Kristen Schaal is a multi-talented performer as an actress, comedienne, voice actress, writer, and more. People primarily recognize her for her inimitable work on Bob's Burgers as the mischievous bunny-ear-wearing daughter Louise.
However, it seems that before the existence of Bob's Burgers, Schaal worked as a writer on another adult animated comedy - South Park. While that alone is interesting enough news on its own, Schaal has now revealed that she was only in the writer's room for a month.
It turns out that Schaal was young and inexperienced when it came to working in a writer's room, so she was pitching ideas that didn't mesh with the vision Trey Parker and Matt Stone had for the series. She explained the details of the situation in a recent chat with The Daily Beast, but we've included the important bits below.
"The South Park team had seen the Penelope Princess of Pets web videos that Kurt Braunholer and I had done. And I got asked to be a writer on the show. I was like, yeah! And then I got to the South Park offices, and that was—I mean, I am such a South Park fan. I think South Park is honestly one of the most underrated cultural shows. I think people have taken it for granted at this point. But it is such a force. And I grew up in Colorado, so I was in awe. And I didn’t last long. I was there for like a month, and I was told—I got a warning that I was talking too much.
I was pitching too much. I’d never been in a writers’ room before. So I was just like, let me earn my keep. I was like, “How about this? How about this? How about this?” And that’s not how it works. I wasn’t going where the room was going. Because at that time, too, South Park was doing a ton of movie parodies, and my movie knowledge is not good. I couldn’t go there, so I just kept pitching another thing. So looking back, yeah, they let me go. I could do a writers’ room now, just for everybody listening, but I was too nervous and too excited to be in there."
You can see an image of Parker and Stone in the writer's room above, and the two recently made a $900 million deal to continue their still-popular adult animated series. Still, it's hard not to imagine what contributions Schaal would have made to the series.
But what do you guys think about Schaal's South Park experience? Do you wish her humor would have been weaved more throughout the series, or are you happy with her career trajectory as is?
Regardless of your thoughts, be sure to share them in the usual spot and check out our exclusive chat with Towelie voice actor and South Park producer Vernon Chatman below.
Season 34 of South Park is set to air on Comedy Central in 2022.