Gabe Liedman
Let the record show it: Gabe Liedman is not holding back.
The handsome fuzzy comedian made his stand-up debut before landing writing-room jobs for shows as popular as Inside Amy Schumer, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Broad City and Pen15. His mix of wit, observation and queer commentary sparked the interest of actor / producer Sean Hayes and ultimately landed him the biggest contract of his career: to create the adult animated comedy Q-Force. for Netflix. The show debuts on the streamer on September 2.
Q-Force borrows from the classic spy / secret agent genre to tell the story of Steve Maryweather (voiced by Hayes), a once promising American Intelligence Agency secret agent whose career was shattered upon coming out of the closet. 10 years later, Agent Mary, as she is known in the Agency, formed her own group of queer spies. They include Deb (Wanda Sykes), a proud butch lesbian and engineering genius; Stat (Patti Harrison), a moody hacker, and Twink (Matt Rogers), a master of fluid disguise. When the Q-Force stumbles upon an elaborate plot involving hacking, foreign powers, and reality TV, compelling director V (Laurie Metcalf) tasks the team with solving the case, with one caveat: they are also scheduled to welcome ultra-straight agent Buck (David Harbor) to the team. Things get even more complicated when Agent Mary crosses paths with the handsome and single Benji (Liedman) living next door. Also on the bill are Niecy Nash, Gary Cole and Stephanie Beatriz.
We caught up with Liedman to talk about making the show, its brand of adult-only humor, and sprinkling a familiar genre with a deluge of queerness. Q-Force hits Netflix on September 2.
So, how long ago did you design the series? It sounds like something you’ve been thinking about for a very long time.
He is. It came naturally in a conversation with Sean and Todd Milner. They were interested in something in the world of a “gay James Bond”. They didn’t really know what to do with it. Sean was a fan of my stand-up and called me for a meeting. It was an absolute dream come true; I couldn’t believe my luck. They kind of gave me this pitch – a ‘gay James Bond’, and I went and thought about it. I came back to them with Q-Force: kind of a sloppy ensemble version of gay James Bond that’s not just about one gay dude, it’s about a whole team. And [Agent Mary] is not James Bond. He’s in his head, but in the real world he’s got a hill to climb. It was the seed of it.
Q-Force; WANDA SYKES as DEB, SEAN HAYES as MARY, MATT ROGERS as TWINK, PATTI HARRISON as STAT and DAVID HARBOR as BUCK in episode 6 of Q-Force. CREDIT: Courtesy of NETFLIX. NETFLIX © 2021
You obviously borrow from the classic Bond and Charlie’s Angels-both in terms of plot and in terms of camp.
Absoutely.
But there’s also a bit of an 80s soap opera –Dynasty– in particular the Moldova scenario.
[Laughter]
You are dead. We have — strangely — a lot of fans of Days of our lives in the writer’s room. So we love that kind of storytelling: someone’s possessed by the devil, or there’s a lost twin, stuff like that. We wanted to have the freedom to go crazy with our storytelling because it’s lively. You are already watching a fantasy.
Sure.
So I watched James Bond a lot. I am a big fan of Bourne the movies were an inspiration. But when you get a little crazy, you jump into pop culture. Our team, we love all the benchmark stuff and the camp.
Q-Force – (left to right) SEAN HAYES as MARY and WANDA SYKES as DEB in episode 6 of Q-Force. CREDIT: Courtesy of NETFLIX / NETFLIX © 2021
Impressive. In terms of visual style, what was the vibe you were looking for? A mid-century modern aesthetic? The designs remind me a little of the artist Shag. I don’t know if you know his work …
I’m not. I’ll look.
You’ll love it. Shag’s work has a very mid-century modern design: lots of modern, pure colors. Clean lines. Was this the visual aesthetic you were looking for?
Yes, the visual style definitely started with the mid-century designs of the 60s and with the anime. It was a great touchstone for our artists. But I wanted both the design and the music to keep us rooted in the action / adventure genre. The scripts are so comedy, comedy, comedy. I wanted to make sure the show still feels like an adventure. So we went really serious and epic with the music. We went very sexy and designy with the visuals.
I like this.
It was very important to me. In a lot of animated comedies it’s either very sunny or it’s ugly on purpose to remind viewers it’s a comedy. I just wanted to create sexy characters. Bond is sexy. Bourne is sexy. So even though we work with queer underdogs, I wanted everyone to be really hot in their own way. I wanted everyone to have sex appeal.
Q-Force – (L to R) SEAN HAYES as MARY, PATTI HARRISON as STAT, WANDA SYKES as DEB, MATT ROGERS as TWINK and LAURIE METCALF as V in episode 1 of Q-Force. CREDIT: Courtesy of NETFLIX. NETFLIX © 2021
I would also be remiss to note that Mary’s boyfriend Benji, played by you, happens to see a lot like you. Fortune Feimster’s character looks a lot like him. The character of Ira Madison III looks a lot like him. Was there a conscious choice to make the characters look like their real-life counterparts?
It was very conscious. When we dream of someone like Agent Mary, he might look very straightforward. I wanted to make sure there was a human quality. Our artists on each character therefore started with the face and body of the actor.
Interesting.
Then they embellished or went from there. You see it very clearly in the character of Agent Buck, played by David Harbor. On paper, he might look like a pornstar. He’s supposed to be the Randy Blue type.
[Laughter]
But he doesn’t. We started with David Harbor and we said, “Let’s use his hairline, forehead and stomach. This is the kind of man who is the macho man in real life. He’s not torn like Agent Mary would be. It doesn’t matter, he will get all the credit no matter what he does, so he doesn’t do push-ups like Mary does. It was therefore a way of lending to realism.
That then begs the question – I’m assuming David Harbor or one of the other actors didn’t pose nude for the character design? There is a parcel nudity in this full frontal show.
[Laughter]
There are.
Q-Force – (L to R) PATTI HARRISON as STAT, WANDA SYKES as DEB, SEAN HAYES as MARY and DAVID HARBOR as BUCK in episode 4 of Q-Force. CREDIT: Courtesy of NETFLIX / NETFLIX © 2021
You tease them right at the start and then you go. I could not believe it.
Yes. No, he didn’t pose nude. We stuck to her face and clothes for the design. But I wanted to see what nudity we could get out of. It’s a mature show for adults. There is sex in it. I had no idea what Netflix was going to say when they first saw everyone’s penis drawings. They were cool about it. We were all on the same page: this isn’t a kids’ show, it’s for queer audiences. That’s not to say queer people are a monolith, but the spirit of the show was to be free and wild. You see a lot of frontal female nudity in live-action, but you don’t see as much male nudity.
Law.
So i just thought Why not? And that led to some really fun artistic encounters. It turns out that pubic hair is difficult to animate.
Who would have thought? There is a tendency in animated comedies to be light on the plot and heavy on the jokes. You do both here – there are a lot of jokes, but there are also a lot of conspiracies. How do you find the right rhythm of jokes so that there isn’t too much to distract from the plot, but the series is funny enough?
This is very true and it is different every time. Something like Inside Amy Schumer is a skit. You’re only in a world for four minutes, so you put it in. Brooklyn 99 is more of a sitcom – I’m very proud of this show. And it’s so full of jokes that sometimes you’re like is this a normal conversation? I also worked on things like 10:15 where it’s a comedy it’s funny, but if you look at the page it’s not full of jokes. The humor is elsewhere. The characters cry and feel shit. Big mouth, another show I worked on, is one joke per minute. It really depends on the project.
With that, I wanted to have some space to breathe. I also wanted to tell the adventurous parts of the story – there is a lot more intrigue in these episodes than Big mouth Where 10:15. It was therefore necessary to leave room for mystery. I also wanted to be more emotional at times. One thing that attracted me to the show is that we are dealing with a handful of people with secret lives and dual identities. Sometimes I wanted the stakes to be crazy. It’s a great hope for the series, that we’ve found the right balance.
Q-Force – (left to right) WANDA SYKES as DEB, SEAN HAYES as MARY, PATTI HARRISON as STAT in episode 10 of Q-Force. CREDIT: Courtesy of NETFLIX / NETFLIX © 2021
I think you did. It’s awesome to me that you tell a full season arc, a story serialized through these 10 episodes, but it’s also a joke a minute. And that allows us to fall more in love with the characters.
It was my hope. It’s an action show, but it’s also a workplace comedy. It was another thing we were trying to do. We worked with Mike Schur who co-created Office and Parks and recreation He is a master of this world. So having it in the mix opened my eyes to [seeing this as] a workplace comedy that takes place on a fighter plane, or whatever. And this cast is amazing, so it would be a bummer if they just said jokes and couldn’t flex.
Completely. Tell me about your personal comedy style You’ve worked with some really hard-hitting comics in your career: Abbi Jacobson, Amy Schumer, Andy Samberg, Anna Konkle, Maya Erskine. How does working with such talent improve yours? What do we learn about writing …
