Interview: Producer Jon Stern Talks ‘Childrens Hospital’

Back at San Diego Comic-Con, we got the opportunity to sit down with most of the cast from Adult Swim’s newest addition to their late night lineup, in Rob Corddry’s Childrens Hospital.

While we got to speak with most of the people from the talent side of CH, we didn’t get to hear from the producers who were behind the process that brought this killer show to Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.

At New York Comic-Con, we got the chance to sit down with executive producer Jon Stern and he gave us the inside scoop on how exactly the show came to be the fantastic televised sitcom that it has become today.

Check out the full interview after the jump!

The Flickcast: What gave you guys the idea to come up with the concept for the show?

Jon Stern: What gave us the idea was Rob Corddry and what gave him the idea, was when he brought his daughter into a children’s hospital with a torn ligament. Something about being there with all the tiny equipment was funny even though there was nothing funny about it. In hindsight he thought it would be a great setting for inappropriate romance and hospital jokes.

TF: How are you guys able to get such talent like Malin Akerman, Henry Winkler, and Megan Mullally into a fifteen minute show?

JS:  It’s a small show so the stakes are low as compared to a normal length show. The environment and the freedom mean that it is a more fun and an inclusive place to work and everyone gets to creatively be involved. That’s not something you get to do everyday and it’s worth devoting a little time to.

TF: What can we expect in some of the future episodes, like big name cameos? Can we lay it down for our readers and fans of the show?

JS: This season you still have Ed Begley Jr. and Rachel Harris are coming up, and our big live episode coming up on November seventh which is not going to have special cameos, but it will be an unusual episode. We wanted to be the first people in the history of television to do a live episode, so that’s something to look forward to. Next season, we’ll have a whole new host of guest stars plus our usual cast, our regular cast as that comes together, we’ll start shooting in December and we’ll have some new people by then.

TF: Lastly, I would like to know and I’m sure our readers and viewers would like to know, how many takes need to be done? It seems like you guys have way too much fun on the show and if I were a cast member, I would be doing blooper take after blooper take. How much content gets cut out rather than makes it into an episode?

JS: Well because we’re budget pressured, we’re timed pressured too, so we only do a couple of takes of everything. You definitely sometimes get a scenario where take after take is ruined by laughter and sometimes we have to edit around it, there’s not that much room. We don’t have a lot of bloopers but we sure do have a lot of stuff that makes us laugh. We certainly enjoy ourselves off screen all the time, hopefully some of that makes its way onto the screen.

TF: It seems as if the cast members, everyone just has great camaraderie with each other and it’s really refreshing to see a show like that on T.V., so we hope to see a lot more from you guys in the future.

JS: We enjoy doing it. The main thing is that people enjoy watching it. Hopefully people will keep watching it, so we can still do it. That’s all we can ask for.