BoJack Horseman creator: "It's a shame" Netflix is abandoning its model of giving shows a chance

Los Angeles Times

Raphael Bob-Waksberg was asked by the Los Angeles Times about Netflix canceling BoJack producer and production designer Lisa Hanawalt's Tuca & Bertie after just one season. "When we started on BoJack, it was understood that the Netflix model was to give shows time to find an audience, and to build that audience, and I remember being told, 'We expect the biggest day BoJack Season 1 is going to have is when we launch BoJack Season 2,'" says Bob-Waksberg. "We didn’t get a full two-season pickup, but that was the understanding, that these things take time to build. It was my understanding that that was, at the time, the Netflix model: to give shows time to build. I think it’s a shame that they seem to have moved away from that model." Bob-Waksberg also discussed this season's assistants' strike storyline as the issue of low pay for assistants has begun making headlines. "It’s very clear to me that if all of the assistants stopped working for a week, the town would be in utter chaos (laughs)," he says. "In some sense, they hold all the cards, and yet they’re often treated like garbage. 'Funny' is maybe the wrong way to describe that, but there’s an interesting irony there that felt like exploring — how that would affect our world, in an exaggerated way, on our show." Bob-Waksberg was also asked about splitting the final season in half. "Creatively, I think it allows us to structure the season in a different kind of way. And I think that allows us to stay surprising," he says. "And I think people were starting to feel like they understood the rhythms of our normal 12-episode season, and I like the idea of this last dash of eight with people not knowing what to expect or how it’s going to play out. Is it going to feel like its own season? Is it going to feel like the second half of the season they just watched? Is it going to have the same punch that comes at the same times? I like the kind of air of mystery that lays across the final eight episodes."