and the sketches are kind of getting bigger and more grand, kind of in the realm of like the Coreys sketch and things like that. That was one of the biggest sketches we did. We’re getting bigger and we’re getting more fun and more people are coming in to do them. Until it’s not fun, we’ll keep doing it. And the Star Wars thing was a dream for us. That was a huge boost of confidence for us, that they took faith in us for that and had a full ten-hour special on, with the marathon.

IGN TV: They had those big billboards for the special in Hollywood and on Sunset Blvd.

Meyer: Yeah, billboards and stuff like that! So it’s great. We’re getting more confident, which is pretty fun. And we brought a couple of new writers in this year, just to keep it fresh and kind of keep spinning it around. And Seth and I will do, hopefully, less and less work. [Laughs]

Robot Chicken returns with new episodes in August on Cartoon Network’s [adult swim].