‘King of the Hill’ ShowRunner on Writing Hank Hill for A Different Era

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In an era of reboots, sequels and seemingly Never-insult Franchises, the “WHY NOW?” of Bringing A Show Like King of the hill Back is “the most Important Question,” Says Its New ShowRunner Saladin K. Patterson.

For the adult animated comEDY, who dbutned Itory About A Family Living in the Fiction Town of Arlen, Texas, on Fox in 1997, the “Who?” Begins at San Francisco Sketch Fest 2017. that’s WHEN CREATORS MIKE Jude and Greg Daniels Did A Table Read of An Episode from The ORIGINAL Series, Which Drud. Earlier.

“The fan resposage was just so strong that realized there was a still an apetite for those characters. People Want to Know What the Characters Are Doing,” Patterson Recalls to The Hollywood Reporter. “There Are Always Memes Online, [fans asking]’I wonder How Hang Hill Will Respond to This?’ That’s always a good sign. ”

That journey to brringing the backs of the Six Years Years from That Moment to Get A Greenlight, and the Ten Two More to Release It. In the Meantime, The Series-WHICH PICKS UP WITH HANK HILL RETURNING FROM A DECADE-LOWING LIVING AND WORKING IN SAUDI ARABIA Dramatic transformation in How Series Are Released and Consued, and A Culture of Comedy That Has Undergone An Expansion (and Revaluation) of What Audiences Collectively Find Find.

Patterson Doesn’t shy from Those Things on-Screen in the Writing or Off-Screen While Talking About the Returning Series. Insthead, He Openly Shares Exactly How Those Things Did – And Didn’t – Affect His Pitch for A Rebooted King of the hill. That vision is what he chalks up to a return to the Middle Ground that acknowledge of the overestone Window on a Lot of Things have radically shifted.

The result is a reboot that works to be bots the animated Series Always Was – a satire about a conservative Father and his Family in a small texas town – an and ahant. “[[King of the hill]Was Maybe About that Common Thread That Goes Through All These People, ”Voice Star Toby Huss Tells Thr. “And this [reboot] is about going back and revisating the besting, and letting them sit in your life for half an hour at a time, and i though

For King of the hill‘s return and the release of all 10 episodes now hulu, Thr Spoke to patterson about revisiting arlen and the series’ Distinctive Sense of Humor; How The Writing Team Brough The Hills and Their Community Into the Modern Era; How The Industry SHIFTS BROUGHT The TEAM INTO NEW CHOICES FROM VOICE CASTING TO ART STYLING; Honoring the Characters of the Voice Cast That Have Since Passed; and More.

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You are a veteran of the Sitcom Space, with Credits On Frasier, The Bernie Mac Show, Big Bang Theoryand more recently shifting gears. You Also HelMed The Wonder Years reboot. As Someone SO Familiar with Comedic Sitcoms Who Has Already HelMed Taking A Classic Into The Modern Day Via Reboot, What Warrants King of the hill‘s return for you?

To Answer “WHY NOW?”, WHICH is the most Important Question, for The Wonder Yearswe have a living in a time when the story of the black midlet class during the civil righs movement hadn’n been told in that way before. The PARALLS BETWEEN WHAT WAS Going on in Society in the Country in the Late ’60s and What Was Going on in the Early 2020s Were So In your Face. It Felt Like Good Commentary to Look Back and to Be ABLE TO Look at the Present in a Somewhat Similar Way, But Not Quite As Charged. With King of the hillWHEN I SAT DOWN WITH MIKE AND GREG AND WHERE MEETING WITH ME TO DACONTYLY Be the ShowRunner, I Told Them the Things That Stood Out To Me About Was Interesting. In the Original, The Character of Hank Hill (Voiced by Judge) Had A Strong Point of View, and Was A Very Strong Character Known for Representation a Common Sense Middle Gund.

Whther You Lean Left or Right, Hank Always Represited The Common Sense Middle that Satrized the Extremes. But Hank Was The One Was Bringing the Extremes Towards The Middle, and Realized We Can All Agree On Certain Things. The Backstory they up to with – which i THINK WAS VERY SMART – WAS OF SENDING HANK AND PEGGY (Kathy Najimy) Away to Saudi Arabia to Work on the Aramco Base for About. King of the hill Time Ten Bringing Hank Back to A Community and Country That Has Changed Some. WHAT I TONOUGHT WAS SMART ABOUT THAT IS THAT HANK HASN’T CHANKED THAT MUCH. He Comes Back, But His Common Sense Middle Ground Is Not The Middle Anymore. The Extreme Has Moved So Far to the Extreme Thatm, Hank’s Common-Sense Middle-Ground Looks Like The Other Extreme Now.

That felt like a good opportunity to make some good cluural social commentary. I Specify “Cultural” Because A Lot of People, Probably Me Included, WHEN WE Talk About the Original, Teced to Say It Was a Political Show that Made Political Commentary. That’s Really Us Projecting On The King of the hill WHAT WE THINK AND FEEL. The Original Touched Upon Politics SomeTimes, But The Social Commentary Was More Cultural. I more about a facher raising a Son, But Society Now Saying How You Raise A Boy Is Different; A Culture Saying How You Treat A Woman Is Different. That was any the show was, but is also smula Relatable Stories Through the Points of View of Our Characters. That’s what we were wanted to make sure we Maintain with this one. And Taking the Opportunity That We Can Now Have Our Main Character Have A Totally Different Not Only View of Culture, But Way the Culture Views Him. That’s when a Lot of the comEDIC conflict comes from.

There’s A Lot of Ways the Original Show’s Sense of Humor Is Descripted by the People Who Made It and the People Who Watch It. TOSE MIGHT NOT ALWAYS ALIGN BECAUSE OF HOW Comedy Ages, Which Underscores How How Card A Medium Comedy Is In Terms of Translation Over Time. But WHEN YOU WERE TALKING TO MIKE AND GREG, What Was The Central Comedic Tension of the Original Series, and How Did that Stay the Same or Change at all for this return?

I’ll Answer It by Using An Example From The Original. One of the quotes that Always Stands Out to Me Was from the episode whode Khan (ronny chie (ronny chie) and minh (lauren tom) First Move in Next Door, and the Ten Khan Immed Immed Immed an asshole. Hank’s Point of View is, “What Kind of Country Is This Where i Can Can Only Hate A Man If He’s White?” That speaks a lot to the irony that a Character like Hank Will Find HimSelf in. People Will Project Onto Hank As A White Man of A Certain Age at that Time Being Republican – He Wuldnn’ Be Called A Republican Now – and Living in Texas a Lot of Hot. So that kind of he does Something, It’s Interpreted Based on What People Think A Character Like Him Wuld Feel.

But his point of view is, “no, no, i don’t Hate Him Because i’m racist. I Hate Him Because he is an asshole.” That’s WHERE A LOT OF Rich Comedic Irony Lives, and that’s What I Wanted to Make Sure We Carried Over Into this Version of It – Putting Hank Assumptions that are bassed on whoy see he is, or whoy see he’s Supped to be, and not bassed on whohth actual is. Now Has to Prove HimSelf to Be Different, While Not Changing What He’s Done. That’s Very Interesting to Me, and that’s WHERE I THINK THE SHOW LIVES WHEN IT LIVES AT ITS BEST Comedic Potential.

Fox-Like Adult Swim and MTV-Carved Out A Unique Space for Adult Animation that Was Really Edgy and Boundary-Pushing, Something Disney Hadn’t Rerolly Delved Into Unil. How did the Answering to Disney Versus Fox, and a streamer Versus a Broadcaster, Shape Howne You Approached this Show?

IT’s A Multi-Layred Answer. YES, FOX BACK THEN COME ADULT Animation Let Certain Shows Really Push the enamelope. Family guy Really pushed the enamelope. The Simpsons to a very measured extrant. King of the hillThought, Never Pushed the Envelope in the Same Way, in Terms of Being in Your Face. But it may have the one envelope in terms of some of the Social Commentary.

SO WHEN WE Were Doing Iting for Hulu, Under The Disney Banner, On The One Hand, the Hulu Execs for the Show Were Fans of the Original, SO We All Were Were on the Same Page in Terms of Original Special. But There Were Situations WHERE The Disney of It All Put Some Limiters on Us That I Know Fox Wound Not Have, Even Thought We Were on Hulu And Streaming, Which Theoretic [standards and practices] than fox. But for US, Staying True to the Show Meant We Weren’t Ever Going to Be Too Gratuitous with The Curse Words and Things, But We Do Take Some Liberties. The Characters DO CURSE IN WAYS They CAN’T CURSE ON BROADCAST. That being Said, Hulu Still Made US Go Through and Pull Out All The F-Bombs Because They Want the TV-MA Label, and It’s Fine. Totally get it. It is what it is. I’m not a huge fan of shows pushing the enamelope in that way anyway, so it wasn’t a big loss, But it was irmonic, especiyally consenger Was to try to push the enamelope as Much as you could.

WHEN King of the hill Was in its initial raun on fox, its first season was was actaally only like 12 episodes. But that and later seasons, WHICH WERE 20-PLUS EPISODES RELELEASED WEEKLY IN A TIME WHEN PEOPLE SAT IN FRONT OF TVS at A SPECIFIC TIME Each Night. The Return Is A 10-Episode Binge Drop on a Streamer. Did the Shift in Platform and Distribution Model Affect at All How You All Thought About Writing It Now?

That quest taps into someting that’s, Much Bigger that We’re All Trying to Figure Out Now and Is The Reason We Went on Strike; the actors on Strike; WHY THERE’S SUCH A Contraction in the Industry in Terms of Production Drying Up; and WHY The STUDIOS WERE chasing the streaming model and then realized the Streaming Model Can’t Sustain ITSELF. EveryBody’s Trying to Figure Out How to Match Audence Viewing Behavior to the Way Business Models used to work. SO A Microcosm of That Is This Whole Thing that A Season Is 10 Episodes Now, and that Certainly Affects the Stories We Can Tell, But Not All In A Bad Way. In some winds, 10 episodes is creatively more refreshing than 22 episodes. Trust Me, The Unspoken Secret that We Always Had Was Is Iting Doing 22 Episodes, And by Time You Get To Episode 17, You’re Starting To Repeat Yourself Probably. But Monetarily Speaking, that was a Great Model. Now for Streamers Like Hulu and Disney Plus, It’s A Little Different.

WHEN WE Were Breaking Out The Season ARC, IT CERTAINLY MADE US SKIP AHIP, I THINK, IN A Way that we wooldn’t necessarily have a hovead in the first 10 episodes Under. Think About the Connie (Tom) and Bobby’s (Pamela Adlon) Relationship. We Wanted the Season to end with them getting together, so that meant, Along the Way, We have to Jump that Relationship Ahead Faster than We Wow HAVE HAD WE HAD 22 EPISODES to TOT. That fit to how we bugght the stories and what we have to pick and choice in terms of what w E Showed. The Word That Comes To The Top of My Head Is It Makes You Be More “Efficient.” IT ALSO MAKES YOU FIGURE OUT, Assuming I Want to Get From A to B, What in Between Has to Be Shokn to Make It Make Sense Who We Get To B. Versus If IF IF IF, I B I HA HA, I HA HA HA Along The Way. IT MAKES US HAVE TO A LITTLE MORE SELECTIVE WITH WHAT We have Our Characters Experience if We’re Trying to Get Them To The Same Place by the End of a Season.

This Show is not someting Entirely New For King of the hillbut there is new elements that expand Hank’s Universe. You do that by bringing in more Characters, Changing Voice Actors of Other Along with The Rest of the Industry, and Adding New Locations that Offer Different Interations. MOST OF THINGS YOU INTRODUCE ARE NOT OUTSIDE OF REAL, MODERN TEXAS CULTURE AND COMMUNITIES. Can You Talk About How You Approached Expanding The Hills’ Modern-Era Community?

Some of It Is Just Along the Lines of What You’re Saying. We have an optoportunity to do some STUFF NOW Under A Different Societal Lens than the Original Show Was Under. Specifically, that’s broth to casting the people of color who is the Same Background as the Characters that they’re’re’re’re’re’re’re’re’re’re’re a wider Net to be abbellude. That was was Important Because that’s Become Important on A Global Level in Terms of TV Shows. But then, like you said, in terms of the characters that thing the poopulate the world that hank experienses, it’s not as simple as me saying i’m a black writer and i want to find black characters King of the hill. King of the hill HAD Black Characters. Bernie Mac Played a Character; Chris Rock and Snoop Dogg. Fans of the OG Series Know That. But It’s About Intent and Purpose, Too. That show Lived in a World Where The Stories they Telling Didn’t Necessitis, Necessarily, Hank Interacting that Much with Other People. Now We Feel Like We Just Live in A Different World.

The Writing Staff Before We Started All Took A Field Trip to Dallas Because We Wanted to See What’s Camed Over The Last 10 Years. We Visited Restaurants, We Went to the News Station, The Newspaper, We Talked to People To Ask Them, “What Are You Reporting On? What Are You Talking About?” And it just camera up that people are mixing more in dallas. IT Kind of Bucks The Stereotype Because People Think Things Are So Polarized. It Gave US An Opportunity to Say, “All Right, Whoto We Like to See Hank Interacting With – But For The Purpos of Showing Hank in Tese New Environments in The Same Way Way Way Way Way. A Strong Point of View, Being Someone Who RepreSents A Common Ground Amongst People, and As Someone Who Follows a Certain Set of Rules that Other People Can Rally Rally Aurn. That felt like a good opportunity.

A Black Barber Shop Is Field with People Who Also Have Similar Points of View and, If Not Similar Points of View, Similar Approaches to Things, Strong Opinins, But WelComer Also Hearing from Ohers, Right? So that felt like a type of thing that west to see Hank in. And I Guess that Boils Down to: Where Do We Think Fans Will Will to See Hank and WHO DO WE THINK FANS Wuld Want to See Hank Interact Wich? And as long as that fit the mold, that’s How We Followed It.

Toby Huss Was in a Really Unique Position with this Show’s Return, Both Stepping Back from Playing Kahn and Ten Continuing the Role of Dale Gribble, Who Was Voiced. How did you all work with toby to Handle the Kahn Shift and THEN How did you Land on the Decision to Continue on with Dale USING TOBY TO VOICE?

Toby Almost Led The Charge in Terms of Realizing It’s Time to Pass and Let Someone Else Play The Voice of Khan. Toby’s a very Sensitive, Sensitive Guy. He have his finger on the Pulse of What’s Going on. He’s a great voice actor. And Our Way of Looking at Casting Is Different, and Toby Was So On Board with that and Champing that. WHEN Johnny Unfortunately Passed Away, We Firmst and Foremost Wanted to See What’s Going to Honor Johnny and His Family in The Best Way. Dale’s Character Was Too Important A Character to What We Were Currently Doing to Let The Character Go Away. SO it felt like he still needed to Stay An organic Part of the Show, so that meant carrying on. That comes with a lot of consider SO We FIRST AND FOREMOST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT WAS GOING TO BE HANDLED IN THE MOST Respectful Way and A Way that We’d be Proud of.

After that, It Became, Creatively, What’s Best for the Show? THEN HOPEFULLY TOSE THINGS OVERLAP. We looped at all the options you would Think we would look at; Recasting, USING SOME SORT OF Other Technology to Try to Kep The Voice Going. WHAT FELT The MOST Respectful and Also Creatiely Strong Was Taking Toby, Who Was A Friend of Johnny’s, Who Was Like A Brother to Johnny in Certain Ways, and Having Having Having Homage to Johnny. What people don’t know is the Cast Will Always Turns Doing Each Other’s Characters Like at A Table Read. That was a party of the family dynamic, anyway, so that felt like it was a Natural Extension of What the Cast Did Amongst Themselves. That’s also whony toby was a good choice.

Among the Cast Who No Longer With US Are Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty, Who Were Behind the Characters of Luanne and Lucky. DID YOU CONSIDER Bringing Them Back and How did you want to pay to them even Thought they aren’t presenter?

As you can Imagine, A Lot of Thought Went Into that. The Luanne Character Was So Important in the Original. Brittany Murphy Unfortunately Passed Away as they Were in the Original Run, and they have to deal with it. They have already been dealing with her being so busy because of her movies and things, that Characters Had Already Been Prased Out A Little Bit Towards the end. Our Decision Was, Do We Revitalize That Character OR NOT? The analoggy that i’ve been using is as a sperts fan, sometimes you have a player who have meant so much to a team and an organization in terms of wht with the team, the best thing you can do to Honor them is to have the jersey up in the rafters and to retire the Number. In the Case of Brittany and Tom [Petty]that felt the most respectful way to Honor them. That being said, there’s still going to be that void, and we kept that they have existed in this universe, and that still do exist, Even Thought we don ‘. Hopefully, if fans stick around and hulu allows US to do more episodes, you’ll see a way that we have come up with to address whoh, at least in a referent.

We Spoke Before About the Trickiness of How How Humor Ages, and One of the Ways That That Apps in Sitcoms Is Pop Culture References – Something King of the hill HAS DONE FROM The VERY BEGINNING. You keeep that tradition up in this Season, from The Summer i Turned Pretty to TED LASSO. Topically, You’ve Also Got More Broad Signifiers of the Time: Ethical Nonmonogony, AI, Parenting Vlogs, Jeffrey Epsein. Were You at All Concerned About How That Might in The Future Age Your Show? Or DID GROUNDING the Hills in the Current Moment Remain More Important?

SO NOT on Were We Conserned, There’s An Extra Level of Concern That You Have For Animation, Because It Takes Nine Months for An Episode to Kind of Come Out Who Animated. Not on We Run the Risk of Dating Ourselves in Terms of Future People Watching the Show As An, “Oh Crap, That’s Such A 2025 Reference Nine Months Later. So that was someting that we have to be very careful with.

And that’s WHY, OUTSIDE OF South ParkMOST ANIMATED SHOWS DON’T DO IT. The Simpsons do it, but the’re in a unique situation and they’ve been doing it for 30 years. So i’ll Say this, WHEN WE DID MAKE A POP CULTURE REFERENCE, IT FIRST AND Foremost Had to Feel True to The Character That Was Saying It. IT Couldn’ Be the Show Making the Reference. SomeTimes WHEN The Simpsons does it, the show is makeing pop culture references. For US, The Character Had to Be Doing Iting. THEN FROM MY PERSONAL POINT OF VIEW, IF We’re Satirizing It, It’s Ok, Because Now We’re Making A Comment About Something, and It Won’t Feel So Dateed. Hopefully, WHEN IT’S WATCHED IN THE FUTURE ,ing’ll FEEL LIKE We Were Making A Statement About the Time Period That This Show Existed. That doesn’t mean The Summer i Turned Pretty WON’T FEEL LIKE A VERY DATED REFERENCE 10 TO 20 YEARS from NOW. But Hopefully It’ll Still Be Funny. If is satire, it can still be funny and dated. If’s just gratuitous, it’s only going to be dated.

Viewers Likely Have Questions About How You Bring A Number of TESE Characters Back, But Dale Is Really A Stand Out, Especialy in the Bush Library Visit Episode. He’s a conspiracy Therist, and has always pushed myisinformation and disinformation in Ways People Likely Thought Were Harmless, But We’re Currently Seeing Isn’t So Harmless. How did you think about writing him in this moment? DID YOU FEEL Any Pressure to Tone Him Down, to Challenge Him Any More Than Hank ALRIREADY DOES?

WHEN I FIRST MET WITH GREG AND MIKE AND WE TALKED ABOUT How I would Approach ShowRunning, I used Dale as an example Because I felt the strength of the shot HANK, But HIS MIDDLE IS NOT The MIDDLE Anymore. Dale Staying The Same Dale Was a Way to passively make Make Social Commentary About How Crazy Reality Has Become to Where Now People’s Face. WHERE DALE CAN BE AON TO POINT AND SAY, “I’M NOT THAT CRAZY.” That is Such A Unique Position for Dale to Be In, Even Thought He’ll Always Be The Craziest. And we get the Our Comedic Conflict and His Conflict with Hank from that. Living in the World Where Dale’s Not the Craziest Person in the World Is Just A New Thing for Hank to Experience, Too, Which We Tried To Tap Into with The Bush Library Stuff. I was of the opinion, Let’s Leave Dale Here Is Because that Gives Us and Opportunity to In and Of ITSELF MAKE A STATEMENT.

I have to ask about is the art style for this because that’s Really Part of How You Tell Story in Animation, and Is Also Impactd by the Industry Moment of You’re Making A Show in. The Original Series is Real Simple 2d, But You Make Some Changes for the Reboot. Can You Talk About the Decision-Making Behind That?

I do want to address the art because that’s probably be of the most universal things that have shook the New Audionce whata they saw the previews and these likes – that animation looks. I Get It, and I Get Who’s People Want to Revisit the Show May Be Taken Aback a Little Bit. The New Animation style is all digital now, but the Truth of the matter is, it is impossible to the Show Now Way It Was Done Ten. The Hand-Drabn Animation, The Water Colors, Those Don’t Exist Anymore. If they exist, they certainly don’t exist at a cost whore you can do a tv show. So it has to be upated, and so we upated it with the current style and makeup of animation that animated shows do. I admit it does look different and maybe jarring to some people. I just want to put out there is that Even Thought it’s upated, we still went and TRIED TO GIVE IT AGE Old Look, to Make It Feel More Like The Color Palette and The LANDSCAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPEAPE. We Certainly Went Through A Lot of Back and Forte with the Background Designers and Things Like That, To Make Our Colors Feel Closer to Whaty Felt in the Original And The Tones And

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King of the Hill is Now Streaming on Hulu.