The new FX comedy Legit (Thursdays, 10:30/9:30C) is based on the life and stand-up of Australian comic Jim Jeffries. It’s about a jerk of a guy who is trying to become a good guy – but he invariably approaches it from a direction that can only be described as wrong. And yet, in a weird and nearly unfathomable way, he actually is a good guy – and the show is getting rave reviews.
Series creator/co-executive producer Peter O’Fallon and writer/star/co-executive producer Jim Jeffries spoke with a group of journalists/bloggers about the show’s genesis and approach – and Jeffries’ experience as a first time actor – among other things.
Could you talk a little about how the idea for the series came about?
Peter O’Fallon: Do you want me to start, Jim?
Jim Jeffries: Yes, you start.
Peter: John Landgraf is a good friend of mine at FX. I worked with him before on the The Riches and a couple other projects in the past. I had lunch with him one day and I said I really want to do the comedy thing that he’s doing, particularly the Louie model. At the time, he said go find me a comedian. Then I went to my agency, which was CA, and looked a whole bunch of different comedians and came up with Jim. We met a couple of times and watched almost all of his stand-ups and saw him do a bunch of stand-ups live and ultimately came up the idea for the pilot, which came directly from a stand-up, so that’s basically how Jim and I met together and figured out we could work it out.
Jim: Sorry. I’ve got a cold.
Peter: Jim’s got a bad cold, by the way.
Jim: You’re going to hear that from time to time through the call. Yes, that’s basically it. There is not much more I could add to that question. The pilot episode was directly mixed out of my third DVD, Alcoholocaust, and a true story from my life about me taking a friend with muscular dystrophy to a brothel, so the way we came up with the idea is we just did true stories, I guess.
Peter: The other thing, like with Jim’s manager, Lisa Blum, who is also an executive producer on the show, we met with her and—I met with her alone and she said what do you think—and I said I think there is a pinprick of a heart in there. One of the things Jim told me after he did this stand-up, particularly the muscular dystrophy—the thing about taking him to the hooker or the brothel—is that afterwards, parents, brothers and sisters—those kind of people would walk up to him and say how can I do that for my brother. So, for me, there was a kindness to this incredibly raw, incredibly abrasive and difficult humor, but at the core of it was a kind act—not necessarily heart but it was a nice thing to do to somebody. So in my mind, that’s what kind of sparked the idea for me of trying to balance the difference of this really dark humor with ultimately someone trying to do a nice thing.
Jim, in the stand-up world, you get instant feedback from the live crowd as to what works and what doesn’t. How has it been different working on this?
Jim: Not as pleasurable, of course. It is better to hear it live directly instead of doing something and then waiting three months to see if people are laughing at it. But I have never acted before, so I’ve enjoyed the process very much.
Peter: Although I will add that we all laugh like … on the set.
Jim: We do laugh on the set …but I’ve enjoyed it. I find the whole acting process to be a little bit more than the … I traded my stand-up career.
I was wondering—FX is known for giving people a lot of freedom with their shows. What have they done for you as far as do they give you notes or do you just kind of do your thing and turn it in?
Peter: Let me start with that one, Jim. One of the reasons I wanted to go back to FX is from working with other networks and stuff was that idea and the concept that John has, which is a brilliant concept in my opinion, especially with these comedies, is trying to keep them at a low enough budget that there is not as much pressure and there is not as much heat, and because of that, there is a lot more freedom. One of the things that I found really amazing with FX, and this really isn’t me blowing smoke—I found them to be the best example that Nick Grad gave me. Once I was complimenting them on their notes and he said, yes, we like to be more like a book editor than an actual network.
I think that’s a really great analogy because as we went through the process, there were a couple of notes they gave us on the script, initially, and it was about the basic heart of the script. I don’t mean the heart of the show but what the show was about. They kept pushing us to push further and further into what the show was actually about. They were great notes, and it actually did help us find the rhythm and find it. And then in the editing process—again, their notes are big and overall. It isn’t like cut here and cut here. I thought this would be funnier and I thought this would be more touching or whatever. Those are bad examples. But in the big pictures, I have really loved the process. The freedom is tremendous and when you need it, they’re there, which I think is great.
Jim: I agree with Peter. But for me, the notes don’t really apply that much to me because they never really questioned any of my jokes.
Peter: None of them.
Jim: They never question my jokes. They sometimes say is this not a bit risky, and then we always say we’ll shoot it and see how it turns out and if it doesn’t turn out, we’ll just cut it.
Peter: Except for one that Jim brought up— Never mind.
I really liked the, forgive me if I get the name of this wrong, the 1950s dad voice. How did you come up with that?
Jim: I don’t know when we called it the 1950s. That was an ad lib. That happened on set once.
Peter: He started doing it. I thought it was hilarious.
Jim: I think it was like me trying to do an infomercial commercial or just the dad off Leave it to Beaver. I just started doing the dialogue like that and I thought Peter would come in and say stop being an idiot. But they told me to keep going so we just worked it into the episode.
Peter: I remember we were just doing rehearsals just before we started shooting. There was a close-up of Jim and he turned to the camera and said, “Well, Billy, let me tell you how this works.” I fell over laughing and hollered out to him as we were shooting and said just keep going, and he kept going and then we started calling him. I said what is that. He said, you know it’s kind of like a 50s dad. The guy that talks about asbestos plants that he goes to work out. I said that’s hilarious. Let’s go with that.
That’s a great example of what we were talking about a minute ago about FX’s freedom. We saw it on the set. We thought it was great, and we said let’s go.
Jim: FX gave us notes from that episode. They said we love 50s dad, a great bit from Jim’s stand-up. We never argued with them. That was never in the stand-up.
Peter: One of the things we do. I don’t know if you guys have heard this, but we try to get together on the set. We have a script. Scripts are good and they’re tight. But we try to get in there and we have really—Dan Bakkedahl, who was Second City, and Mindy, who is Groundlings, and D.J., who—everybody knows D.J., and Sonya—we have this group of extremely talented people that are really good at playing their instruments. I always like to use the music analogy. Jim gets tired of this one. We kind of jam. We get it going and things start working. We rehearse over and over again—like when we do the big master shots, we spend a lot of time trying to find the rhythm and things like 50s dad come out of it.
Jim, you said you hadn’t acted before. Are you taking acting lessons or are you just winging it?
Jim: I’m just winging it. I think I’ll take an acting lesson if I ever play a different character besides myself. At the moment, I think I should be able to play myself alright.
Thanks. I enjoyed the episodes a lot. I didn’t think anybody could balance this sort of heart with the really irreverent, dark humor but you guys pulled it off.
Jim: Thank you.
Peter: That really means a lot.
I think I understand risky and pushed limits. Do you find that it’s hard to top in the television atmosphere today?
Jim: I don’t think it’s hard to top in the sense that it’s not hard to top live action. But when you’ve got to top something like Family Guy or American Dad or any of those shows because we can’t do what cartoons can do, but I think live action-wise, everyone’s got the same boundaries. I came and wanked off a person with muscular dystrophy. As long as you don’t see the pain and you see my hand moving and that’s the same rule that everyone has to play by.
Peter: What we’re trying not to do—at least what I’m trying not to do—is to continue the whatever outgrowths or— One of the things using the idea of American Dad and Family Guy is they are a lot of jokes. We’re a bit more of a story. In a perfect world, what we are trying to do is to make that whatever you do in life has consequences. So there is a very small—I don’t want to call it a moral because then it sounds like we’re trying to make moral judgments and we’re not but the idea of like what Jim just used the example of wanking off Billy. It was something he did because he had to because Billy needed it because he was a buddy and he has to do it. The comedy of that is I love putting people in difficult situations and watching them try to get out of it. But secondly is the idea that it is also a nice thing to do. That’s the balance that we’re trying to get. We’re not trying to get too crazy. Does that make any sense?
Jim, you’re opening your life to a larger audience, how does that feel? Different?
Jim: Yes, it feels very odd, especially since a lot of these stories are 100% true. I’m really raking my life to get each story out. If we go to a second season, I’ve got a few stories ready to go. But it is odd. It’s like they say that when you know a person, you only know the tip of the iceberg and 90% of the iceberg is underwater. I think people know 90% of me and only 10% underwater. I haven’t held much back.
Peter: I love one time we were watching one of the shows and Jim turned to me and said, “Am I that much of a douche?”
Jim: I’m portrayed as … but it’s probably a fib.
I’m just following up on something you said about winging it by playing yourself. Can you describe the process of actually portraying Jim Jefferies in a TV show reenacting stories you’ve already told in stand-ups?
Jim: The way to do it is you just have to act like a bit of a prick. That’s the only way to do it. Also, you have to have a false sense of confidence where you think you’re cool and the rest of the world doesn’t think you’re as cool as you think you are.
Peter: … I think is a really great thing to say. We’ve had a couple of people say it was really great but it wasn’t as funny as his stand-up. The thing about that was so important what Jim said is that a stand-up is—you tell them Jim.
Jim: It’s pretty bizarre that people go your stand-up is way funnier than the show. I’m like I hope so. Stand-up is just me trying to be as funny as possible in the most concentrated hour with me standing on stage with no storyline, no plot line, and no character development. Doing the TV show, you have to have the characters. We want you to root for them. We want you to have emotions for these people. It used to be people that I just explained on stage. So, obviously, it’s slower and it’s not quite as funny. But I hope the TV show leaves you a little bit more fulfilled than the stand-up does. Does that make sense?
So far, in the first season, we’re seeing stories from your life off stage. Will we see any of Jim Jefferies, the professional comedian, also?
Jim: I never really stand-up on stage, at least in this season. You’ll see me a couple of times in clubs. We were really conscious. We didn’t want to be compared to Louie, so we thought we’d end up doing stand-up on the show.
Peter: And also I believe—and it’s just my own little parameters I want to put in—one of the things that is easy about being able to do the stand-up is that you can—we used to call it the Wonder Years trick where at the end you say what we learned today was. By not being able to go to a stand-up and have us explain or tell the joke or try to illiterate the story, it makes our job a little bit harder, but I think it makes it ultimately hopefully a more satisfying show.
What we’re trying to do is make little mini movies—little 23-minute movies. If you notice, there are no titles. The titles just come on. There is no theme song. There is no music going out to commercial or music coming in to commercial. The only music we use is needle drops. Every show is a little bit different. Every show there is no real pattern. One of the hardest things we’ve had marketing the show is what’s the show about. Well, it’s about Jim trying to become legit. So the good news about that is it opens up so much more for us.
I have to say I have seen you, Jim, do the stand-up, and I have to say I actually almost prefer the show better because, like you’re right, you’re doing the whole story and you have the whole time to actually relax and do the whole story. Although I love them both, I think this show is really a great vehicle for you—a wonderful vehicle. I think it’s incredible. Of course, Peter, you’ve done like a lexicon of everything I’ve ever loved from The Riches on down way back to Party of Five and Northern Exposure. You’re quite a prolific guy.
Peter: One of the things that has been interesting about my career, and it’s a thing that has only existed, I think, in the last few years is I always try to go for things that I find interesting. I did the first two episodes after the pilots of Northern Exposure. My agent sent it to me and she said you’ll love this because it’s weird. We went up there and we did it. I don’t know if you heard the whole story about Northern Exposure years ago about how everybody hated it. The network buried it in the summer, and so we did whatever we wanted to, which was great.
In that kind of freedom, the first show I ever did was Thirtysomething and that show as like graduate film-making school. After that I did American Gothic and a bunch of other shows like that were—all throughout my career The Riches were like independent films for television. It’s been really great and wonderful. I’ve really enjoyed it, maybe not as much financially as I could have, but creatively it’s been great.
Jim, when you first started talking to Peter, did you have a rough idea that this was something you did want to do or did he have to talk you into it?
Jim: I’ve sold a lot of sitcom premises and scripts over the years, which were always like I’m a taxi driver or I’m in a boy band. Actually there was one that I was the manager of the Thunder from Down Under in Vegas, which wasn’t a bad one, believe it or not. In the end, I kept selling these scripts and I was like I have these stories in my stand-up and we can just do them. Originally, the concept was that from my stand-up we’d do these stories and then maybe the D.J. character would be in for three or four episodes. Then FX liked it so much, they wanted him to be in the series regular. At first, I was a little bit apprehensive about that. But now I’m glad. It’s given us a definite B story or sometimes an A story that we always have to write through. Having to care for this character in a wheel chair and still make it funny is a nice little challenge weekly.
It really is. It really adds a whole lot. I just want to say the series just opens you up to so many different things. Before I let you go, you mentioned that 10% we don’t see. Is that 10% that you edit out because you think it’s not interesting or stuff you just don’t want to talk about?
Jim: No, no. It’s illegal. Obviously, I’m not allowed to say it.
There is no edit button on you.
Peter: Jim lives his life like most people live 90%. I don’t know if you heard that other comment—the life underneath. I have found pretty much across the board Jim lives his life pretty much wide open.
So this question is for both you guys. What has been your favorite part of working on this show or your most memorable moment on set thus far?
Peter: Can I take that one? You guys met Rodney last week. He has become a great friend of Jim and me. His name is Nick Daley, and he’s an actor with special needs. On our final episode—he absolutely loves fire trucks. So he came out at lunchtime and gave us this great speech telling us how special it was for him to be here. Our medic, who has worked with the LAFD, got the fire truck to show up at lunch and two fire trucks showed up. They dressed him all up. He got to drive around with the fire truck and do the hose and all that kind of stuff. It was just a really killer moment because it was so great for him because he kept bugging because I kept telling him we’re going to take you to the firehouse. For me that was really great.
Jim: For me, I’ll have to say meeting my girlfriend in the pilot episode.
Peter: There you go.
I heard she played one of the hookers, right?
Jim: No, no, no. She was Nick Daley, the mentally challenged guy on the fire truck. I just said girlfriend very loosely.
So the second question is there anything you guys can tease about the upcoming episodes—maybe some guest stars that are going to be dropping by or anything?
Jim: We can tell you guest stars, I think.
Peter: We have Andy Dick.
Jim: Andy Dick. We have Marlon Wayans.
Peter: John Ratzenberger.
Jim: Verne Troyer.
Peter: Well, we have Brad.
Jim: Brad Williams. Eddy Ifft from my podcast will be making an appearance.
Peter: We have some really crazy, crazy story lines coming up.
Jim: What about girls? Rachel—we have some pretty girls coming up.
Peter: Somebody sent me an e-mail—somebody online, which, by the way, you guys are the key to our hopeful successful. I think it’s because of you guys we bumped up last week. Please keep the buzz out. I don’t want to call us an underdog, but FX’s model—this actually comes from one of the guys at FX is they take their chickens, they make them, and then they throw them out of the nest and see what flies. As you’ve noticed, it’s mainly built on this whole concept of whether people like it or not. Right now …. The buzz on the internet has been great. The comments I get—all this stuff I’ve been getting has been really fun. The thing that I really enjoy about you guys, and I have to be honest with you, and, again, I’m not blowing smoke, is you guys get it. Really, it’s been encouraging and very fun for me to read a lot of these reviews where people say I was surprised by the heart. I always get scared by calling it the heart because it really isn’t heart, but whatever it is, I appreciate it. It’s really great.
I love the show so I’ll do whatever I can.
Peter: Anything we can for you, let us know. Call us anytime.
Jim: Do they include Canadian ratings in our little rating pack we get?
No. I think Canadian ratings are done separately. What you see is just American.
Jim: Oh, bloody.
Peter: I did a show up there in Canada for a couple of years. It was great.
Jim: My girlfriend’s Canadian. I’m Australian. She’s Canadian. We have an American baby.
Peter: And we’re pretty upset about you guys taking our jobs.
I’m actually asking this on behalf of a journalist who couldn’t be on the call. He was asking it seems to me that you guys are exploring how close being selfless is to being selfish. Was that on your minds when creating the show and how do you keep that balance?
Jim: Actually, I don’t think anyone has said it more succinctly as that.
Peter: That was very well put. In my career, what I’ve always tried to do, even like I made a movie a long time ago—Suicide Kings. I always can’t stand movie or anything that happens. In Suicide Kings, it’s quite violent. What I have the people do is when the violence happens, they all freak out and go crazy like we all would—like normal people would. The thing that we’re trying to do in this show is the same kind of thing. How do you react? It is funny, but it is also a difficult situation—with Billy in the wheelchair and Dan having trouble with work, all those kinds of things. There is just a hint of reality.
So one of the things we love about the show is that somebody called it a bromance, which I think it kind of is. I think thinks it’s a really good analogy—selfless and selfish. Actually, that came from Jim, in my mind. After watching all of the stand-up and sitting down with him, it’s the same struggle I think we all have is how much are we out for ourselves and how much are we out for other people?
That makes sense. The follow-up to that kind of goes along those lines – how do you balance the sweetness with the crudeness on show? He loves both but he wonders how you strike that balance?
Jim: I think I’ve struck that balance my whole career with my stand-up so to me, it feels like a fairly natural way of telling jokes. I don’t see any other way to tell jokes, to be honest with you.
Peter: I think what I was saying a minute ago—with Jim and I—I think that is one of the things that has been a nice marriage for us is I believe that it’s really important to show, for lack of a better term, the consequences of your actions, even if they’re emotional or they’re simple little things in life. The thing that I think we’re hopefully doing well on this show right now is the crude and terrible humor but then the reality of life comes in. That’s where I hope that our plan is to make it funny as … and then suddenly surprise you with life, more so than heart. This is a real situation with a guy in a wheelchair. It’s really funny, but he still has to wipe his … which hopefully will work.
So you guys both wear so many hats on the production of the show. What do you find are the challenges or benefits in being involved in so many aspects?
Peter: Do you want me to take that, Jim?
Jim: Yes.
Peter: The challenges are obviously I work myself to death—seven days a week and that kind of stuff because as I think we mentioned earlier, there is not a lot of money in the show. But the positive aspect is the ability to have one vision so that it ends up being pretty much what you want. It’s the amazing thing, again, about FX. I cannot say enough good things about them. Everything that has been on the air so far, Jim and I, hopefully also, are very proud of. It’s pretty much what we want—98% of what we want. The 2% may have been places where we crossed the line maybe too far, but, in general, it’s been really rewarding to, like I said a minute ago, to make these little mini movies every week.
As a filmmaker, one of the things that I’m trying to do is I’m primarily known as the director. I’ve written a couple of movies in the past and I did my own series about 10 years ago, but one of the things that I always wanted as kind of a fantasy of mine was to try to make television a bit more of a film-maker’s medium. I have been able to do that with this one. It’s been really great—really fun.
You had mentioned some of the guest stars. Could you talk a little bit about how you go about casting the series and getting D.J. and some of the other main cast?
Jim: D.J. auditioned for us like a regular person. It was quite the prize when he walked in. I think it was just luck. I think Memphis Beat had just been canceled that day.
Peter: We have this wonderful casting agent.
Jim: Wendy O’Brien is very good.
Peter: Another Canadian.
Jim: Apart from that, we got John Ratzenberger because I do John Ratzenberger impersonations. When we wrote that character, whenever I would table read, I would say I’ll take Walter and then I’d just do a John Ratzenberger And then we were, why don’t we just ask if we can get him? And then lo and behold, we got him.
Peter: D.J. is another great example. He came in and auditioned. Like I said, it was a bit of luck. And then he got cold feet. We were up in Portland and we shot the pilot in Portland and his manager called me up and said I think you may need to talk D.J. into this. So I got on the phone with D.J. and talked to him. I first started out with the obvious question—really, D.J., you don’t want to play a guy in a wheelchair? That’s what everybody gets awards for. And then after that, he was just worried and nervous about what he could do. Now, if you talk to him, he loves the choice he made. Again, he’s the hub we wheel around because the other people are more improv and comedy centered and D.J. is a really solid actor. Because he’s stuck to a chair and only can express with his face, it’s critical he is as good as he is and obviously is.
Then we have Andy Dick, a good friend of Jim’s. He came in and he killed it. We have a show coming up you’re just going to love. He’s outrageous. He talks about his troubles and his issues that he’s had and talks about being sober and not being sober and it’s really quite funny.
Jim: When we want someone like Andy Dick who is playing themselves, we wanted them to be portrayed as they actually are, you know what I mean, rather than a glossy version of themselves.
Quick question for you, Jim. I didn’t ask you—how did you originally get started in comedy? What was your calling? Did you always know you wanted to be a comedian?
Jim: I wanted to be a stand-up comedian since I was about 14. I started watching stand-up comedy on TV. I did some open spots when I was 17. The first one went rather well. Then they found out I was 17. In Australia, you have to be 18 to go to a bar. They said if I wanted to come back, I had to bring a parent. So I told my dad that I went off and did this. And my dad said alright, I’ll come out with you. I remember it was hailing and it was really bad. I went on stage and I bombed in front of about seven people. Just died on my … My dad was there. I was doing a lot of jokes about you know when you’re in school and this happens and that happens. My dad, in the car ride home, said I don’t think this is for you, mate. It broke my little 17-year-old heart. I went out and did it one more time and it just didn’t go well. I didn’t do it again until I was 23. Then I got up on stage. I’m 35 now. It’s been my occupation since I was 23 years old.
Peter: When I asked him the same question at first, what did your mother call you—The King of the ….
Jim: The Kind of the Idiots.
Is that an appropriate term?
Jim: I think it’s appropriate. I’ve never been the type of guy that had a lot of friends or was part of the cool group. If I have got friends, I seem to be running the show.
Peter: As him mom used to say, they’re all a bunch of idiots. We’re just continuing that now with the show. Jim calls it the ugliest show on television.
Sorry to hear you’re sick, Jim. We Americans didn’t mean to bring you down a little bit. You talk a lot about your family in your performances. Are you going to be bringing in family for yourself on the show?
Jim: That’s the plan I have at the moment for Season Two is to bring my parents over for maybe three episodes.
Your mother sounds hilarious.
Jim: A lot of stuff in Mindy Sterling’s character, which is lifted directly from my mother. Obviously, Mindy is not morbidly obese, but my mother’s a hoarder and Mindy’s character is a hoarder. There are a few lines where I’ve had arguments with my mother that I put straight into this script. I have an idea of a few actors I’d like to play my mom and dad that would be my dream cast. They’ll definitely be in the next season.
How do they feel about the show? Have they seen a lot of it?
Jim: No. I’ve shown some episodes to my brother because I like to get his feedback but not to my parents. They can watch it if it ever gets to Australian television. They’ve never laughed at anything I’ve ever said. I don’t think they’re going to start laughing now.
So is all the cast from Legit—is that your new family, then?
Jim: I hate to get mushy and say something like that, but I do believe we’re all friends. This is the first set that I’ve ever been on. I hear that’s a rarity. We all—me, D.J., Dan, and Mindy—have all been calling each other after each episode airs and see how we all feel. We’ve all remained friends.
Peter: One of the things, from my point of view, is I’ve been doing this a long time and one of the things I told John Landgraf and FX when I wanted to do this—one of the reasons I wanted all the freedom that FX gives you is that part of the problems with studios and networks and all that good stuff is they tend to oftentimes make things to be difficult. I try to go out of my way on this show to do everything that I’ve seen that there have been problems in the past to try to make it really fun and to try to have a good time. As we discussed, we’re on a fairly low budget. I’m making a tenth or whatever of what I usually make, but the idea is that you pay for it, hopefully, with fun. Part of that fun is the more fun you have, the more it becomes a group of people—like in a perfect world, what I would like to do is like make a troupe, like we could all go together and have more and more fun. So far, it’s been really great.
Peter, do you feel like FX is the perfect place for you? I think it is, but do you think it’s perfect place for a jumping board for this show?
Peter: Absolutely. I have no question.
Jim: I’ve said before that I like that they like their comedies as edgy as possible, but there are still some restrictions. I can’t say (C-bomb), right?
I miss that.
Jim: If I had a show on HBO, it would just be a naked girl sitting on a chair saying (C-bomb) over and over.
Peter: Jim has a good point. Even though there are very few rules, and you will see one coming up here next week is about Jim in an airplane where he calls the guy a …, and we beep it out. We beep it out in a really great way. It’s very obvious what he said. In some ways, it’s almost funnier that he actually said it and that we have to beep it out. One of the things that has been kind of nice about it is it does give us rules like a basketball court where you’re inside the court and you have to play within those rules. In some ways, it’s an odd way to say it, but I think it actually helps the stories. I think FX is also the perfect place for a number of reasons but also for the fact that they are—as I said earlier, this book editor thing. There are occasional times when it feels like we’re on our own for a second and then they come in and say I think this is working and you say good.
I think the show is going to be amazing. There are some students at UCSD, especially one named Brad, who is so thrilled that you are on TV, Jim.
Peter: Tell Brad to tell all his friends in Tweet and Facebook and Reddit and all the other stuff you guys do because it’s all good. It’s all working.
We absolutely will. Thank you, guys.
Peter: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Photos by Matthias Clamer and /Courtesy FX