Ahead of Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp’s Netflix premiere this Friday, Variety put together a comprehensive oral history of the project with David Wain, Michael Showalter, and more from the Wet Hot cast and crew. It’s a fun read for fans interested in learning more about how it went from a cult favorite film to almost becoming a Broadway musical but ultimately a Netflix prequel series. Here’s Jake Fogelnest looking back on one of Wain and Showalter’s attempted pranks in the writers’ room:
I left Funny Or Die in October, started at WHAS. The first thing that happened was I got an email from Michael and David saying, “We’re going to do a prank. When you come in on Thursday, we’re going to tell the writing staff that at the end of the week, one of you will be fired. And we’ve decided that it’s going to be you that’s been fired. So we’re going to make this announcement, then come in, like, an hour late on Monday.” When they made the announcement, half the writers room said, “This is bullshit!” and the other half of the writers room got very panicked and nervous. For about ten minutes, the air in the room changed. Michael and David immediately picked up on this and immediately said, “No one’s going to be fired!” They bailed out of the prank so quickly. After everyone’s laughing, I said, “So do I still come in an hour late on Monday?”
Read the rest over at Variety.
