'The League' Creators On Seven Seasons of Raunchy Humor and Getting Pranked By Marshawn Lynch

The mastermind couple behind FXX's brilliant fantasy football sitcom 'The League'

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Football is forever, but all TV must come to an end. And so, the stadium lights are dimming on FXX'sThe League, the pseudo-improv, foul-mouthed sitcom about even fouler friends whose adult lives are dictated by their dedication and obsession with their fantasy football league. The show has gone on to become a cult hit appealing far and wide beyond fellow football fans and fantasy leaguers to create fun, light gross-out half-hours and pop culturally relevant phrases like "Eskimo Brothers." With the show's seventh and final season premiering tonight, we hopped on the phone with the series creators, husband and wife Jeff and Jackie Schaffer to reflect on the show's near decade-long impact.

Why end the show after seven seasons?
Jeff: I think for us it’s very simple, which is whenever we go out we always wanted to go out with people wanting more. We always said we rather be Bernie Sanders than Brett Favre. We’ll see. It’s never over until it’s over. But we still want to end with a big bang.

So did you approach crafting this season with a sense of finality or is it going to be like any other?
Jackie: I don’t know. Every year we think, god if the season ended with Kevin swimming out to the boat on fire after the Shiva, that would be a great ending; If it ended with Ruxin in the choir in the church, also a great ending. So I think this year we are trying to make a funny show and whatever may be, may be. I don’t think this is the entire finality of these characters. We’ll just leave it at that.

Jeff: Conceptually, it’s very important because you look at a lot of season finales and it’s always weird when the finale of a series tries to do something that every episode of the series wasn’t. We try to do one thing: Make the funniest show we can. It’s very important for us that the final show this year is fucking funny. That’s what we really care about.

What other sitcom series finales come to mind when you think of stuff you want to avoid?
Jeff: I think, and I was a part of this one, but the Seinfeld one was a terrible wrap. The biggest flaw of it was actually that the four characters that we’ve been watching do so many things for so many years weren’t active in the show. I’m not saying it’s terrible. It was still a funny show, but our main guys were spectators. They were literally sitting in court watching the guest cast parade through and do all of this stuff. I don’t think it’s as terrible as people say, but that’s what I think you want to avoid.

Jackie: I will say that our cast has so much fun shooting together and they are such good friends that as much as everyone enjoyed the Mad Men series finale, if we were to separate any of our guys from the rest of the crew while shooting the end, I think they’d hate us. They have such a good time making the show that I think we better find a story that keeps them all together. It’s not like we are sending Jon Hamm off to Big Sur. I think we learned the lesson when we talked to Matthew Weiner about the ending of Mad Men that you better have a very good reason to separate one of your guys from the rest of the group because they all really want to be with the family in the end. 

That goes into my next question. The show is at least half improv. What is the vibe on set? How much is in the script and how much is just everybody being hilarious and coming up with the best jokes?
Jeff
: The set is super fun, first of all. It’s really small. There’s no other writers on staff. There are no other directors. There are no other producers. It’s Jackie and I and the cast. That’s it. It’s very intimate and it’s very loose but the scripts are pretty well thought-out in a sense of all the themes and what the stuff is.

Jackie: They are such a brilliant cast, but we are not those people who are like, hey it’s improv everyone just show up and create comedy for us and we will just sit back and make you do all the work. We are all part of it. So we show up with really well thought-out stories and good connections, lots of dialog, and then the whole thing is, we say, comedy stock exchange. If you’ve got a better line, beat it. Some of the most fun rants have been written and some of the most fun rants have been improvised. It’s all about having it be very prepared when we show up so that they can have fun with the details. We are not just throwing them in there with loose or really thin characters or a plot. That’s what makes it fun.

Jeff: The thing is, you were prepared to do it one way, but then Paul Scheer may pull out his phone and be like "Well I got a slambook on my phone." We were just in the editing room and he was talking about how someone on Ruxin’s team had scored zero points and is popping out a big ol' goose egg and he’s really groaning and squeezing this goose egg out. Then everyone starts asking about the goose egg. Then he’s shitting out the goose egg and he’s like "No, I have two holes. There’s a hole for the goose egg and there’s a hole for my poop." So we were like, let’s spend a little more time on this. You always leave the room and you just have to be aware of when the scene is going to turn into something else. You may have one plan when it starts and a completely different plan by the time it ends, but at least you had a plan going in. The way it ends up being on set and shooting, it’s really like shooting a comedy sporting event. You wouldn’t think that adult humans would make a TV show this way. But what comes out of it is that you are with a bunch of guys who are fucking funny talking to each other. That’s what we are going for.

Over six seasons you guys have had so many terms and phrases that have blown up in pop culture. What has been your favorite so far?
Jeff: That’s a good question. We certainly have gotten the most mileage out of "Eskimo Brothers." It’s been an amazing thing to see. We were shooting and someone was like did you know they were talking about Eskimo Brothers on The Bachelor? It was like, 'What? Really?!' "Fear Boner," to me, is very enjoyable. The concept that you can be so terrified that you’ll get an erection. It still really makes me laugh. By the way, part of the reason why we are sticking with this is that every year the show has Jackie and I and the cast have a League of The League. We all play in a fantasy football league. Every time something crazy happens on set they are like, this would be a great team name, you could literally see people running to their phones to change their team name to that thing. A few years ago I was the Second Harvest, which has always been enjoyable for me. The other one, I think Jackie got it the next year, Toilet Kitchen. I really love the concept of the Toilet Kitchen. We are going to be revisiting that in the season premiere. I don’t want to ruin it, but according to Rafi, Kevin and Jenny have gotten a kitchen makeover and he loves what they’ve done with their kitchen. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll leave it at that.

Another one that got us out of a total jam, and this is a classic, 100% Nick Kroll: "Frittata." It was the first season and we got this mandate from Fox that you weren’t allowed to use the word "retarded." We were like, fine, but we’re about to hand in a script where Taco and Ruxin go to Chinatown and get into a fight with a Chinese retard. So what are we going to do here? Mentally challenged is such a mouthful. Nick was like, there’s something I’ve been saying, which is I use the world frittata. So the word frittata came into the lexicon there and we’ve been using it ever since.

Speaking of Kroll, what’s it been like to watch him or Mark Duplass just blow up off the strength of the show?
Jeff
: I don’t think the strength of the show is it. When we were casting these guys we wanted to cast people who were doers. People that made things. When you’re in a fantasy football league, the thought behind it for us was they were going to be making a lot of videos. The thing for us is that these guys are all writers and producers. That’s the beauty of it. They’re all used to making their own stuff. It makes us very proud and very happy to see them getting to do all the stuff they want to do. We shoot for 10 or 11 weeks. It’s basically a July to October kind of thing. It’s like getting attacked in an alley, fighting and wrestling for a few minutes, and then all of the sudden you’re done and are like, that was cool. It allows all of our cast to go and spend the other eight months doing all the other stuff they want to do. 

Taco is Jon’s first real acting credit, right?
Jeff: We had come up with this character called Taco and then we got introduced to Jon Lajoie and it was like, this is the guy. He was perfect. He still is. But he still knows absolutely nothing about football. Nothing. We shot that Marshawn Lynch promo and Jon comes out and starts talking to Jackie and I and was like, "I thought it was very funny Kevin getting caught on fire and everything. Then someone explained to me that this is about the Super Bowl." [Laughs] I just went, yep. The greatest thing is, Marshawn Lynch can’t get enough of Jon. Jon has never watched Marshawn play a down in his life, and Marshawn can’t get enough of Jon and they were having the best time.

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Do you guys have favorite episodes and/or seasons?
Jeff: Hmm. I really loved “12.12.12.” It was a show that ended with Deion Sanders walking into his apartment to find Rafi and Dirty Randy (Seth Rogen) making a porno. There’s nowhere else on the planet where those sentences have ever been said. One of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done is the second episode of this year. It’s awesome. It’s called “The Draft of Innocence.” Andre won last year so he gets to choose how the draft is held. He wants to do a costume-themed draft based on the Gilded Age and it’s insane. It’s just really, really funny and really makes me laugh a lot.

Jackie: I also love things like—I think "Thanksgiving" is a great example of it—let’s meet Ruxin’s dad. Let’s meet Andre’s sister. Let’s see these people’s worlds and who they go to work with, who they talk to, and who they hang out with outside of the league. 

What about favorite cameos? Especially from the football/NFL world?
Jackie
: I've got to say, Jason Witten is the nicest guy. When I said, hey do you mind if we do a fantasy where Jenny masturbates to you? He was like, sure, no problem. I’m down for that. That was one of those things where we were like these guys are so cool. I thought that was one of the moments where—you know, it’s Jason Witten. He’s known to be one of the cleanest cut, nicest guys in the league. And we were proposing a scene that was kind of raunchy. I was so excited that he did it because it was perfection.

Jeff: He could have said no at any time. We got this extra scene if you have time. Oh, it’s of Jenny masturbating. Oh, and she’s pregnant. There were so many times he should have said no, and he didn’t. What a sweetheart. J.J. Watt was funny. He was straight up clowning around, giving as good as he got. It was amazing. The other one that was amazing: Marshawn Lynch. Marshawn Lynch pranked us last year, which was crazy.

What did he do?
Jeff
: So we are supposed to shoot the scene with Marshawn, the one from last year where he shows up at the EBDb van. We were going to do it one week and then he tweaked something so he had to stay in Seattle for treatment. So we’re getting to the end of it. We shot everything. Then he’s like I can do it next Tuesday. We call up FX and we get the gang back together to do this one scene. We are going to do this one scene with Taco and Andre and Marshawn. He’s supposed to show up at 11 on a Tuesday and he’s flying in Monday night with his agent. We talked to his agent the night before. He’s getting on a plane that night. He’ll be there. So we call the next morning to touch base with him at 7 AM. and he’s like, "I don’t know where Marshawn is. I landed in L.A. and I don’t know where he is." Then he does some digging and was like, "Marshawn was in a car accident. He wasn’t driving. He’s okay. His uncle was driving him to the airport and I guess the phone was still in the car so he hasn’t been able to call us. Anyway, I don’t think he’s coming." We are having this phone call looking at the set. They’re putting all the lights up. There is a big fly swatter. Everyone has come back for this one thing at no small expense from FX and he is AWOL. Then we are about to call FX and we get a call from the agent: "Well, I guess if you know my client long enough he can fuck with me. He’s right here. He came in the night before." He did it just to fuck with his agent and by extension, which he didn’t realize, he completely screwed with us. His agent is literally there just freaking out and Marshawn comes up and is like, "Hey buddy." Then he comes and does the scene and he couldn’t have been nicer or more fun. But being punked by Marshawn was terrifying for a few hours. 

So what’s coming next this season? What can we expect cameo-wise, plot-wise?
Jeff
: There’s a few things I’ll tell you. A lot of people are coming back this year. A lot of old favorites. Everybody from Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Jason Mantzoukas, Frank "The Body" Gibiatti played by Ike Barinholtz, Rob Riggle who plays Ruxin’s boss Bethesda, Zach Woods, the terribly annoying hipster Lane. We even have Will Forte who plays Chuck, one of the most wayward members of the league, coming back. We’ve also got Leslie Bibb, who plays Pete’s ex-wife Meegan. We haven’t seen her in five years and we are going to be seeing a lot of her this year. She comes back in a big way. Shiva, of course, will be back. The trick of bringing all of these guys back that’s so great is you just have to give them funny stories. They all have great stuff to do and they are super funny.

No Jeff Goldblum?
Jeff
: We are working on it. We’d love to have him. He’s awesome. It’s great to get Seth back. It’s fun. Our cast, we think are brilliant and because they are so much fun we have all these amazing guests who want to come and play with our guys.

What’s next for you and Jackie?
Jackie: There are a couple of things we are talking about doing that we are excited about. We are the morons who signed up to a show and are the writers, directors, producers, no production company. It’s just us. This is what it’s like to shoot low-budget on location. It’s all-consuming all year round. So we haven’t had a ton of time to do another show. It’s kind of exciting, the prospect of being able to do something else. We’ll see.

Jeff: There are a few things we got cooking that I wish we could tell you, but we can’t.

Jackie: Now we just sound like dicks.

Jeff: We just can’t yet. We want to, but we can’t.

Jackie: We don’t want to ruin the surprise.

Jeff: It’s for your own good.

Before I let you go, earlier you mentioned that you and the cast are in a league in real life. I have to ask what is that like? Who has won the most?
Jackie
: I’m really glad you asked that question. Like are you curious of what everyone’s records are, in terms of championship? Is there a dynasty?

I want to know records. I want to know who is the most competitive. Who is the Andre?
Jeff
: When we started The League Stephen Rannazzisi was the only one who played Fantasy Football before. So he looked at me and was like, "Buddy, we got this. Super Bowl every year. You and me." In the past six years he has had not one sniff of the playoffs. Katie won it the first year and the trophy is called the Aselton Cup and Jackie has won it twice. She’s the only person who has won it twice. I finally won last year. We actually considered ending the entire show just because I finally won. I wanted to end as a champion. It was last year and Stephen Rannazzisi was sitting in the makeup chair with Jon Lajoie. And Rannazzisi is cursing a storm about his team. He’s like, "I can’t believe it. I lost. Nobody did anything. Everyone shat the bed. Just nothing. God I can’t believe I lost." And Jon’s sitting there like, "Who did you lose to?" And Rannazzisi is like, "YOU. I lost to you and you had two players on bye weeks!" I’ve never seen his head that red. When you’re losing to somebody who doesn’t even know that the games are on, you are terrible. 

So, basically Rannazzisi and Lajoie is like a Kevin and Taco exchange in real life then?
Jeff
: It might as well have been Kevin and Taco talking. It was hilarious. Paul Scheer was add/dropping on his honeymoon during the first season. This was a guy who had no idea. When we actually did the auditions he was like, "I’m not sure I want to go after this. I don’t know enough about fantasy football." I was like "Paul, trust me, your character is perfect." He went from not knowing anything about it, to in the middle of our first season he got married and was adding and dropping players during his honeymoon like a banshee. He’s hooked. You should see when a football player comes on set. The amount of, "Heyyyy let me talk to you." I remember in the first season Antonio Gates was the first guy to come to set before and LaDainian Tomlinson had a bum ankle or something. I was literally playing Nick Kroll that week and I tried pulling Antonio Gates aside to ask about the ankle/knee situation and Nick literally comes up to me and was like, "No! Get away! While I’m getting wired you’re not allowed to sit here and pump Antonio for info." So that’s what it’s like on set. The league of The League is very much like watching The League.

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