Back in 2023, CBS officially announced that its next animated series would be an adaptation of Innersloth’s hit 2018 space murder mystery video game. Among us. Now, three years later, the program stacked cast of hollywood actors called an emergency meeting in Summer Games Festivalresulting in the surprise premiere of all 10 episodes on Paramount+.
Among uswhich is animated by Titmouse (Star Trek: Lower Decks), follows a variety of monochromatic crewmates aboard a ship that transports junk through space. Hidden among them is an alien who eliminates them one by one. Their task is to put their collective heads together and find out which one of them is the imposter before there are no crewmates left.
Before Among us‘ premiere, we spoke with showrunner Owen Dennis (infinite train) about how the series landed on its eclectic cast of actors, as well as his philosophy for adapting a video game into a television show nearly a decade after it skyrocketed to become a global sensation.
Among us has an absolutely complete cast, spanning actors from video games, animated shows, and comedy. The cast includes Yvette Nicole Brown (Community) as Orange, Kimiko Glenn (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as Cian, Liv Hewson (yellow jackets) as Black, Ashley Johnson (the last of us) as Purple, Wayne Knight (Seinfeld) like Lima, Phil LaMarr (samurai cat) as Brown, Randall Park (blue eyed samurai) as Red, Dan Stevens (Solar Opposites) as blue, Debra Wilson (Metal Gear Solid: The Weapons of the Patriots) as Yellow and Computer, Elijah Wood (the lord of the rings) as Green, and Patton Oswalt (Goat) as white. Assembling the right group to bring little jellybean-like crewmates to life was no easy task for Dennis.
“One of the difficult things about casting Among us is that all the characters seem the same. They have different outfits, but they look pretty similar, so (we needed to) make sure that each voice definitely sounds like a different person,” Dennis said. “For us, there’s no mouth movements or faces. So if you have a whole group of people and they’re all standing there and one of them is talking, you have to know which one of them is actually talking without moving their mouth.”
He continued, “It was very important to us to make sure we had actors who were very good and could express things using comedy, drama or whatever direction we needed. And also, their voice is unique enough that you know exactly which person is speaking at any given moment.”
Although the guidelines on what Among us The needs for assembling a team of actors to bring their giant jelly bean types to life were clear, Dennis admits that even then, it proved to be a difficult hurdle to overcome, so he’s especially grateful that they got the full cast that they did.
“When we got to who we were, everything felt very natural and very good. I’m very happy with everyone we have,” he said.
Given that the show’s announcement came three years after the peak of the game’s pandemic era, a cavalcade of Internet memes making their way into the Internet’s collective consciousness, and video game adaptations being an unpredictable endeavor for die-hards, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess that some fans might harbor a lingering concern that the CBS show could become a dated time capsule of that very specific moment in time. And radio silence since 2023, followed by a shadow, likely increased the anxiety of fans who had half-forgotten the series was even in development until today’s surprise announcement.
When asked if he or the writers’ room were concerned that Among us‘ the cultural moment had passed, and if that possibility added pressure to make a show that was prescient rather than tied to 2020, Dennis was unfazed and said he didn’t let the noise affect him in his work. That job, in his words, was “to make an animated show based on this video game that’s supposed to be fun.” He then followed that response with a comment that seemed like the modus operandi any showrunner adapting a video game should follow.
“Comedies are products of their time. All media is a product of its time. As much as people try to pretend that they’re making something timeless or that can last forever, everything is a product of its time. You can’t escape that. But what can really make something obviously a product of its time is a lot of referential humor. And references are kind of a lower-level joke because it’s not really a joke. It’s just saying something and then someone else says, ‘I know.’ That’s not a joke. joke. That’s just saying something that someone knows.”
As such, Dennis ensured that Among us He did not rely on referential humor. Instead, the show strove to create jokes that made sense for its characters, situation, and comedic tone, with an emphasis on “no big specific references or anything like that.” Additionally, Dennis noted that trying to incorporate pop culture memes, especially into hand-drawn shows like Among usIt’s nonsense in the first place.
“Animation takes so long to make that if you try to make a pop culture reference to something right now, when it comes out, it’s dated as soon as you start doing it because it would be so many years since it came out,” he said.
“Desire (Among us) to fend for itself. I think it’s important that whenever you adapt something, it has to be something that fans will like, but it also has to be able to stand on its own without having to know the previous works or the metanarrative around the work or any kind of things like that. It has to be something completely your own. If you can do that, then you can achieve something. But if you don’t, you’ll end up with something that feels strange, empty, and strange. “I would hate to work on something like that.”
The 10 episodes of Among us are streaming on Paramount+.
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