BoJack’s latest season sees the horseman in the middle of the Oscar race, his legacy hanging in the balance, with the series going to some of its most painful places yet. With season three premiering last weekend, we touched base with the person responsible for the Netflix series’ look, producer and production designer Lisa Hanawalt. She shared her opinions on the series’ progressive characters, the season’s stylistic departures, and if BoJack can ever truly be happy. Lisa Hanawalt: Well, that’s a difficult question for me to answer because I don’t write the show, but I guess with every year I want to challenge myself because I get bored really easily. But I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen until I get the script. So every episode there are definitely surprises. You know Raphael [Bob-Waksberg], who’s the creator of the show and my friend, he’ll kind of hint at what he’s thinking about in terms of what’s happening, and I’ll be like, “Come on! Just tell me…” Of course though I don’t know what’s going on until I read the script, and even then things will change by the final draft. So I’ll kind of try and figure out who the main characters of the episode are and what the emotional core of things is and then base my designs on that. The fourth episode of the season, which takes place underwater, is essentially a dialogue-less episode. What’s the story on how that episode came to be? We have a limited amount of characters that we can do in each episode based on our budget, but I really wanted to pack everything in there. The baby seahorses I just wanted to be heartbreakingly cute, and it’s even a callback to Harper, BoJack’s imagined daughter. When he goes on this drug trip in season one, episode eleven, he imagines that he has this daughter. So his interactions with the baby seahorse are kind of informed by that hallucination. Yeah the seahorse stuff is great! I also know about the ferocity at which seahorses give birth, so I was glad that you got to show that happen. I’ve also got a lot of love for the season’s second episode, which is set back in ’07. The previous season has a similar flashback episode in the ’80s. Do you think these yearly “removed from time” installments could become a yearly tradition? It’s nice to be able to go back and build his backstory because we’re missing so many years! We saw the beginning of Horsin’ Around when he has this friendship with Herb Kazazz, but then we jump to present day. I don’t know if we’ll do it every single season and make it a tradition, but it’s certainly fun to explore their pasts. And also to see stuff like when Diane meets Mr. Peanut Butter. Todd wasn’t in the last one, either! It’s nice to see where he was at in his life. I also love that Jessica Biel is in it as Mr. Peanut Butter’s former wife. And she played herself, which is awesome! That’s so good. On the topic of that time period, all the material with The BoJack Horseman Show is a great commentary on projects with good intentions and high ambitions that just slowly get compromised. Why do you think the show decides to explore that area of too much ego and freedom decaying something? It is! I think BoJack is one of the smartest shows out there. It really has a lot to say about gender, sexuality, and mental health. This season has an episode about abortion. Why do you think it’s important to have these sorts of discussions? It’s funny that it still feels like such a taboo issue to explore, even though it’s such a big part of people’s lives and is such an important issue politically. But yeah, I’m really glad that we got to do that episode. It’s also not just a straightforward take on it, either. I also think that Princess Carolyn hasn’t been given a good reason to value a romantic relationship over her career because her relationships have been really shitty. Like her time with BoJack was not great! But yeah, I’m curious to see what happens between her and Ralph. A lot of the time with characters on this show you don’t know whether they’re good or bad until you get to know them better. I think that’s a large point that the show’s trying to make—that people are neither just good or bad, but rather complicated. With Ralph it’s like, “Is he going to be good for her? Is he not?” We’ll have to get to know him better in order to figure this out, which I think is very similar to real life. I feel similarly about Judah, her assistant. He almost seems a little too robotic at times, or like, what’s your angle? But it sort of looks like he’s just a really good assistant. There are so many great animal background gags in the show—“Koalafornication” is one of my personal favorites. Do you have a particular favorite or one that you were eager to sneak in? Is there a favorite animal design of yours this year that you hope becomes everyone’s new favorite character? I think the seahorses are a personal favorite in terms of new characters. Sextina Aquafina is probably my favorite to design for because I just get to look up a bunch of pop stars and come up with crazy new outfits for her. I’m constantly pushing for more outfits. I’m like, “Can we please get at least four different outfits on her this episode? I know it’s a lot of extra work, but I just really want to draw them.” Oh, and also the mustangs at the end of the season! Yeah, it’s very specific. I just like the idea of combining sea world with a strip club. It’s so crazy but it also weirdly makes sense in this world. I love that the show released a random holiday episode as a surprise after the first season. Do you know if another one of those is happening? You could even do it as a BoJack Horseman Show episode now instead of Horsin’ Around! You’ve got more to pull from. Ooh, good point! I would really like to see an episode of The BoJack Horseman Show. We’ve only seen them putting it together. That’d be really interesting. Probably really surreal. I don’t know! I don’t know…That’s a question that I try to like answer in my own life and I don’t know. From myself, I think that BoJack maybe just needs to learn how to be less hard on himself? Because it leads to him treating himself and others really poorly. He seemed to be on the right path when he was jogging at the end of last season! But then he kind of goes off the rails… Yeah! I felt the same way, where it seemed like he was learning, but then he just falls even harder this year. All twelve episodes of BoJack Horseman’s third season are available on Netflix right now.
