Dropout‘s “Very Important People” has a very important list of guest stars for Season 2. That starts off with Anna Garcia (“Superstore”), who plays “Zeke Aaron McKinley,” fourth grader who was turned into a rock formation after making a wish. Also set to appear this season: Comedians including Nicole Byer, Chris Redd, Bobby Moynihan, John Early, Kate Berlant, Paul F. Tompkins, Echo Kellum, Lisa Gilroy and Danielle Pinnock.
The premise of the comedic talk show, which comes from the team formerly known as CollegeHumor and host Vic Michaelis, is simple. It starts out as a chat between Michaelis and their guest — who has to come up with the character they’re going to play during the interview in five minutes, following a blind makeover.
Garcia is one of several “VIP” Season 1 guests and fellow Dropout stars who have returned this time, along with the well-known stars like Byer, Moynihan and Tompkins. But Michaelis has a lengthy list of more dream guest stars for potential future seasons, including Quinta Brunson, Patti LuPone, comedian Elaine Carroll and Dropout CEO (and Carrol’s husband) Sam Reich.
“If Quinta would ever want to do the show, in a heartbeat,” Michaelis said. “I’m watching and loving ‘Agatha All Along,’ and if Patti LuPone wants to, she doesn’t even have to do a character, she just has to show up on the set and slap me in the face. I would take it, happily, and we would pay her rate for that.”
Michaelis is interested in bringing boss Reich (who hosts “Game Changer” and “Make Some Noise,” while also running Dropout) on as a guest — but is much more interested in Reich’s spouse: “A lot of people come to comedy in different ways and for me, ‘Very Mary-Kate,’ which was a CollegeHumor series that Elaine did, was the first thing that I saw, and I was like, ‘I want to do that. That is the funniest thing in the world.’ I grew up obsessed with the stuff that Elaine was putting on the platform, and so she is my dream cast. On top of some of the A-listers, she’s who I want in the chair one day.”
Of course, Michaelis also hopes to cast as many of their friends “as humanely possible.”
“One of my favorite things about the show has been, in a long-form setting, being able to showcase my friends, who I cannot express enough, I think are the funniest people on the planet,” Michaelis said. “And I get to watch them crush in front of audiences five, six nights a week. Getting to have this shown off on a platform, and then every week watch people online be really excited about seeing them come on, and the characters that they’re creating, really has done something good to me as a person.”
Michaelis plays a version of themself on “Very Important People” — as someone that doesn’t really want to be there. This character gets a new vibe in Season 2, following the actual show “VIP” receiving a Webby Award — something that Michaelis says will be heavily featured on the set.
“In the first season, the character of host ‘Vic’ has come to this sort of access-cabley-but-more-online-web-showy show as a person that views themselves as too good to be there,” Michaelis said. “They want to be a real news anchor and think that they should be in real news, and are stuck on this show. So they are just doing their absolute best to give hard news interviews to the characters that are in front of them, with the hope that that will one day land them to what the next thing is. What happened in our real lives in between seasons is we won a People’s Voice Webby Award, and so that has actually become a pretty big figurine in this season.”
Now that the host Vic has received recognition for being a news personality, they’re a little bit stuck in this situation that they didn’t want to be in, Michaelis said in setting up where their fictionalized self is as Season 2 opens.
“So it’s like they’re tripling down, and now feel like they have something to lose,” Michaelis said. “It’s them maybe getting a shot at this bigger news network, feeling like things are really going up. Their personal life is absolutely on the downswing. It’s just them trying to figure out potentially getting some wins in this career sector, while their personal life is really in the toilet. And trying to make it all work at this place that they don’t really want to be, while also still interviewing these characters. Dense!”
In the Season 2 premiere, the first character Michaelis interviews is Zeke Aaron McKinley (played by Garcia), that fourth grader who was turned into a rock formation after making a wish. It’s an “infuriatingly perfect” guest for “VIP,” Michaelis noted.
“When Anna first stepped out — I should say when Zeke first stepped out, because I don’t think I saw Anna on set that day — I curled into a ball and could not stand up,” Michaelis said. “There’s a video where I curled into a ball, I was shaking and crying, I was laughing so hard. It took me a solid minute before we could sit down in the chairs and start the interview. I was beside myself. And it was perfect. It’s just so pure. It’s what you want when you look at a character. Of course, you look at that rock formation, and you go, ‘That’s a fourth grader who found a lamp and made a wish, and the third wish that they made was rocks. Yeah, absolutely.’ There’s nothing else it could be. It’s so clean. It’s perfect. It’s infuriatingly perfect. It’s simple, it’s gorgeous.”
