Uncover the Mysterious Power of the Ladybug Effect with Greg Porper – SYS Podcast Episode 535 Exclusive!
Ashley
So where did this idea come from? Did you work in a corporation and there was some weird employee? But just where did this guy come from? And just where did this story idea come from?
Greg Porper
Yeah, I think I don’t view it as a bad thing, but I think I’m a very weird individual where I just have like weird ideas and weird phrases that whether I’ve said it or I’ve heard other people say and like I log it down on like a list and I’m just like I love the misfit character, the person who just says the awkward line that everyone just turns and says like, what did you just say? And then, you know, I think that’s why I love The Office so much, just because there were those characters there. I love the environment of a workplace. The character of love I was not actually based on any individual I’ve ever met, thank goodness, but it was like a combination of just like ideas and things I’ve heard people say in the past that would just inspire like just weird things. Like what like, I’m trying to think like the fact that he eats raisins with a pencil, you know, like I’ve seen people eat like I know there’s the famous thing in Seinfeld where someone’s eating like a twitch with a fork, but I just love like just what’s like a quirky thing that can stand out that’s just super weird. But to him, it’s completely normal. And so, Larry just kind of, I don’t know, I think I was just inspired by the fact of like, what’s someone who I don’t want to work with, but I would love to watch kind of just turned into this character. And, you know, the original character, because we had a web series called Don’t Tell Larry, and the original character had like anger issues. That was like what his deal was like he just had a short circuit. And in that case, I knew plenty of people who have, you know, short circuits and get angry easily. But when the actor Kyle Kennedy, who was a real-life coworker, who’s extremely talented in the groundlings, when I met him, and we were talking about it, and then we started filming that web series, and he again, with this strong improv background, he took what Larry was saying, and he ramped it up to an 11. So, the character of Larry isn’t what it is without Kyle’s without Kyle’s flair. Because he, he will just take things like one step farther than what we had in mind. Originally, Larry’s, again, just a character who just was a little angry. And now like Kyle just would add these little Larry isms that would just, you know, make you laugh out loud, or just make you a little uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what we wanted. So we kind of embraced what Kyle brought to the character.
