Adam DeVine Talks Upcoming Season of “Workaholics”

Valley had the chance to speak with Adam DeVine, one of the writers and actors of the hit Comedy Central television series “Workaholics,” in a phone press conference open up to college media outlets. The show follows the lives of Blake (played by Blake Anderson), Anders (played by Anders Holm) and Adam as they are on the verge of becoming adults. The season premiere of “Workaholics” will air at 10 p.m. tonight.

Throughout the interview with DeVine, his laid-back personality certainly shined through with his extensive use of words like, “dude,” “man,” “kickass” and “no sweat.” He even made fun of himself toward the end of the interview saying, “I say ‘no sweat’ a lot. The main quote [of the interview] is going to be ‘Adam said no sweat, dude.’”

To get a sense of DeVine’s personality and time working on “Workaholics” check out the interview:

Q. How do you feel about catchphrases circulating among other people?
A. It’s cool because it’s just all phrases that me and the guys all said together and you know how your group of friends have their own way of speaking sometimes and sometimes it sounds weird and foreign to people who aren’t really close friends with you. Now everyone knows our little inside catchphrases, which is pretty sweet.

Q. How does it feel to go from this show being an underdog to being one of Comedy Central’s flagship comedies?
A. It’s incredible. It was exactly how I wanted things to go, which normally in your life it never happens exactly how you want them to go, but in this case, you know, right place, right time and this was the show that Comedy Central was kind of looking for and it just so happens that we were the guys to do it. I feel crazy lucky.

Q. Any new catchphrases for this upcoming season?
A. The thing is we don’t purposely – we’re not like “we’re going to make this a catchphrase.” It’s just kind of we write the show and we do the show and we improv a lot of it and then we never know what’s going to catch on and what’s just going to be just a thing that we just said. It’s really up to you guys to decide what you guys are going to say all the time.

Q. You guys did a lot of web series before being picked up by Comedy Central…what was that like to be making little videos with your friends and then to go big?
A. Are you kidding? It was rad. It was like we won the fricken’ lottery or something. We made like 80 Internet videos and we were constantly putting them up and always trying to get better. Luckily, someone sort of saw us and gave us the opportunity to take it to the next level.

Q. How closely do you resemble the character that you portray on “Workaholics”?
A. They’re pretty close. Just the core of the person I feel is pretty close. Like I’m a little bit of a maniac. You know Blake is a like a little bit of a sweetheart and Anders (Ders) is a little bit uptight. But I’m not as dumb as my character, fortunately. I think I would be dead. Like Adam the man couldn’t survive in the real world. He’s always chugging stuff that he’s not supposed to chug and jumping off of things he’s not supposed to jump off of. He lives a very dangerous rock n’ roll life style.

Q. Advice to students?
A. If you want to be an actor or producer or writer you just have to do as much as possible and practice and get on Youtube and make videos and one video might suck, but come back and make another one and another one. Keep making content and you know if you make 100 videos and 60 of those videos are really funny, people are going to notice. They won’t notice the 40 shitty videos. Just make as much as you can and try to make it the best that you can and take it seriously. I really give it up to the guys, especially Ders, for bringing some professionalism to our crew. When Ders kind of came in he was like, “Let’s take this very, very seriously and try to take this somewhere.” We started taking it seriously and having pitch meetings once a week – it doesn’t mean we weren’t drunk when we were making our pitch ideas.

Q. Have you received any super weird fan mail?
A. Yeah, I mean I’ve been to a show where this girl made me cupcakes and I was like “oh kickass, thanks for the cupcakes” and then I went home and found a lot of her hair in the cupcakes. Like she just smashed her own hair, like she wanted me to devour her hair. That was fairly strange.

Q. Why do you think college students have taken such a liking to “Workaholics?”
A. The premise of the show is so relatable to people in college because it’s like, you know, you’re kind of at that point in your life where you’re about to be a grownup and it’s scary as shit because grownup hood sucks. So you’re kind of like, “I want to stay a kid forever, I want to be with my friends – these are my best friends of my life, I don’t want to become an adult yet” and that’s kind of what the characters on the show have done – they’re just in this state of arrested development where they’re just having the best times of their life, working this sh*tty job and hanging out with their best friends.

Q. What was your college experience like and how does it influence your writing of the show?
A. Mine ruled – I only did two years of it but it kicked ass (Adam attended Orange Coast College)…I actually met Blake day one of improv class and I was like “this dude with the little fro is really funny we should be writing partners” and then he introduced me to Kyle – they were childhood friends – and we started making videos together. Two years later I met Ders at The Second City, which is an improv school in L.A., and from then on we’ve just been making videos together.

Can’t get enough of the “Workaholics?” Well, DeVine said that he, Ders and Blake have recently finished writing an action-comedy movie that they’re hoping to shoot this year. It’s completely written, starring the three of them, and Seth Rogen is helping to produce the movie – so be on the look out for more this year from the stars of “Workaholics.”

Photo credit: Comedy Central