'Fairfax' Creators Talk Season 2, Working With Guy Fieri, and Share Exclusive Clip

What has it been like seeing the response for Season 1?

Aaron Buchsbaum: I think people loved it. We just want more people to love it and discover it. We want to be the next big thing. But people that have seen it, the reviews and everyone that we talk to, everybody says really nice, positive things and the reviews have been awesome. When you put a show out into the world, you have no idea how it’s going to be received. To see that we had a fresh tomato and people on Twitter were saying nice things was such a relief. You put four years of work into something to see people respond positively means a ton. And the people that have seen it, really like it. I think our hope is just that word spreads and more people see it.

What I really appreciated about Fairfax with Season 1 was the fact that the four main characters all have a goal in mind. They don’t want to be influencers just to be influencers. They all have a purpose. Why did you feel that was important?

Teddy Riley: Part of just rounding out each character meant finding something that they were specifically passionate about. Whether it was Benny’s shoe collection or Truman’s kind of creativity. We wanted to make sure that they each kind of had their own lane in a way that felt really personal to each kid that it wasn’t just this broad kind of goal to be famous. It was like they wanted to do it their way. And it made for deeper characters and also just really fun storylines and places that we could take each kid.

Matt Hausfater: My friend group growing up, everybody brought something different to the table. It was just this weird mish-mash of people and everybody had their own passions, but you sort of riff off each other’s loves and interests and they put you onto new stuff and you put them onto new stuff. We thought that was important for the kids as well, to have diversified interests and hobbies, and passions.

AB: To better represent Gen Z and what it’s like to be a kid today, we always talk about how inclusive they are as a generation. Even though on the surface, Dale is so obviously different from them, we always love the idea that of course, they welcome him with open arms. Even though they don’t even connect to his personal drive, he is the most authentic version of himself and they see that and they love that. That’s why they happily welcome him into their friend group.

They poke fun at him, but they don’t shame him for being different.

AB: Absolutely. When we grew up, the concept of the bully, people were just tougher back then, and now it’s such a beautiful part of being a kid today that there really is this hard push to be inclusive and caring and thoughtful and celebrate our differences, which is so nice.

How are you able to capture the Gen Z vibe and energy so well?

AB: We put together a writer’s room of really incredible young voices that were very tapped into the culture. On our end, we are encouraging ourselves to tap into the culture as well. We all have Instagram TikTok, Snapchat in our phones and we do the deep dives. We’re all just really impressed and fans of this new generation. It’s so incredible what they’re doing and what they have going on and how much they have to balance. It seems like if we were kids, then we would not have survived all this. But, our hat is off them and we earn awe and just love having an opportunity to celebrate them.

TR: I mean, Aaron joked about it, but we really are 13 years old still at heart. We’re on the Supreme app, looking at drops every week. We’re talking about dunks, we’re looking for deals on eBay and at the flea market. We’ve always felt whether you’re from this generation, ours, whatever, everybody can relate to being that age, 12, 13, 14, in middle school, and having these crazy ambitions, wanting to spend whatever money you have on probably something your parents would call really dumb, like beanie babies or shoes or whatever it is. For this generation, it’s Supreme and stuff. So we always felt that was a universal thing that people could connect to. And, and like Aaron said, our writers are awesome. We all have younger siblings, nieces, and nephews, teenagers in our lives too, that we bug and talk to and kind of hear what they say and put it on the page.

The show kind of pokes fun at a hype beast and streetwear culture and people’s obsession with standing on line for a clothing drop or sneaker. Whatever it is. But we have all done that for movies, for concert tickets, and nobody shamed us for it. Why do you think that aspect of our culture is kind of looked down on, in a way?

AB: My instinct is people are old and jealous. That’s where my head goes. Some of the best times of my life were waiting in line for the midnight showing of the Toby McGuire’s Spider-Man movies. Dressed up like Spider-Man, that was some of the most fun I ever had. I probably walked by that person now waiting in line, being like, “That just seems like a giant waste of time and I have shit to do cause I’m an old man.” I think it’s just, curmudgeonly people that forget the joy of the quest for whatever it is you’re waiting in line for.

I saw Guy Fieri will be in Season 2. How do you guys pick the people that are going to be featured on the show?

MH: We are surrounded by younger, smarter, faster hipper people that help for sure. Dr. Phil actually, I think was a conversation the three of us had with Somehoodlum where he’s just very good at the internet and he’s self-aware and he’s awesome. And people call him daddy. And the fact that when you’re 13 in 2021, when we wrote the show, you’re not really admiring Dr. Phil because you might not know him because you’re at school. You’re not caught home watching daytime television. So the idea that Dale, when Dale’s like, “Who’s Dr. Phil? Who are you?” When he asks him in that closet scene, that to us made it inherently funny that kids are chasing after a shirt with someone on it and they don’t even know who that is, they just know they need the T-shirt.

TR: Guy, we were just huge, huge fans of. We just wanted to work with him and he was kind and funny enough to say yes. With all the kinds of celebrity references that are peppered around the show, we just kind of trust our gut and respond to what makes us laugh. The celebrities that are in there are probably just people that we’re all fans of and just doing it because we love them. Shania Twain was someone in Season 1 that, we just love Shania Twain! And when you get a chance to go, “Hey, would you want to have some fun with us on this show?” And then people say, “Yes,” it’s just the best feeling.

AB: If you take one thing away from this conversation, let it be known that Guy Fieri is as incredible as he seems. He is the best person on the planet. He’s just a legend and it’s fully earned. He is the mayor of my Flavor Town. It was the coolest thing in the world to just literally record with him over Zoom and chat with him for a little bit and be like, “Holy shit, you are the coolest person on the planet and you deserve everything you have.” He’s unstoppable. This is how much we love food on our end. He is a star. He is a professional athlete. He is Tom Brady. He is on that level. That’s where he belongs. And it’s, he’s just awesome. That’s why he is in the show.

What can you say will be different from in Season 2 from Season 1?

TR: So much. We go to so many new places in Season 2. We did not want to repeat ourselves in certain ways and keep finding things that were part of the world of Fairfax and the culture that we hadn’t tapped into yet. There are still things from Season 1 that are going to carry over, but there are also a lot of news storylines about their relationships, the friendships with each other, and also kind of discovering new worlds. The Fairfax flea market was a part of our lives and is just something that’s so embedded in the world. We knew we wanted to do something there. That’s a really fun place that we take it. We kind of just up our cinematic level. Even just off the premiere, we go to a lot of places that feel like, “OK, we’re, we’re taking the show there.” Season 1 is a great time to take that next step with the audience. And hopefully, the audience trusts the way we kind of broaden where this show can go.

AB: We dive deeper into character. Even characters that we didn’t have a chance to explore in the first season because we really needed to know our main four. There are other characters in the school, especially Camila Mendes, Larry Owens, Ben Schwartz, these are actors that are so incredible. The first season we were obviously trying to fit the main four-character stories into every single episode. Now we can just really spread our wings and play with them. There are a few episodes in particular where we just get to have so much fun with those characters and let them do their thing and hear Larry Owens sing and just do stuff that is so much fun and so exciting and really lets those characters shine. 

We always talked about building out our Springfield and, as fans of The Simpsons, we know so many characters. If you ask somebody who your favorite character in The Simpsons is, everyone has a different character. Our intention was kind of just like continue to build out that world and really have our audiences, give our audiences the opportunity to fall in love with other characters outside of our main four.

How did you guys choose who would be voicing each character? 

MH: We were just going off our bucket list of, if we had a magic wand, who would we have magically appeared in our show? 

AB: Look, there’s nothing fun about COVID, but in making a show through COVID, a lot of actors weren’t able to work in live action television. We just went through our list of like, who is the dream person for this role? And our casting director would reach out to them. And then next day they’d be like, “Hey, so they’re in this show.” And it’s like, I remember we were casting Annie Murphy. Annie Murphy had like, just come off of winning an Emmy, and she was incredible. And we were like, how amazing would be if Annie Murphy was to be in our show? And then the next day, it was like, “Hey, so Annie Murphy said, yes, she’s in your show.” And it was like, “Holy crap. All right.” Now we have to compose ourselves and work with Annie Murphy. It’s crazy.

There are so many shows that are animated shows for an older audience. How do you feel about this new era of animated shows for an adult audience?

TR: We love it. It’s so awesome to be a part of this new wave of animation. We’re huge fans of the genre. We love Rick and Morty and Big Mouth and it’s great. Feels like there’s a wave of new animation that’s coming and we’re so stoked to be a part of it.

AB: We’ve been all been working in the industry for a number of years now. We had this moment where it was, “Holy shit, animated movies, and television are the best product out there.” There’s a reason why, even on the features side, all these animated movies are so goddamn good. And then on television, the bar keeps getting raised. Animated television is just so strong right now. And we’re lucky to be a part of it. It’s crazy. It’s my favorite programming on both sides.

TR: Whether people realize it or not, everyone loves animation.

Fairfax Season 2 will drop on Amazon Prime on June 10.