Adam DeVine and his Workaholics cocreators/costars, Blake Anderson and Anders Holm, were approached about taking their anarchic chemistry to the audio dome before 2020. When COVID hit, they actually had time to make a plan. Given the urgency and seriousness of the moment, they wanted to create a comedic distraction and pledged to talk, per a press release, about the “least important issues facing Americans today”—as echoed in the series’ tongue-in-cheek title, This Is Important. DeVine, who’s accustomed to creating scripted content, says, “This is infinitely easier than anything that we’ve ever done because you’re usually writing for months at a time, banging your head against the wall, trying to figure out the story lines and structure and the dialogue—and then you have to edit it.” The time line for a podcast? “We record it and then poof, pow, surprise! It’s in your earholes the next day.”
DeVine has since pivoted a screen idea he had to the podcast format and begun pitching it to production companies. “Realistically, we wouldn’t be able to film this for another two years, but we can do this as a podcast now,” says the actor, adding, “I’m trying to find all the fun ways that I can work at home and not put on pants.”
IHeartMedia has partnered with Ferrell, Shonda Rhimes, and Jason Blum to launch audio production arms. Says Conal Byrne, the iHeartPodcast Network president, “It makes total sense to me that they would turn their sights to this medium as, I think, the best sketch pad for ideas in the world right now.”
Byrne says entertainment types began orbiting the audio space about two years ago in earnest, as the number of Americans listening to podcasts every month headed toward the 100 million it is today. It was also around 2018 that agencies like CAA began incorporating audio deals into their development packages. One insider estimates that many celebrities could get a six-figure guarantee per year, with the biggest actors receiving between $1 million and $3 million to launch an unscripted podcast. Scripted projects offer less up-front money but can be adapted into TV shows, films, books, and so on. In July, Moore told Vanity Fair that podcasts offer “a lower risk of exploring where [an idea] can go.” Two months later, The Wrap reported that Amazon won a bidding war to develop Dirty Diana into a potential series starring and produced by Moore.
Rob Herting, a former CAA agent who left the firm in 2018 to launch his own audio production company QCODE, says, “I have many agent friends who have said they’ve been overwhelmed with requests [in quarantine] to create or build a story in audio.” Herting says that what he thinks appeals to A-list talent about podcasts is, “They can own it. They can control it. They can partner in it. They can be involved with the distribution decisions. And the turnaround time.… Most of the film or TV projects they work on have such a long gestation period—development through production through postproduction, which can be pretty staggering. We recorded Dirty Diana in early May and released it in early July. We recorded Hank the Cowdog, I think, in late June and released that in September.”
As for Curtis, she says she’s not in podcasts for the money but the unique value of the medium, like the intimacy between host and listener. Curtis says over the years she has entertained the idea of joining a panel talk show, or even cohosting a talk show, but disliked the promotional undercurrent. “With a talk show, people that come on are selling something,” says Curtis. “And you are ultimately a conduit to their selling, no matter how lovely the exchange you have with a guest.” She believes Good Friends will be a more authentic opportunity. “This is people talking about friendship, not selling.”
“When you think about TV or film, there’s usually a format, a run time, a predefined ad load to drive these mediums,” says Byrne. “In podcasting, so far, it’s really creatively free. You can tell a story in five minutes or eight hours.… You can have a light or heavy ad load. You can do the ads yourself, you can do prerecorded ads. The entire experience, soup to nuts, of a podcast is a blank slate for a creator.”
Pre-COVID, the podcast realm was best known for its talk shows and true-crime content. But Lindgren says that, during lockdown, news and comedy podcast listening spiked as people searched for both accurate political updates and distraction. He predicts that, after COVID, scripted content like children’s podcasts and Spanish-language programming will continue to rise. Considering that the podcasting industry is nearing the billion-dollar-a-year mark and taking into account the nimbleness of the platform, Herting doesn’t think that the trend of celebrity podcasts will wane once quarantine is over.