Before she even walked onstage, Aya Cash swore she was going to cry during Vulture Festival’s ten-year-anniversary reunion panel for You’re the Worst. She kept that promise — so did her two co-stars, Kether Donohue and Desmin Borges. Borges became so emotional while discussing his experience playing Edgar, an Iraq War veteran with PTSD, that he had to ask for Kleenex and a beer to be brought to the stage. (Chris Geere, a.k.a. insufferable novelist Jimmy Shive-Overly, was unable to attend at the last minute but recorded a video message that you can watch below.)
Stephen Falk, the creator of You’re the Worst, was the only one who kept his emotions in check, mostly because he’s not a crier. He is, however, a spectacular shit-talker. When asked about the running gags that played over five seasons of the FX/FXX comedy, including several jokes about Moby, he was blunt and honest: “Moby’s the No. 1 person — Hollywood celebrity — that girls I know have made out with and feel really shit about it.”
But gossip about the artist who gave us the song “Porcelain” was hardly the only thing on the agenda at this celebration of one of the best comedies of the 2010s. There was more discussion of running gags (leg-washing, Trash Juice, and Sunday Funday, which inspired a sing-along of the Sunday Funday theme song), how the cast members felt about where the characters landed in the series finale, and whether there could maybe be more You’re the Worst in the future. (Me: “So even though we just said what a perfect ending this was, I’m going to ask, would there ever be a possibility of—” Aya Cash, interrupting immediately: “Yes.”)
Watch the You’re the Worst reunion in full below, or read on for a transcript of the conversation.
What do you guys remember about auditioning? Chris said he flew from England to L.A. to read with potential Gretchens, and after doing a scene with Aya, he thought, This feels right, this feels amazing.
Aya Cash: Okay, first of all, I was rejected by FX that day. Chris got the job, and I did not. So I have a less romantic version of that! Then I re-tested alone in the Orange Is the New Black offices with Stephen and a little camcorder, being like, “Make her nicer.”
Stephen Falk: Yeah, that’s true. FX said, “No, we don’t want that one!” But she was so great I was like, “You have to!” I mean, it’s not like a hero story for me, but I went to John Landgraf, and I said, “Please! I think you’re wrong, dude!” And he’s like, the fucking head of FX, “Fuck off!”
Kether Donohue: No one tells him he’s wrong! You’re probably the first person who said he’s wrong.
S.F.: Probably! So then I flew to New York and re-taped her, and he was like, “Okay, fine.” Then he came to me at the first party and was like, “Okay, you were right.”
Chris also mentioned that the four of you went for a drink after the pilot and said, “This could be it.” Is that how you remember it?
A.C.: After the table read we did not all go get a drink and say “this could be it.” We went to In-N-Out Burger, so that if somebody got fired, at least we’d be eating a burger during it.
K.D.: Because everyone gets fired after table reads. It’s like an actor’s worst nightmare. You’re on alert, like, “Did they laugh at that joke?” So then we’re all eating In-N-Out like, “Did they laugh at all our jokes?” It was really pathetic.
Desmin Borges: Do you remember your audition?
K.D.: I was actually filming an Audi car commercial that Jordan Vogt-Roberts directed — he directed our pilot — and he was like, “She should audition for You’re the Worst.” And it went well, so I got a test deal and I read with Aya. Me and Aya had met in 2000 — we’re both from New York, and I remember Aya was famous in New York. Her headshot was on all the casting directors’ walls, and I was like, Oh, she always gets a pilot every season! So I was so intimidated to read with her. But we read together and we had good chemistry I guess.
D.B.: When we went to In-N-Out Burger, there was a lot of talk of, “Oh, I’m getting fired.” And I was quiet in the background because I knew I fucking killed that reading, man! I was like, Nah, man, they ain’t firing me! I can fucking tell you that! But during my audition, I started the self-tape thing early and I thought, Edgar’s a military man, so I dressed in my best and I was really buttoned-up. It was either a call or an email from Stephen after he saw the tape. He was like, “Dude, get your worst fucking shirt, crumple it up, put it under your mattress for 24 hours, and tape it again. Do not shave. Look like you just fucking shot heroin all night long.” I did that, and I was hoofing in Central Park and my phone started ringing and it was like, “Hey, they’re offering you the part.”
S.F.: I didn’t want him at all. [Laughs.] The year before, I’d done a pilot for NBC with Jeffrey Tambor and Dane Cook, which was exactly as good as it sounds. Des was in the main cast, as well, and we got shut down in the middle of production. They were like “Yeah, no, no. We’re not going to air this on anything. You can go home.” I was like, “I moved to New York and you built a $2 million set!” Anyway, I thought he was bad luck, but he wasn’t. And it wasn’t me. It was Dane Cook.
D.B.: The dude who was two-and-a-half hours late to my read with him, because apparently one of the tires on his motorcycle blew out and he didn’t have another mode of transportation to get there. Dick!
So I know the basic premise of the show is two people who don’t want to be committed eventually becoming committed. But I also feel like the show is about how not to be, to use a phrase from the show, a “sweater person.” That’s what everyone is trying to avoid. Do you think that’s accurate?
S.F.: Yeah, absolutely. But I think there’s a level that the show plays with that is about the fallacy of worrying about becoming a sweater person. It’s playing with the silliness of fighting the natural progression of getting older and falling in love and settling down. There’s an uncoolness that they are constantly fighting against while doing it and wanting it.
Kether introduces the phrase “sweater people” in a scene with Aya, in which Lindsay is bemoaning the degradation of her “boring,” almost-over marriage, and Gretchen is complaining about being tired from all the partying she and Jimmy are doing, and how she just wants to drink tea and read in bed. Their conversation climaxes in Lindsay slapping Gretchen. Was that a real slap or a fake slap?
A.C.: They were often real!
K.D.: We’re Method actors.
S.F.: Kether’s a very in-the-moment actor, I would say. You’re not exactly sure what you’re going to get, but that’s the beauty of it.
A.C.: But also do you remember, those scenes were always the ones where afterward, you’d be like, “It was bad, it was bad, it was so bad.” And I just remember being like, “You’re the most brilliant actor I’ve ever worked with. There’s no way that this didn’t go well.”
K.D.: When I die I’m gonna regret being insecure so much.
A.C.: Aren’t we all?
As funny as this show is, it also deals with some serious issues: Gretchen’s depression and Edgar’s PTSD. I’m thinking particularly of a scene in which Edgar finally gets into a treatment program involving video games built around participants’ trauma but is rejected when the VA supervisor learns he’s stopped taking the many, many pills he was prescribed, because he felt they were doing more harm than good. One of the things that strikes me about this scene are all the different tones, and how it goes from really funny moments to that really intense dramatic interaction at the end. Is it hard to manage all those different tones?
D.B.: No. No, because at some point you just gotta give over to it [chokes up]. The greatest thing about what Stephen and the writers did with Edgar — it’s just so easy to, like, get out of your own way and do it.
S.F.: Des obviously is fucking brilliant. From a writing standpoint, the tonal stuff is very difficult because it can go so poorly. I imagine if I could cook anything, it’s not unlike going too far with one ingredient or the other, then everything tastes awful.
We approached FX about getting serious in the second season. When you create a show, if you make it past the first season, you have to pitch the entire second season to the executives. By the third season we had gained their trust, but for the second season we were like, “Hey, we want to make a season about clinical depression!” They were like, “What? It’s a half-hour comedy, you guys!” We were like, “Yeah, we know, but we think we can do it and we think this cast is intelligent enough, and we think the writers are strong enough that we know how to make it funny.”
Jenji Kohan, whom I learned to write under on Weeds and Orange Is the New Black, always talks about how some of the biggest laughs you’ll have are in a hospital room. Tragedy and comedy are so close, and I think if you stay close to the truth of it, it works. Rather than just wildly throwing in a dick joke where it doesn’t fit, you have someone like the VA woman. She’s the one kind of making the jokes, but it’s in service of her job, which is to keep veterans from trying to access treatment. It’s not really her fault; they have such little resources, and so if they dealt with everyone on a human level, they’d be overwhelmed. That affords you the space to make jokes because it’s in service of her objective, which is just to get him to shut the fuck up and go away.
Did you ever hear from veterans who were like, “Hey, I really appreciate what you’re doing on the show?”
S.F.: With the veterans we talked to, we would ask, “What do you want us to do or avoid?” And they were like, “We find comedy in all of this. That’s the only way we can survive. Make us laugh.” And so that was sort of a big challenge.
D.B.: Stephen and I talked about that quite a bit, and the larger population of vets who have never seen themselves onscreen. So many of them talked about how most of the time you see vets and they’re just beating the shit out of somebody in Best Buy for no reason. I mean, that hits home. I don’t come from that world one bit, but being broken and misunderstood and feeling like you haven’t been seen your entire life, it’s easy to find a common place.
I still talk to quite a few of them. Via Instagram or email. As we kept on going with the show, I just kept on thinking, like, I just want to make them proud. I want them to feel seen and heard and understood.
To honor the show and switch tones, I wanted to say that I watched the show when it was on — I loved it, I wrote about it at the time — but I went back to rewatch it recently and one of the things that stands out a little bit more when you’re bingeing it in a condensed period of time is all the running gags. So I want to talk about a few of them, and this is the part where you start talking shit about people again.
First, there are a number of jokes about Moby in the show. Jimmy at one point wants to give away a scarf because it looks too much like Moby’s. What’s the deal with Moby?
S.F.: The only thing I will say about Moby is Moby’s the No. 1 person — Hollywood celebrity — that girls I know have made out with and feel really shitty about it. That’s all.
K.D.: Why?
S.F.: Why do they make out with him? That’s a good question!
Next: Sufjan Stevens’s broth restaurant. What is the deal with that?
S.F.: We had a running joke about Sufjan Stevens trying to open a broth restaurant. We wanted to shoot a fake commercial with Sam and the guys because they’d invested in Sufjan Stevens’s broth restaurant on Gretchen’s advice, and it didn’t go well. We asked Sufjan to be in it. And Sufjan Stevens said no, he wouldn’t do it.
A.C.: Let’s not pick on him now. I think we’re all grown-ups.
S.F.: No, he’s the best.
A.C.: But that just reminded me, Travis Barker was supposed to be on the show. Do you remember this? He was there, then left before we shot.
K.D.: He had to pick up his kids from school.
A.C.: Then it was Henry Rollins instead. Just wanted to let that out of the bag.
Trash Juice. Where did it come from?
S.F.: My high school. We’d have a luau every year and they’d put Kool-Aid and fruit and vodka in a giant trash can, then you would drink it and you’d wake up, and your mom’s picking you up, and you’re like, “Oh no, why is my shirt red?”
Did you guys ever drink any Trash Juice on set?
[Aya and Kether laugh.]
S.F.: I don’t think they drank it. It was just red food coloring or whatever. But no, Kether would often … we have a spit bucket, right? So there’d be food or cigarettes in a scene, then we’d stop rolling and say, “Okay, you don’t have to smoke anymore.” Then she’d light up a cigarette. We’d be like, “Kether, you don’t have to smoke right now!”
K.D.: And I’d eat the Froyo. After each take they were like, “You know it’s prop food, right? You don’t have to finish it!” And I was like, “I know!” And I finished it.
At some point every one of the characters said “she a’ight.” What was the genesis of that?
S.F.: It was a writers’-room joke. We just liked the idea of it passing from one character to another.
K.D.: I think the psychology behind that is Stephen’s not impressed by much. It takes a lot to impress him. So it’s like, “Yeah, she a’ight.” That’s the vibe.
Washing your legs. What was the inspiration for that and how do each of you feel about washing your legs?
A.C.: Can I just say, I was just asked about washing my legs in a press event for a different job, and they had no idea it came from You’re the Worst. They literally were like, “So do you wash your legs?” and I was like, “Haha, You’re the Worst!” And they were like, “Sorry?”
S.F.: One of our writers, Eva Anderson, who’s the weirdest person I’ve ever met, one day announced that she doesn’t wash her legs in the writers’ room. And we were aghast.
K.D.: Does she rinse?
S.F.: Well, I mean, she’s in the shower, so there’s rinsing happening. I think that was her point.
K.D.: I definitely wash my legs. Because I like to go in chronology. I start up here [points to head], then go down here [points to feet].
Sunday Funday. Where did this come from?
S.F.: I don’t know where Sunday Funday came up. I do remember I had to leave the writers’ room and I said, “Make a song for it and pitch me the song when I come back.” And they pitched me that and I was like, “I fucking hate that.” Then I think they maybe went right to the cast and told them, and they were like, “We love it!” And I was like, “Goddamn it!”
There was a Sunday Funday episode in every season with the exception of one.
S.F.: Yeah we did. I mean, to me it felt really gimmicky to repeat it. It was sort of like “Slapsgiving” or whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! No, but just easy chum for the audience.
A.C.: They are the audience, Stephen! [Gestures to the audience.]
S.F.: Fuck you, guys! Chum for you!
I want to talk a little about the series finale, which I think is one of the best series finales ever, and it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. I guess my first question is, Stephen, did you always know it would end that way?
S.F.: I think the big lie of TV is that the writers always know how it’s gonna end and they know the exact right moment. It’s bullshit. Anyone who tells you that is a liar. But I did know that I wanted the show to trace the very traditional steps of a relationship. If we had gotten a sixth season — we didn’t end it, they just canceled us — they would have then had a kid and done that stuff, and eventually moved into an old-folks home, then died in season 39.
I don’t know when we decided they would not get married, but be together. That just felt fucking perfect for us. My wife, Christina, was the one who really pushed me to include the montage set to the Mountain Goats’ “No Children,” showing what happened after the show ended. John Darnielle had done a Weeds cover of “Little Boxes” for me, and so I had a bit of a relationship with him.
So for each of you, how did you feel about where your character ended up in this finale?
A.C.: I mean, I wanted it to go forever, so that was disappointing! I do remember shooting that last scene. I remember trying to improv. Stephen hates improv in general. I just remember Stephen being like “stop it.” And yeah, he was right!
D.B.: I loved how it ended for Edgar. In the actual penultimate scene, when he told Jimmy that he didn’t think that he should marry Gretchen, I felt like there was a brotherly bond that we had been building to. To get to that place where he could be that brutally honest with somebody meant more than him moving to New York and becoming a comedy writer. I feel like he finally found himself then. There was even this one moment that was in there. Chris and I didn’t know the cameras were rolling and I think I put my head on Chris’s shoulder and we both said at the same time, “Love you, buddy.” That was what I remember being the end of Edgar.
Yes, it changed the dynamic between him and Jimmy. They were equals now. And Kether, how did you feel about getting married to Paul again?
K.D.: I’m not gonna lie, I forgot what happened!
S.F.: I mean, you did stab him! It’s a little weird that you got remarried to him.
In the writers’ room, did you try out different scenarios for what might happen to them?
S.F.: Yeah, you go through every scenario. But it always felt to me that they would end up together. She had matured. I don’t know if Paul had.
K.D.: Did she mature?
S.F.: Yeah, I think so. And I think what Des said about his character is very astute. That’s what we wanted for him — to become equals. That’s the thing about rom-coms in general, right? There’s a sidekick. And knowing that I was walking into writing a rom-com, I was like, I don’t want fucking sidekicks, because no one is not the center of their own story.
Isn’t there a scene somewhere in the series where Lindsay and Edgar say, “We’re not the sidekick”?
S.F.: Yeah, they have self-awareness.
K.D.: Beyoncé!
D.B.: That’s the Beyoncé monologue.
K.D.: When me and Des did scenes together, I had to look at the floor sometimes or I’d laugh, because he was cracking me up. I was like, “I can’t look at you during your coverage because I’m gonna laugh,” so I would just stare at the floor.
So even though we just said what a perfect ending this was, I’m going to ask, would there ever be a possibility of—
A.C.: Yes.
K.D.: We should do a limited series! Or like when Sex and the City does a movie. We should do a movie!
S.F.: You’re the Worst in Dubai! I mean, we would love to do anything. The obvious answer is unless FX wants to do it, we can’t do it.
What if we crowdsource the funding?
S.F.: Then we have, like, Zach Braff’s movie that no one watched? No! FX has to fucking pay for it. I’m not gonna make you guys do it.
