Interview with Oh My God... Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances Creator Adele Williams

Join Swimpedia in our conversation with Oh My God... Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances creator Adele Williams, as we discuss everything from the making of the series to how the characters in this show compare to the Aqua Teens.

Oh My God... Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is the latest Adult Swim original, which arrives on the channel on Sunday, March 9th at 12:15 AM with a double episode premiere. Following Sunny, Tulip, and Ladi, the series is set in the not-so-distant future of South Central LA, combining wacky plotlines with dynamic and relatable characters. Creator Adele Williams brings a fresh voice to Adult Swim as the first black woman helming her own show on the network. Viewers can look forward to an entertaining program that clearly embodies the DNA of what you can expect from Adult Swim, along with a creative and authentic look at the lives and stories of black people and women alike. In the meantime, check out our interview with creator Adele Williams and learn more about the making of the series!

Swimpedia: Hi! I'm with Swimpedia. We're kind of like an Adult Swim news website. We have a Twitter account and stuff like that. I've seen the first season of Oh My God... Yes!, it's amazing. I really, really like it. So, I do have a few questions here for you. To start, we would love to learn more about the process of making the pilot and the jump from that to the series, because I remember when the pilot came out. Did you make any major changes with that?

Adele: Ooh, what changed? The biggest change? Yes, there's two changes. First, the background, the world, our background designer just elevated the world to like a million degrees. And then the pilot lands as a Sunny focused show with her two–they play like sidekicks–Sunny and Ladi. I mean, I'm sorry, not Sunny and Ladi, but Ladi and Tulip, they don't say much. They feel very tertiary. We made it a point to keep the show ensemble focused, to give them each equal space and footing, to show up in the episode, make decisions that move the story forward. So that's the biggest difference, the season, the show is a lot more of an ensemble, centered on each of the characters.

Swimpedia: Yeah, and I definitely noticed that too, because my favorite part of the show is that friendship the three of them have.

Adele: Yes.

Swimpedia: So, coming from your time writing for My Dad the Bounty Hunter, which was on Netflix and geared towards a younger audience. How is it now, working with Adult Swim on your own project with an adult focus?

Adele: Ooh, how is it? It's very different. Needless to say. You know, to write a four-quadrant, you know yeah, a series that appeals to much younger audiences, and to write for Adult Swim, being adult and then allowing me to be at the helm of the voice of the show, gives me the freedom. Because, you know, Adult Swim is very creative first, focused. It’s a blessing. So how was it? Oh, my, it was a blast. The room felt different. And don't get me wrong, My Dad the Bounty Hunter, the room there was fun as well, and supportive. And I learned a lot, you know, being in any room for any show, you're going to learn a lot, but being in the Adult Swim rooms that we curated was just nonstop jokes. I mean, there are times I had to just call order because we spent way too much time just riffing on scenes and taking them places that weren't going to end up on the page. You know, we're just having a fucking good time, but we were able to come back. Thank God for my story editors like James III and Branson Reese and Kimberly Walker, they have a wonderful understanding of story, and so they were able to lasso us in and bring us back to the focus.

Swimpedia: That's awesome. So how did you develop the style of the series and what went into creating the different personalities of the three leads?

Adele: Each of the leads are a bit of me. They're just a piece of me. So, Sunny is the part of me that can–because she's very smart–can intellectualize her bullshit and intellectualize her bad decisions and spin it so that they sound like good ones, just because she doesn't want to admit she failed. Very much a part of me. You know, Tulip is the compassionate, spiritual part of me that tends to kind of function on that innocent until proven guilty mentality when it comes to relationships with other people. And, as I like to say, “runs red lights,” you know, was willing to give something a second chance despite the fact that all roads are leading to this as a bad idea. And Ladi is the part of me that, she's that gut feeling I always have that I never listen to. That gut feeling where after some shit goes down, after I'm on my Sunny and on my Tulip bullshit, and when it all turns out to be a bad idea, which I knew from the jump, Ladi is like “I told you.” You know, she's that. And so I just breathe life into each of those parts of me and imagine full people. So it was fun to, you know, come up with the plot, the circumstance, and imagine how each part of me would respond to this particular circumstance.

Swimpedia: Yeah, so how did Adult Swim itself influence your series? And are you a fan of the channel yourself? Do you have any favorite Adult Swim shows? Because I've seen so much Adult Swim DNA from what I've seen of the show so far.

Adele: Oh, okay, so my favorite show–I love Rick and Morty. I love, and I think it's coming back, I don't know if like my eyes were deceiving me or what, but I fucking love Xavier: Renegade Angel. I don’t know if you’ll see any of that in the show, but I love that show. I would say those are my top two. I've always liked–this is, you don't see this in there–Primal, I love Primal. Um, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, but I think that’s Cartoon Network. But those were all my top favs. But Xavier: Renegade Angel and Rick and Morty are my top two.

Swimpedia: Yeah, yeah. I almost kind of see a similar dynamic with the Aqua Teens and the main characters of Oh My God... Yes! where Ladi is kind of like the Frylock where she's kind of like the sensible one...

Adele: Exactly, exactly.

Swimpedia: And Sunny is kind of like the Shake, yeah, and Tulip’s the Meatwad. I was thinking that throughout a lot of the first season.

Adele: Tulip is Meatwad oh my god! That's good, I hadn't heard that before. It makes me think about how people say Succession and Arrested Development are basically like the same thing.

Swimpedia: Yeah, yeah. Um, so what would your advice be to creatives who are trying to get into the business and tell unique stories from different voices now more than ever.

Adele: Stay true to that unique voice. You know, ask for permission, later apologize, or what's that saying? “Don't ask for permission, apologize later.”

Swimpedia: Ask for forgiveness.

Adele: That part, do that. And honor your voice no matter what, don't think about, you know, I don't know the secret to success, but I do know the secret to failure is trying to please everyone. And I know we’re living in a time where we're trying to, you know, we're thinking about, you know, social media and being exposed and being public facing, and having ourselves put out there, and allowing ourselves to be subject to criticism and judgment. But, you're always going to have a hater, you know, as I like to say, “we all ugly to somebody.”  Okay, but just do you and try not to allow the naysayers and the poison whispers to augment who you are and what you have to say.

Swimpedia: Absolutely.

Adele: But it's resonating and it's landing with somebody somewhere.

Swimpedia: Yeah, yeah. Well, so can you tease any jokes or moments in the show that you're especially excited for audiences to see? And why?

Adele: Oh, my goodness. I'm excited to see, there's two in particular, the “A Beast, a Broad and a Baker Named Warrenmacytom” episode when they have the baker in the back seat. Yeah, I think that whole episode taking place, where it takes place, was fun to, you know–I’m trying to tease it out without giving away too much, but it takes a turn. Okay, in a way, but there's a conversation that's being had underneath the chaos that I think we can all relate to, that has to do with closure and letting go of something. And I think my favorite moment, my favorite shot to this day, I think will always be the episode where Sunny and the girls are being chased by the robots. But there's a shot when they, after the tiger does what he does, and Ladi has her gun pointed at the character, and the girls are hiding behind her. That to this day, I don't know, there's something very powerful about that shot that I’m just obsessed with.

Swimpedia: It's awesome. Um, so what did you learn throughout the making of the first season that you wish you could go back and tell yourself at the start, or would you do anything differently in a second season of the show?

Adele: Oh, um, have your jokes read out loud before you send it to the network. When you write, you're doing it in a vacuum. And there were so many moments throughout the production of the first season where it's not until we had our actors in the booth because I couldn't, we didn't do table reads for this. It wasn't until we were recording that I was like, “oh, wait, that's not funny. Wait, wait, wait, wait, no, can we?” And I didn't have time to rewrite something, and so I relied on my actors and their, you know, wit to come up, and I’m like, “can we? Can you? Can you spin it?” And thank God they were able to. Tristen Winger, one of my actors, he voiced every single Jamal in the “23 and Me and Me” episode, praise God for him. We had comedians like DeRay Davis, who, you know, did a lot of improving in the booth. So, read your jokes out loud. And something I would hope to do if we're given a second [season], there's so many characters that I want to bring back, and there's so many places I want to take the girls, still within the world that I can't wait...I can't wait to do that.

Swimpedia: Awesome! Well, those were all the questions we had for Swimpedia. Um, it was super, super nice to meet you. I'm a huge fan of this show already. I can't wait for it to come out. It's gonna be fun that it's airing alongside Common Side Effects and YOLO and all this stuff. It's awesome and so great.

Adele: Thank you so much!