Awards Daily’s Megan McLachlan talks to Drunk History creators, Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner, about the end of the series, and what Season 7 would have looked like.
Before Comedy Central unceremoniously canceled the Emmy-nominated Drunk History after six seasons, show creators Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner had planned on ending the series with Season 7. In fact, all of the narrations had been filmed, including a very special final episode.
“We were going to end the series with an episode called ‘Teacher Appreciation,'” said Waters, “and it was all the narrators talking about their favorite teacher growing up. And then I talk about my favorite teacher, and then my history teacher gets drunk and teaches a story.”
“We flew him out from Maryland,” said Konner.
In this particular case, history can be real bitch. Surely, some network will give Drunk History its final season (looking at you, Quibi!).
What started out as a grand experiment in testing the knowledge of the inebriated has grown into some serious history lessons and innovative television. What’s really more impressive than watching drunk people recite historical facts is the attention to detail Drunk History gives its stories that have fallen through the cracks of history, from the production design to unknown anecdotes. Through its six seasons, it has been nominated for 17 Emmy awards, including Outstanding Sketch Series six times. The show has made history fun and funny.
I had a hilarious but bittersweet conversation with Waters and Konner about the end (or pause?) to their series, the common threads they uncovered in the stories they’ve told, and what they hope the legacy of the show is.
Awards Daily: Congratulations on another Emmy nomination, but I’m sad that the show is coming to an end. How do you both feel about that?
Derek Waters: Thank you. It’s really disappointing. I humbly say I think we were making good stories come to life, stories that hadn’t been told, and making people laugh while doing it. This is definitely not our choice to end. We wanted to end in a different way, but we also were so blessed to be able to start a show, to be able to somehow say, “Oh my god—we had a show called Drunk History on TV.” Knowing that we got to do that is a really cool achievement, but we’re obviously disappointed.
Jeremy Konner: We’re so grateful for having six seasons, and it’s incredible that we were able to have 17 Emmy nominations, the greatest cast of all time come through, and it’s an experience that’s changed our lives tremendously. We’re really proud of the work we did, and sad that it’s over. One day, maybe someone will make a Drunk History about us.
AD: I love that. Also, though—remember—everything gets rebooted. In TV world, we live in a soap opera now—no one or nothing is ever dead. This could be back in a couple of years.
DW: I like that. Good attitude, Megan.
JK: Love your optimism.
AD: Watching the series finale, what an episode to end on. Typhoid Mary and quarantining.
DW: Don’t say series finale! I can’t say that. You just said it’s never dead! (Laughs)
AD: Okay, you’re right. The season finale. How does it feel to be so ahead of the game with that?
DW: I’ve often said, Jeremy and I never high-fived that we knew a quarantine was coming. . .
AD: (Laughs)
DW: Yeah, there’s always been weird stuff with our show. I’m not saying because of us COVID happened, but our show has found stories that are interesting and then somehow they become extremely relevant. I believe that’s just the good gods that are looking out for you and maybe the people we’re trying to tell stories about are watching out for us. There have been a couple of times where things have just happened. Like, Mr. Rogers’ birthday when it aired.
JK: When we were filming the ADA 504 Sit-In, we didn’t know but it was like the anniversary of the sit-in coincidentally. We didn’t even realize that.
DW: But yeah, when we find stories, they may not be exactly relevant, but they’re topics that we should know about. Typhoid Mary was someone that we know that name, but what did she do? I didn’t know.
AD: I didn’t either.
DW: I thought maybe she was a wrestler. I wasn’t sure. She sounds like a cool wrestler.
AD: (Laughs) Like Typhoon?
JK: I thought she was going around trying to get sick. She wasn’t trying to get people sick. She just wouldn’t fucking wash her hands after taking a shit.
DW: Wait, Megan, did you just say Typhoon?
AD: Yes! Remember Typhoon, the wrestler?
DW: That’s what I just told Jeremy. I always thought of the wrestler Typhoon.
AD: Yes, oh my god. I knew that, too, and it’s scary. And Earthquake was his buddy.
DW: All right, we’re in the same era.
AD: I also loved the “Fame” episode, which is up for Outstanding Costume Design. The Masterpiece the dog section is fascinating, the most famous dog in the world. What kind of research do you do when it comes to finding some of these stories? You really run the gamut of history to stuff that falls through the cracks.
JK: Our line producer had heard something on a podcast [about Masterpiece the dog] and came to us with it. Our stories come from all different places. We have professional researchers, but then friends come to us with stuff and comedians who are on the show with stories they want to tell. I think that’s been such a huge part of the history of this show, the collaboration and wanting to find the most unique stories, the stories that no one has ever heard before. If you have heard the story, we want them told in a way you haven’t ever heard before. That requires us to really invite everybody in and take story ideas from everyone we can and give everybody as much of a voice as possible.
[In the “Fame” episode] (guest) Nicole Byer came in and told that story of Eartha Kitt and Lady Bird Johnson, and started calling her Bird Lady because she was drunk, and started basically turning her into a Batman villain—it dictated how the story was going to be told in a way I don’t think we were planning on. That was really exciting to see, stories evolve. And I think that’s something that happens constantly throughout the show. We think it’s one thing, and we constantly change it around because that’s not how the narrator told it. They were much more passionate about this other part of the story we weren’t excited about. We have to follow their passion because that has to be a more interesting story.
AD: I’m fascinated with how you film the episodes. It has to be so different from anything else. Do the actors follow the footage of the interview? How does the process work with syncing up?
DW: When they get the part, they receive a video that is just the narration, but they also have a script with the words so they can see how the person is talking when they do it. Some actors like to emulate different ways a person moves their mouth or any kind of mannerisms the narrator has that the actor can pick up on. That really helps them. Then when they get to set, because the sound’s already finished from the narration when we’re doing the reenactment, we have the sound on playback, so each scene is being played on a loop, so the actors are hearing their lines going as we’re doing it. And it helps them and it also helps us see if they’re in sync. But let’s be honest, 99% of the time, they all got it right, but when they don’t, the best editors in the world can move it around.
JK: When Evan Rachel Wood came in, she had been doing Dubsmash and said, “I was born to do this.”
DW: “You guys have picked up on a talent that I have that I have nowhere else to showcase.” She’s the best one we’ve ever had.
AD: Derek, I think one of the most impressive things about the show is your cool demeanor while you interview the people. You’re like Barbara Walters.
DW: That’s editing.
AD: (Laughs) It’s hard sitting with a drunk person in real life. What are you thinking during these conversations?
DW: Well, I humbly say I’ve always loved people, and I really do love listening. We do the stories five or six times throughout the night, and the first time, it’s just them getting all of their jokes out. If there are any at that time, I’m laughing at things they say to engage more. The second time, I’m not reacting as much, just because I don’t want to overlap with the audio and let them get into it, and then other times, I’m thinking, I’m going to disagree with something they say so I can get them more passionate and specific about what they’re trying to convey. Sometimes you get that out of someone.
JK: Derek is the drunk whisperer. He knows how to get people talking. I’ve sat in plenty of times and I start asking people, and there is just some magic that Derek has that gets people jumping up and down and screaming, falling on the floor. It’s a skill that, as the show ends, I hope you can parlay.
DW: I think it’s a good skill I’m going to keep in a treasure chest. I don’t know. There’s a skill and a gift. I don’t know if it’s a gift or a skill. I think it also helps that I’ve always looked and sounded drunk, so I think people feel like they’re fine around me. Maybe when Jeremy or another producer comes in completely sober, it’s like the cops are here. “Oh, shit. Hello. Yes, that is a great story [in robot voice].”
AD: How many drinks does it usually take to get the people really talking? And is there a drink of choice that really loosens them up?
DW: It all depends. We always say have something that you’ve never had a bad experience with. I’ve always said that wine makes you tired, beer makes you talk about things from 10 years ago that don’t matter, and whiskey makes you talk as if you know everything. The better way of saying it is that whiskey makes you think you’re the smartest person in the room. Bourbon or whiskey. It’s the specific passion they have for these stories. It’s not like the alcohol brings it out of them; it’s already inside of them. I like to remind anyone reading these things, I’m in no way glorifying alcohol. No, this is just a way to make history funny. It’s humanizing history, because history is so taught. Alcohol brings that out and humanizes the history teacher. Again, I don’t endorse alcohol. I should have burped after that.
AD: (Laughs) What’s the most interesting thing you discovered in all of your research? Is there an interesting thread in all of these stories that you’ve uncovered?
JK: Something that just immediately pops out when you say that, the thing that we have found over and over again is finding underdog stories, finding stories of people who had unbelievable odds and unbelievable obstacles that they had to overcome. What keeps happening is that the best stories are actually about the disenfranchised and people who have not had their time to shine in history books, especially American history books that are filled with white men. It’s been really interesting to want to find more stories, thinking we want to find more stories with POC and women and minorities, but then realizing that’s not just because we want to do a PC thing—these are the best stories in history. These are WAY more interesting than Washington and his cherry tree.
DW: C’mon. That’s a good story.
JK: These are stories that I constantly keep going, “I can’t believe we didn’t learn this. This is insane. This is the best story I’ve ever heard.” I think that’s something that’s blown me away every season and continues to blow me away.
DW: There’s a lot, a lot of stealing. That’s the thing I’ve always seen. Wait, he didn’t come up with that? She came up with that? The Wright Brothers are a great example. They would have never been the Wright Brothers without their sister, and there’s only one reason why we didn’t learn about her growing up. A lot of thieves, I’ve noticed. A lot of big dogs stealing the little dog’s idea. That seems like an unfortunate common thread.
JK: There are no saints. History is so messy. Humans are good and humans are bad. And the people we put on pedestals often have some really shady beginnings. A lot of times they were the people who had more money and were better at marketing and stole ideas from other people. Absolutely.
AD: That’s fascinating. One last question: After six seasons, what do you hope the legacy of Drunk History is?
DW: The stories, that people can learn from them, but also I humbly say what we were doing hadn’t been done. There’s too much shit that’s like, “I’ve seen this before.” I hope the stories live on, but I hope the show as its own concept and world that we created, inspires others to not do what has already been done. I think the show’s good, but I think it also got a lot of people’s attention because it was different. It’s a good thing to be different.
JK: I want to make history less scary. I want this legacy that opens the door for people to be like, “Ohhh, those are just people hanging out and trying to fucking live their life, and then they had to deal with this crazy thing?” And then people wrote history books about them as if they were born into this role from Day 1, but they weren’t fated into these roles. History is just storytelling about dumb humans being human. You can find humor in anything; tell it the right way. We’ve gotten a lot of tweets of stuff from people that their teachers showed them Drunk History in class, and a lot of people who said Drunk History taught them more than any class in high school and got them interested in history. I just think it’s really important. History is really cool, and for the most part, history books are really hard to read. That’s a bummer that those two things can’t coexist. A call to everyone: Let’s find new ways of telling our past. Let’s all try to integrate that into our world and not be so scared of it.
Watch Season 6 episodes of Drunk History on ComedyCentral.com.
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