If you use social media, you’ve seen a man-on-the-street interview.
You know the type: punchy, short-form digital series where you get to know an interviewee in record time. Some shows, such as Track Star or Gaydar, use specific subjects like music or queer history as entry points. Others, like Are You Okay? or Subway Takes, invite guests to rant about a topic of their choosing. These series have taken over your feeds and Hollywood press tours alike, and for one episode, they take over FX’s sitcom Adults.
In Adults Season 2, episode 7, titled “C Alert,” Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) laments having what he and his friends call “man-on-the-street face,” a condition that makes him a target for New York City’s street interview content creators. (Due to his Canadian politeness, he can never turn them down.)
However, by the episode’s end, Paul Baker embraces his man-on-the-street face to help his housemate/will-they-won’t-they love interest Anton (Owen Thiele), who’s gotten in trouble at work for saying “cunt.” While the word’s positive connotations in queer ballroom culture have led to wider reclamation and resurgence, especially online, it still carries quite a bit of baggage in America; hence Paul Baker’s quest to encourage its normalization through street interviews.
Tiff Baira and Jack Innanen in “Adults.”
Credit: FX
Cue a montage of Paul Baker fumbling his way through appearances on highly popular, real-life man-on-the-street shows, including Gaydar, hosted by Anania; Are You Okay?, then-hosted by Brianna “Bri” Morales; Recess Therapy, hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum; Street Hearts, hosted by Tiffany “Tiff” Baira; and Track Star, hosted by Jack Coyne. The sequence is a hysterical, cameo-filled conclusion to the episode, but also a tribute to the reach and influence of man-on-the-street content creators.
According to Adults creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, the idea to bring man-on-the-street interviewers into Season 2 started with the show’s writers taking walks around New York City for inspiration. One day, in Washington Square Park, they noticed several interviewers pulling people aside for their own segments.
“One of the writers was like, ‘isn’t it funny that we haven’t seen that on TV yet?'” Shaw recalled in a video interview with Mashable. “It feels like such a present part of New York culture right now.”
To capture this aspect of New York culture — which, in turn, becomes digital culture when it’s posted online — Adults reached out to several New York-based street-interview content creators about appearing as themselves in the show.
“To be honest, I was skeptical at first,” Track Star host Jack Coyne told Mashable over the phone. “I thought Track Star sounded like it could be the butt of the joke.”
Coyne created Track Star as a “reaction” to the more aggressive, inappropriate type of man-on-the-street interviews that have gained notoriety online. Adults certainly pokes fun at this more confrontational style of content, with Paul Baker appearing on fake shows like Milk or Dare or Gay Granny’s Trivia Crashout. (Adults executive producer Nick Kroll also makes a voiceover cameo as a sleazy host who wants Paul Baker to rank the women in his family by attractiveness.)
However, the episode’s final montage flips the joke on Paul Baker and serves as more of an appreciative showcase for the creators making cameos.
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“We’re such fans of this genre, and we think it’s so cool the way these younger creators have managed to really carve out these very funny, specific, voice-y names for themselves in this space,” said Shaw.
Adults usually shoots in Toronto, but in order to capture the creators’ voices, the series sent a small crew to New York City to film Innanen’s segments on each show.
“We wanted to do it on their terms and on their territory, and we really let the hosts lead with their voice, their improv, their writing,” Kronengold said.
Jack Innanen and Caleb Simpson in “Adults.”
Credit: FX
Hosts were given an outline to work from, but were also able to improvise and treat the fictional segment like any real shoot for their show. For internet personality and former Are You Okay? host Bri Morales, that meant deciding whether or not Paul Baker is, in fact, okay. (He’s not.) For Gaydar host Anania, that meant determining if Paul Baker is gay, straight, or a homophobe. (In keeping with the show’s lore, he’s fluid.) For Street Hearts host Baira, that meant sitting down at the show’s recognizable match-making table and getting to the root of why Paul Baker is single.
“Paul Baker was just a real person in that moment,” Baira told Mashable over the phone.
Over the course of one day, the Adults crew zipped around New York, from just outside a Midtown Container Store to shoot Gaydar all the way to Prospect Park to shoot Recess Therapy. Segments were shot in accordance with each show’s style, adhering to their specific cameras, lighting, framing, and even methods of mic-ing people up. In post-production, Adults also mimicked the shows’ graphics and fast-paced editing.
“Being so onboard with having our format inside of the episode makes it a very valiant effort on the showrunners’ part,” Anania told Mashable in a phone interview.
“You don’t often see that from brands,” added Amelia Montooth, creator of Gaydar and CEO of Mutuals Media. “Usually, you’re battling with them to try to keep your authenticity.”
Part of that authenticity meant acknowledging street-interview influencers as stars in their own right. Caleb Simpson, known for his house tour videos, originally auditioned to play one of Paul Baker’s bro-y friends in the Season 2 premiere, before being brought back to play himself in a cameo in “C Alert,” where he shoots a video about Samir’s (Malik Elassal) home. For Simpson, the role reflects a changing attitude towards content creators.
“I started making content on the internet 11 years ago, and the industry didn’t take it seriously,” Simpson told Mashable over Zoom. “About three or four years ago, I started taking acting and stand up and improv seriously, and then you get cast to play yourself in a show, and you do exactly what you would do when you film your content.”
Adults‘ embrace of content creators speaks to their rise in Hollywood. (In addition to these street interviewers, Season 2 also guest stars internet personalities like Jake Shane. Innanen himself started as a content creator.) It’s also a savvy way to make its target Gen Z audience feel seen by meeting them where they’re at: online. As Shaw said, these series are “generational access points.”
“What is the Maddy quote from Euphoria, where she’s like, ‘is this fucking play about us‘? That is the goal for these young adult shows to really ring true to their target audience,” Morales told Mashable over the phone. “It would maybe be funny if [Paul Baker] went on The Today Show, but it’s so native to the demographic that of course he’s going to do Are You Okay?, or course he’s going to do man-on-the-street shows, because that’s where everything is right now.”
“Everything” includes the Adults press tour. For Season 1, Innanen appeared on Are You Okay? and Amita Rao and Owen Thiele appeared on Gaydar. For Season 2, Paul Baker’s many stints on man-on-the-street shows also doubled as opportunities for Innanen to film appearances on these shows as himself. Art mimics life, the show reflects the marketing, and it all comes full circle in just a brief montage.
“The fact that Adults is putting a show like [Track Star] in their script and on TV and understanding it’s a big part of the cultural conversation is just the beginning, honestly,” Coyne said. “I think you’re going to start to see a lot more of this stuff in culture broadly, because people are spending as much time watching content on the internet and on their phones as they are watching Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and FX.”
“It is the future,” said Baira. “Short form and traditional, the future is going to be blending the two.”
Adults Season 2 is now streaming on Hulu.
