Very Important People's Vic Michaelis Reflects On The Origins & Future Of The Dropout Series

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Very Important People with Vic Michaelis

Dropout is home to much more than Dimension 20 and other DnD actual play, and now the critically acclaimed series Very Important People returns for season 2, giving host Vic Michaelis (known for playing Mildred in Upload) a whole new roster of idiosyncratic creations to interview. Structured as a long-form interview show, Very Important People sees Vic (playing an exaggerated version of themself) discuss the life, origins, and goals of bizarre characters created through a mixture of improv comedians and stunning make-up work. Season 1 was a strange and surprisingly sweet collection of characters (who were never too far away from revealing a horrible secret).

Season 2 ups the ante, with some returning faces from across Dropout appearing as new characters. A number of new guests like John Early, Danielle Pinnock, Bobby Moynihan (Lego Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy), Nicole Byer, Chris Redd, and more are also poised to join the festivities. Ahead of season 2's premiere on November 7, Vic Michaelis sat down with ScreenRant to discuss Very Important People's spiritual connection to a classic College Humor comedy, the key shared trait between a diverse cast of comedians, and how the show steadily developed an overarching plotline.

Finding Humanity In Unexpected Characters Is The Key To Very Important People

"Knowing that people understand it and are into what it is, I feel more confident going into it this season."

Screen Rant: Congrats on season 2 of Very Important People! It's such a fun show, and I've been really excited to see what season 2 has to bring.

Vic Michaelis : Thank you so much. That means the world. I genuinely can't believe it's been a year since the first season came out and now that this is going to be out in the world. This season, this show in general, is just so special to me. I can feel my heart beating faster, just knowing that it is out of our hands and in people's hands.

I feel better about it this season than I did last season, because last season it was like, "This show means so much to us." I didn't know if my heart could take people not liking it. Knowing that people understand it and are into what it is, I feel more confident going into it this season, at the very least.

Screen Rant: How do you approach the balance between these goofy characters and the genuine humanity under the surface?

Vic Michaelis: I think it really is something that I like about the show. It's very easy, because it's a journalism setting, right? The objective as this host character, as a journalist, is to cut to the truth. Quote, unquote, I'm doing air quotes. That's not going to be helpful in a written medium. Host Vic, at the end of the day, is trying to be a very good journalist.

So it's often trying to cut to the core of what somebody is doing. It's why we ended each episode with, "What is the meaning of life?" Also, just as an improv device it is very, very helpful to make sure that we've got an arc. That we're trying to get to actually know somebody. We were doing different styles of interviews throughout the different episode, but yeah, it makes it easy and nice to have these different facets of a character.

Screen Rant: This season features so many different approaches to comedy and character. What would you say is the common element between all the performers on the show?

Vic Michaelis: Yeah, I think, I think it's interesting. A lot of us, just as performers and as people, come from the same school of comedy. A lot of us came up in Upright Citizens Brigade, or at the very least took classes there. I think different schools of comedy and different schools of improv specifically speak sort of their own improv language.

A lot of us have that shared common language. It does make it easy for somebody like Nicole Byer, who I personally had not improvised with before she arrived on set, [but because we] speak the same improv language, it was really easy to fall into a natural pattern of conversation with her. Especially in a setting like this, we've built out our own thing. It goes a little bit off the rails at times, but being able to come back to speaking the same improv language makes it a lot more streamlined.

How Very Important People Carries On A College Humor Legacy

"College Humor was something that I really grew up on. I was watching Zac Oyama in sketches in high school."

Screen Rant: As a fan of comedy, what's it like to be carrying on that College Humor/Dropout legacy from Hello, My Name Is... with Very Important People?

Vic Michaelis: There was this old College Humor series from Pat Cassels and Josh Ruben, and that was the initial idea for this. They had wanted to reboot that, and then brought [Director Tamar Levine] and I on to sort of be like, hey, what would you want to do? [Dropout CEO Sam Reich] described this in the past as like a spiritual sequel. It's really nice, because what it has grown into is very much its own thing. [ Hello, My Name Is... episodes were] like five to seven minutes, and it was Josh who was in all of the makeup. Pat was playing himself, it wasn't a character. It was him, prepping and asking really wonderful questions.

Very Important People transformed into its own thing. So I think a spiritual sequel is, like, a very good comp for that. It means the world to me [to be making Very Important People]. College Humor was something that I really grew up on. I was watching Zac Oyama in sketches in high school, you know what I mean? Now I'm getting to perform with him and be a very close collaborator. I watched [Jacob Wysocki's] sketch group in college.

Being a part of this platform, and now existing online being able to bring comedy in a public space via the clips and on Dropout... we can bring this kind of comedy to places that maybe don't have big improv scenes. The idea that I am getting to do for somebody else what those people did for me. That is something that is absolutely not lost on me, how cool and how special that is.

Screen Rant: Are there any dream performers you'd be excited to bring onto the show?

Vic Michaelis: I mean, Corin Wells is somebody that I improvise with a lot at UCB. She had just done Make Some Noise , so her getting to do with this season — Echo Kellum as well, another person I just perform a lot with and do a ton with at UCB. Having them on this current season has been so wonderful and so special. I'm so excited for people to see those episodes. It's so interesting, because you asked that question, and I know that the fun answer is celebrities.

Of course, if Kristen Wiig wanted to do the show, come on. Would love to have you! Maya Rudolph? Literally an open door. But the people that I am most excited about are my friends, the people that I improvise with on a regular basis that I think would just absolutely crush on that show. Having a built-in chemistry with folks does make a difference on screen. I also just think that I am surrounded by the funniest people on the planet. Having the ability to improvise with my friends, and then have that be seen by people, and have other people see what I see in my friends is the coolest part about the job. By far, not even close.

Very Important People Season 2 Is Full Of Lessons & Surprises

"You just never know how an audience is going to react to."

Screen Rant: What did you learn from season 1 that you wanted to make sure you brought to season 2 of Very Important People, and what would you say has been the biggest surprise of the series so far?

Vic Michaelis: It was very important to Tamar and I to have some sort of narrative arc. We knew that this show was going to play in clips for people online, but we also wanted to make sure that if you were watching it as a whole show, it had something for that format as well. It is just something fun and unique that you get to do when something is living in clips online and then also living it as a whole piece on the platform.

We wanted to make sure that we had a narrative arc throughout the season, so that way, if you were watching it like that, there was like something else. We really do view it as a narrative show... we were pleasantly surprised by how much people seemed to like that part of it. So we definitely carried that through season 2. There is a full arc. Should we get to do another season of it, if we're lucky enough, we've got the whole plan for what we think would happen next.

With Very Important People , we had something that felt very special and unique, but it was also unique to what was on the Dropout platform. It is a show that is two people improvising together for long stretches of time. At their shortest, they're like 14-15 minutes. At their longest, they're like half an hour. That's a lot of time to watch two people just doing improv together. We had full support of everybody here at Dropout, Kyle and Sam and David and Paul and Ebony and all of those people who were so supportive and were really excited about the product that we had.

That being said, you just never know how an audience is going to react to. It was so different than anything that was on the platform. We were just like, we sort of released it, like a little bird out into the world, hoping it wasn't going to get eaten alive. I just really hoped that it was going to be good enough that they would let us make more of it. The fact that people really connected to the characters and were so excited about everything that was happening again [means the world to me].

I think I have the funniest friends on the planet. And the fact that people were so excited and engaged with what was happening between them and their interpersonal lives and the host Vic's interpersonal stuff, all the little details that we added and weren't sure if people were gonna notice, has blown me away. I am just truly, eternally grateful for Dropout supporting and allowing us to make a show like this, and then the fan support ensuring that we get to continue making a show like this.

Very Important People season 2 is streaming on Dropout.

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