Haha, You Clowns interview: Joe Cappa talks season 2 plans and that wild finale

At least, that’s how Haha, You Clowns begins.

By the end of its first season, Haha, You Clowns lulls audiences into a false sense of security before unleashing authentic portrayals of toxic masculinity and alcoholism. Season 1 culminates in the type of hallucinatory violence that you might expect from Rick and Morty, but feels almost out of place in Cappa’s sweet sitcom.

This isn’t some sort of bait-and-switch, though. For Cappa and his brother/writing partner Dave, the shift in tone across season 1 happened organically as they established the characters and then started to experiment.

“It was just a natural progression of where we could take the family,” Cappa tells Polygon.

When I speak to Cappa over Zoom he’s celebrating some very good news. The show has just been renewed for two additional seasons on Adult Swim. Cappa recalls the relief he felt when he first found out: “The day before that, I was in panic mode,” he says.

The additional seasons give Cappa a huge runway to explore both the slice-of-life stories that made Haha, You Clowns an unexpected hit, along with some of the weirder stuff clearly lingering around the edges. Below, Polygon speaks to Cappa about what’s next for the Adult Swim series, along with how some of season 1’s darker moments came to be.

Polygon: Were you surprised at all to hear that the show is getting picked up for not even just one but two seasons?

Joe Cappa: I didn't even know a second season was on the table. I definitely was very nervous. They actually told me last week that it was getting picked up for a second and third season right after I had surgery. I just woke up from hernia surgery and [executive producer Cameron Tang] called me 20 minutes afterwards. I was still really out of it and I wasn't even sure if it was real.

The day before that, I was in panic mode. I was reaching out to people like, "Hey, is there any way we could promote this show or get it out so people know about it? " Because I was just looking at IMDb numbers and it wasn't ranked very high. There was really no way of measuring how well it was doing. Adult Swim really wasn't giving me specific numbers. I was just very paranoid leading up to that announcement.

Are there certain ideas or characters you want to flesh out now that you have two more seasons to do it?

I'm still excited to play with this paranormal activity that's happening inside of their house. And I'm excited to bring back characters: Justin's character from the therapy episode was very fun, and it seemed like people really loved that episode. Hopefully we can get Darshan [Magdum] back who's kind of having a moment right now. I don't know if you know who Darshan is. He's an Instagram influencer guy. He sings. He's from India. Anyway, he made an appearance in an episode.

We’ve already started writing episodes. My brother and I have written five already and we're super pumped about it. We're already laughing.

In the press release that went out, Adult Swim CEO Michael Ouweleen mentioned the positive response the show has gotten on social media. I definitely saw some of it, but you never know what’s breaking through versus what’s just in your algorithm. Did you get to experience that?

Michael reached out at one point just to say, "Congratulations on the show, and typically I would tell artists to avoid going on Twitter because it's really toxic, but I think there's so much good will toward this show. I think you're in a good place." And whenever one person would shit talk Haha, You Clowns, you'd see all these people swoop in and defend the show.

After starting out as a very wholesome show, Haha, You Clowns goes to some darker places. Were you sort of intentionally taking the show somewhere a little more complicated?

I would like to say that that was the case, but it just sort of happened. We made the show chronologically as the scripts were written and we were already bored with these storylines. We were like, “Let’s push it. Let’s see what happens next.” It was just a natural progression of where we could take the family.

You mentioned Justin Theroux’s episode, where he plays a sort of toxic therapist who tries to turn the boys against their dad. What was the inspiration for the character? Were you trying to say something about modern masculinity?

Justin Theroux reached out on Instagram just saying, "Hey, I'm a big fan." I was in the middle of writing the episodes at that time, so I just asked Justin, "If I wrote a character for you, would you voice it? " And he was totally down for it. He just said, "I like playing characters that are confident, but stupid." We came up with this therapist character. I don't really remember exactly how it got fleshed out.

I love how he's doing something a little dark, but the brothers are almost impervious to it because they're just so genuine.

What I want the audience to understand about the boys is that they're really sweet, but they're boys and they're being influenced subtly around them. They're really into sci-fi action movies that can display a macho take on masculinity, and the way they're sometimes dismissive of their girlfriends. They're really sweet guys, but they're being influenced about how to be a man or a boy in the real world.

The season finale, “Improv,” really threw me for a loop. It’s weird and trippy and dark in a way I’d expect from Adult Swim, but not from your show. How did that come about?

It’s fun for me to see how people interpret this, so I don't want to say too much other than that we wanted to give every brother an episode. This was Tristan's episode. We wanted to establish who he was, and Tristan's into comedy. He sees himself as a funny man. So we put him in an improv class, and as we were writing, it was kind of like: Where can we take it? How much fun can we have with it? And some paranormal stuff bubbles to the surface with their imaginations and the dark side of these boys.

It just came naturally. It was whatever my brother and I were laughing at and where we could take it. I don't think we set up any guardrails other than just what would be believable for the boys. And any sort of situation where these sweet boys are put into extreme situations is also fun to watch it play out.

Were there any stories or ideas you wanted to explore in this season, but you couldn’t quite crack it?

We had a couple of scripts that were completely written and we had been reworking, and then finally we just gave up. One was really exploring who Uncle Kelsey [Eric Wareheim] was and his relationship with the dad. There was a whole episode about how dad feels insecure because Uncle Kelsey is so fun-loving and the boys really take to him. So he is kind of feeling a little bit threatened there, which is a fun dynamic and something I'd like to explore in season 2.

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Haha, You Clowns season 1 is streaming on HBO Max.