he email from Raphael Bob-Waksberg to Lisa Hanawalt on March 22, 2010, was to the point: “Hey, do you have a picture of one of your horse guys, by himself? I came up with this idea for a show I’d like to pitch. Tell me what you think: BoJack the Depressed Talking Horse.”
Lisa Hanawalt: I was like, “That sounds too depressing. Can you make something more fun and whimsical?” And he’s like, “What about The Spruce Moose and the Juice Caboose?” And I said, “Oh great, they can have cocktail waitresses called the Spicy Mice.” I think we should still make that show. For kids.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: I had gone back up to Palo Alto to teach another high-school playwriting workshop in the fall of 2010, and when I got back down, [the Tornante Company producer Steven A. Cohen] was very eager to meet me. Apparently while he was waiting for me to be available again in L.A.,
he kept asking my manager, Joel Zadak, to send him more stuff, so Joel eventually sent him everything he had: a couple TV pilots, a short story, a spec feature script — all the stuff I did with Olde English. He might have even sent him a link to my blog. The first meeting was a “getting to know you” meeting.
Noel Bright [executive producer]: I was on a phone call, and so Raphael came in and started talking to Steve first. Steve’s office is next to mine, and if a meeting was worthwhile or there was something urgent but he couldn’t disrupt that meeting, he’d pound loudly on the wall. It’s like our own fire drill: Wall-pound means, “Get in here.”
So I got off my call and played it like I just casually walked in. Steve said, “This is Raphael.” That meant that I should sit and talk, and clearly this was a meeting that was going to go well.
Steven A. Cohen [executive producer]: Why was it “bang-worthy”? A term I already regret! [Laughs.] I don’t know if it was specifically BoJack related, but it was probably Raphael related. It’s so fun when you read stuff by people and every page you’re thinking, “This is fantastic,” and then you spend five minutes with them and you’re like, “This is really interesting.”
Every day in this town you’re trying to meet someone who has something new to say or a new way of saying it, and you can feel it right away when they do. It’s exciting.
Noel Bright: There are very few creators that are able to channel what’s going on in their brain into an exciting and intelligent and cohesive story at any step of the way, and Raphael’s just a master at doing that. He’s well-spoken and he likes to pry at certain things in an interesting way.