Hulu found success last year with the critically-acclaimed comedy, This Fool, from comedian and actor, Chris Estrada. The series follows Estrada’s Julio Lopez, a good-hearted 30-something surviving life in his working-class South Central neighborhood. Still living at home with his mom, he works diligently at a non-profit that transitions former convicts to civilian life. His job and life are complicated when his cousin is released from the pen becoming his new client.
We caught up with Estrada at the ATX TV Festival to discuss the show’s influences, its focus on class, and the process of starting over. (Disclaimer: This interview was conducted on Saturday, June 3 before the SAG-AFTRA strike. The series had completed filming and was in the editing process.)
First off, congratulations on the show, I was a big fan. How do you feel about the reception to the show and it’s being renewed?
I feel really happy about the reception, especially critically. What we were trying to do, we were trying to create a show that would both appeal to a general audience, but also appeal aesthetically and critically to critics. For a general audience who maybe doesn’t watch TV so in-depth, they could still appreciate the funniness of the world and the story. But for a more critical audience who watches TV with a more cinematic lens and a cinematic narrative, they have a lot there too to also enjoy. So when critics really liked it, it felt great. And the reception has been cool. I get all types of people who come up to me, I really appreciate that.
You have been on the stand-up circuit for a while, when did a passion for writing a TV show come to fruition?
Before I started doing stand-up comedy, I wanted to be a TV writer. But I just didn’t know a way in. I applied to a few fellowship programs that were around. I didn’t go to college for TV, I don’t even have a college degree. I just found books and learned how to spec. I didn’t know a way in, so I decided I always wanted to do stand-up, so I just started stand-up. And then, I was having so much fun doing it I said ‘I’m just gonna dedicate my time doing this.’ And then five years in, I got a call from Jake Weisman, who’s one of my co-creators of the show. I knew him from stand-up comedy. He did a show on Comedy Central called Corporate with his partners Matt Ingebretson and Matt Bishop. I met with them and we created the show together.
What were some major influences for the series – any other shows or in general?
When we pitched the show we pitched as Friday but directed by the Coen brothers. That was a big merging. I just loved Friday, and I grew up not too far from where it was filmed. So we just thought ‘How can we make this really funny hood comedy, and mix that with a more cinematic aesthetic from like, the Cohen Brothers.’ Which me and my co-creators love. Other shows that were an influence were shows like Atlanta, especially those first two seasons and how funny and weird the show was. That was a big influence. The show The Sopranos was a big influence. Just writing a show where everybody feels there’s a gray area.
A lot of the characters on the show are Black or Latino. What was your process in casting these characters in an authentic way that didn’t feel stereotypical?
That was really intentional. I wasn’t trying to do it for righteous reasons. I wasn’t trying to be “woke” about it. I just wanted to be honest. I grew up down there and the neighborhood has always been half-Black and half-Latino. So I just thought, ‘Aww, I want to see that reflected.’ I think that’s interesting. That’s who lives down there so that’s who I should see. That’s a lot of what my life felt like, I grew up with a lot of Latino and Black people. The way to do it authentically is try to be true to the world and the characters. Make sure that nobody’s 100 percent good and nobody’s 100 percent bad. Everybody kind of lives in this nuance. In the recycling episode – where they’re mad that this local homeless dude is stealing everybody’s recycling – I wanted the Black neighbor to be just as mad as the Latino neighbor. And show a class distinction. Working-class people and poor people view each other differently.
That was one of my favorite episodes and that commentary. We always think of race as being the only thing, but we forget that class really affects us.
I just remember thinking to myself, what I related to a lot of my Black neighbors growing up was we all grew up broke. I mean, that was a common thing. So I wanted to show and really reflect that in a way. Maybe let’s talk less about race. Cause at least when I was growing up, we didn’t really talk about it through an academic lens. Sure it came up, but the one thing that bonded us was being broke. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about it in that way.
The series focuses on the topic of recidivism – how was this theme selected for a comedy?
I grew up with a lot of family members and older cousins who were gang members and they went to prison. And I also just saw what life was like for them coming out. It’s kinda hard; you’re trying to figure it out. You’ve been away for a while and life moves on without you. You get institutionalized. But I think in terms of it being comedic, I just thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to make fun of them because that’s easy pickings,’ but if we can make the comedy about me and this cousin character who are beefing and they have to deal with our bullshit, everybody else around us is like ‘Oh these idiots are fighting again,’ I thought that would be really funny. And then funny ways to humanize them. It was less trying to be righteous and more trying to be subversive.
Julio’s cousin Luis is played by actor, comedian, and real-life friend, Frankie Quinones, who is released from prison after nearly a decade. With many of his nuclear family gone, he’s forced to move in with Julio’s family and becomes the newest client at Hugs Not Thugs.
I think a lot of times when you see Black and Latino dudes who may appear to be gangster dudes when you see them on TV they’re doing gangster shit. And I thought it would be interesting and subversive if you’re seeing them trying to be good people – they overcompensate. Like going out of their way to celebrate somebody’s birthday.
At the end of season one, your character and your cousin are both essentially starting over. What can we expect from these two in the second season?
That was a big philosophy of the show – how working-class life feels: one step forward two steps backward. And that was really inspired by this movie called Killer of Sheep, a really beautiful movie by this Black filmmaker named Charles Burnett from Watts. He just made a movie about working-class life that I really loved. The next season we still take that forward – that philosophy of going one step forward, two steps backward – but a lot of that is finding Julio and Luis, and what is life for them after Hugs Not Thugs closed down. How do they bring that back together? How do they bring those people who were important to their lives like Chef Percy, Minister Lenoard Payne, the Michael Imperioli character, how do they find a way to bring those guys back into their lives? Mostly keep exploring what working-class life is, what racial tensions look like but through the lens of comedy and being subversive.
Speaking of Imperioli, how was it casting the guest roles? Did you have ideas in mind for the casting? Did you reach out to them or were there already relationships there?
For Michael Imperioli who is one of our recurring characters, that one was really just, reaching out and offering him the role, and thinking that he wouldn’t say yes. He really liked the script and was happy to be a part of it. That was really exciting because we’re all such big Sopranos fans. We’re all just fans of him in general as an artist.
And then for Fred Armisen and Eliza Coupe who played the billionaire couple, Fred is an EP on the show. So it was just as easy as asking him to do this. And then, Eliza Coupe is someone I really enjoyed from Happy Endings, and one of our EPs Jonathan Groff, he was a showrunner on that show, so that was an easy connection.
And then everybody else, for a lot of the other guest roles, we just were looking for people who maybe aren’t necessarily that known but present as real people. We wanted a show where you believe that person is it. Because sometimes you see shows where everybody looks like an actor, and we wanted to present a show where people looked like real people.
Any notable guest stars for the second season?
We have some pretty exciting guest roles. One of them I can give away is Bill Pullman, we got him in an episode. And we kind of bring back some characters from season one in a really interesting way.
Given the current writer’s strike, do you have a trajectory for the show as a whole? A storyboard with a specific season count or ending?
We just think of every season like the last. That’s how we think about it. And we think about it that way, we say ‘If this is the last, we have to make the best possible last season.’ We dig ourselves into a hole that way, but it forces us to be creative for the next season.
The first season of This Fool is available to stream on Hulu. Season two premieres on Friday, July 28. View the trailer below.