By Ryan Flaherty

Jake Delaney talks about his own experiences of being queer in Los Angeles, a well timed abortion storyline, and why he doesn’t use labels on the sexualities displayed in the show.

How did you get into the television industry?

I did musical theater growing up, and I was always drawn to film and television but I didn’t have the resources to do that growing up. When I went to college I studied screenwriting for film and TV so I was writing pilots and features. I met my writing partner Cara there, we had a screenwriting class together, and we loved each other’s work. We both moved out to Los Angeles and I was working random jobs to make ends meet while Cara took more of an industry route. I was taking improv at The Groundlings and that’s where I met Paige, who co-stars with me. We had really good chemistry in the room and as comedians we just really clicked so we started doing shows around LA together, which is where Cara saw her and asked her to join our writing team. That’s the genesis of ‘The Filth’. 

How do you think your training at The Groundlings contributes to the show?

We really incorporated a lot of our training from The Groundlings into our writing process because they really teach you how to focus on a character’s motivation and how to really ground a character. We created really big characters that were grounded in reality but based off of heightened versions of ourselves and what we knew. When we were coming up with a lot of the dialogue we were just improving back and forth and Cara would write stuff down and then we would go through it with a fine tooth comb to be exactly what we wanted. On the day [of shooting], we had a lot of supervisors that were on the set and that helped us a lot. 

Is this show based off of your own experiences of being queer in Los Angeles?

Very specifically our experiences. The things that happen in the series are all based off of things that we’ve gone through. It’s all heightened and made more dramatic than it happened in reality, but it’s all rooted in our lives. As we speak, Paige is at her family owned plumbing business. She’s not a plumber, but her day job is being a receptionist at her family’s company. The dance club that we go to is based off of Bootie LA in Los Angeles and there’s a group called RAID, random acts of irreverent dance, and it’s this radically inclusive dance group that Paige still does on the side. That’s where we met Katrina who plays Jocelyn. The members of the troupe are actually in the show, so a lot of our own experiences were brought into production along with the writing. 

You have this incredible cast including Jay Lee, Colleen Ballinger, Jessica Marie Garcia, and Lilan Bowden. How did you get that cast together?

It was amazing, one of our producers on the project Harvey Guillén is fully responsible for that. He’s actually Guillermo on ‘What We Do in the Shadows’, he’s so funny and he’s actually friends with all of these people. We got him attached because he’s our director Jamie Holt’s writing partner. I’m unknown, Paige is unknown, and a lot of us are just starting out in our careers as young creatives so we wanted to bring some people on that already had a following to fill in these small comedic roles that we had written and sprinkle them in as cameos. They really helped elevate the project. We had this amazing casting director Karina Walters who brought [Jay Lee] in, and it had been a long casting process for the role of Danny because it was very important to me that I had natural chemistry with the person and I just wasn’t clicking with so many people. Then he walked in the room and immediately I was like “we found our Danny”. 

You have this storyline about an actor going blind into an audition for an anti-abortion propaganda ad, similar to the heartbeat bill in Georgia, was that a prediction or did you reshoot that recently?

The basis of the idea is “what is the worst kind of audition a person could go on”? We were writing that scene in the months before Trump got elected when it seemed like Hillary was going to win and we were thinking of a dystopian world. I remember one of our friends had gone into an audition and they found out when they got there that it was an ad for Trump, so we were inspired by that. Abortion has been a controversy for a long time but obviously recently it’s come to the forefront. At the time we just thought it would be the worst to have to be part of anti-abortion propaganda. 

I noticed that you don’t use labels on any of the characters’ sexualities, was that a deliberate choice?

We wanted this story to be about how hard it is to be human and not how hard it is to be gay. At the end of the day the queer experience has its own set of struggles, and we didn’t want to the focus to be about the gayness. That’s a big element in their lives, they live these very gay and queer lives, but it’s not all about their labels. The idea of labeling someone comes up later because Danny’s sexuality is sort of questioned in the show, and that’s something his character is exploring throughout the story which is fun.

It seems that in the show when Max is doing well, Stella is really low and vice versa. Is that deliberate as well?

They’re really supposed to be yin and yang. With their relationship, they’re so often not on the same plane and they love and support each other but they have trouble getting out of their own heads and communicating and listening to each other. That’s really the issue that I’ve found a lot of people deal with because we all have so much going on in our lives and sometimes you get so caught up in your own lives that you don’t take the time to listen to another person. That’s something that we tried to touch upon with them, and they’re definitely opposites. 

What do you think sets the Filth apart from other shows that explore queer experiences in Los Angeles?

There’s a lot of shows about being gay in LA. I think what I said earlier about it being how hard it is to be human and not how hard it is to be gay. Also the fact that it really is so authentic to our lives, and I don’t feel like I’ve seen my experiences represented on the screen. I’ve related to storylines on gay shows like ‘Looking’, ‘Eastsiders’ and ’Will & Grace’. For instance, there’s not a lot of sex weirdly in ours? That’s not a deliberate choice but people have dry spells and just don’t hook up. I think a lot of the times when you see a queer life depicted onscreen there’s a lot of sex and sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way.

What do you think was the most challenging part of filming this series?

Getting it in under budget and done in time, we filmed five episodes over the course of one month and that required a lot of hard work from a lot of people. When we were writing this we knew we wanted to make this ourselves, but we weren’t putting our logical hats on when we were writing it was more “let’s dream and let’s live and do everything”. We didn’t want to place any limitations on our creativity, but once we got to production we were like “well we wrote a hundred locations for this script, that’s a challenge”. We got one Max’s apartment and Stella’s apartment all in one location just by being creative with the space. There were some 14 hour days but everyone was so committed to the project and we were really lucky to have a crew that was committed to this story and bringing it to its full potential. All of those challenges were worthwhile and the production process was one of my favorite parts. 

You were shooting in Los Angeles which is a really busy city, so what were the challenging parts of that?

I think location changes throughout the day because traffic was bad. We would have a morning start in Manhattan Beach and then we’d go to Echo Park at like noon. That’s the west side and the east side, completely different parts of Los Angeles. Just technically moving the whole company over- that stuff was really challenging in a busy city like LA. Getting permits and trying to get everything as cheap as we could was a real challenge, but somehow we made it work. 

If you could be a show runner for any show currently on, what would it be and why?

That’s a really hard question. It’s hard because I have a lot of shows that I love, but I love them because of the way that they were created. The Other Two on Comedy Central, because I feel like the tone is similar. I think I would be able to do well with that show, but it’s done so well right now that I don’t want to interfere. 

On a similar note, if you could work with any actor on ‘The Filth’ who would it be?

That’s really hard too, there’s so many. Kristen Wiig is one of my heroes, I love her a lot. Bill Hader, he’s a hero. Jim Carrey is the ultimate. I grew up wanting to be him- when I was in first grade people would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up and other kids would be like “firefighter!” And I would say “Jim Carrey”. I didn’t even say actor, I just said Jim Carrey. He’s probably my number one. 

What would your ideal home be for ‘The Filth’?

Any home that we find that would be a great home. Right now, the starter home is going to be YouTube because we’re going to self release on July 12. We’re doing that in hopes of building up an audience to eventually sell to a network so we can have a future. I would love it on Netflix, I go to Netflix all of the time so that would be great for me. I think they have a lot of great content. 

What is your plan for the future of the series and do you plan on doing more episodes?

We have five episodes and all of those are going to drop on July 12. If and when we find an audience that we’ve created independently, that’s when we’re going to go around and try and find a home. We’re having a few conversations which means we might find a home sooner than we think but it’s really not in my hands yet. We have a future for these characters and we know where its going to go, and there’s so many stories that we want to tell with them. This is just the beginning of it and I hope we have the opportunity to show everybody where these crazy people are going to go. 

The first five episodes of ‘the Filth’ premiere on YouTube on July 12.