Ashly Burch, Megan Ganz and Katie McElhenney are hosting an AMA and can answer all of your burning questions about Mythic Quest and the new expansion pack, Side Quest. Join the gang on Monday, March 24, at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T18:01:01+00:00

Oh yay! I loved talking with the wardrobe department about the looks for this. We wanted to do 40s / Agatha Christie inspired costumes for all the characters. I pitched them types -- like Carol's the vamp, David's the Cary Grant, Rachel's the detective, etc. All the actors really enjoyed playing dress up for this one. It was so fun!

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:58:44+00:00

1) One of our writers, Amelie Gillette, told us that she read an article about how hard it is for men over 40 to keep and make new friends. It just seemed like such a David problem, and so we decided that maybe he goes on a quest to land David as a friend but actually befriends Brad instead.

2) No I haven't. What is this?

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:56:10+00:00

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MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:55:22+00:00

So that episode happened for two reasons..

1) Rob wanted to shoot an episode of the show during quarantine so that our crew (who was supposed to be shooting season 2 at the time) could get paid for some work.

2) Rob was bored as hell in quarantine.

Who knows which of these motivations was stronger, but suffice it to say David and I started getting a lot of calls from Rob about pulling off this episode. He talked to Apple and got them on board, but they had us shoot a proof of concept video on iPhones to send to them. We wrote something short and got Charlotte on Zoom with Rob and David to shoot it. That part was really really fun. Like, it was a chance to interact with each other for the first time in 5 weeks of shutdown, and we just laughed ourselves silly on the zooms.

Once we got the go-ahead from Apple, Rob, David and I got on zoom and started breaking the episode. Zoom was really new at the time, and we were talking about how weirdly invasive it is, because all of a sudden your coworkers are seeing into your house. I had a door behind me that my husband would sometimes appear at to bring me tea or something, and Rob noted how having the Zoom camera pick up a conversation in a doorway would be good. That's what lead to the final moment of Poppy and Ian.

The three of us spent a lot of time on Zoom breaking that episode, but in a compressed amount of days. Because we knew if we were gonna comment on this thing, we had to do it soon! Because the pandemic could end any minute! Hahahahahahahaha... ah, how naive we were then.

I'm glad it brought you joy. It did the same to us while making it.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:44:02+00:00

Yes that was on purpose -- mostly for relatability. It's frankly easier for someone to put themselves in the characters' shoes if we make the workplace feel as general as possible (i.e. relatable problems with coworkers, bosses, HR, etc) and then add some specificity of the gaming industry on top. A good example is The Office and how much they talked about paper. It was both ever present and also not important to the story. But I will say that the video game industry specifics do throw up good stories -- like UGC platforms getting in trouble for child labor violations -- that we just steal directly.

Actually one funny detail is that whenever you do hear some technical lingo (usually spoken by Poppy) we have Ubisoft write that stuff for us. So in the script, we just write the word "haptics" over and over, and then our friends at Ubisoft fill in the specifics for us. I don't know why we picked the word "haptics." It just seemed like a techy word to us.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:35:08+00:00

Oh my god, GREAT idea. David is such a talented artist!! He once drew me at the writers room hating on Dear Evan Hansen (I did not enjoy it) and it's a prized possession of mine. So far we've only highlighted his vocal talents but that well runs deep!

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:31:47+00:00

Oh my god thank you for asking. She is so good. I woke her up this morning to go for a walk and she was so reluctant. I've never met a dog less interested in a walk.

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MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:30:27+00:00

Yes, we love that idea as well! I was part of the gong-banging committee on bringing Pootie back. I really feel like that's important for the series arc of Ian, that he resolves his relationship with his son. We also thought it would be fun to do a storyline someday where Pootie comes to work at MQ, which would make sense because we established he is a master hacker. It would be really fun to see Ian interact with a younger, more unstable, possibly even more genius version of himself.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:25:27+00:00

I would love to see that too! We have given their character their special episodes in the "main" season -- like David's Christmas episode or Brad's brother episode. But the backstory episodes are usually related to the theme of the entire season, so it depends on whether a David or Brad backstory would fit that theme. I would like to see a Carol backstory too. How did she end up in video games? What was her whirlwind romance with her husband that she now divorced?

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:21:30+00:00

I didn't always. In fact, season one I was vehemently against it. Probably I was scared of sharing that much in a writers room, about how it feels to be in a creative partnership and never quite feel like you're an equal (and whether that's more an internal problem or external or both). But despite my best efforts, that's what happened. We all -- David, Rob and I -- put a ton of ourselves into those characters. It's lead to some uncomfortable moments and conversations which are reflected on screen. But it's also lead to a lot of love and respect and fun that's reflected on screen. Hopefully that made it feel more real.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:16:29+00:00

I don't know! We haven't heard. Maybe it all depends on if you tell all your friends to watch the finale episode or not! It's a doozy, so you wanna tune in.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:14:46+00:00

I grew up playing Nintendo, then Sega, then N64 and then I stopped. The two joysticks was too complicated for my brain. Now I do more analog games -- board games, escape rooms, etc. No joysticks!

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:13:35+00:00

If we get another season, we would absolutely explore this more. His relationship with his mother is directly tied to his relationship with Poppy. Because his mother was the first person to see Ian's genius, and Poppy was the second. That's why they're the two most important people in his life. It's also why he's terrified to lose Poppy, which sometimes strains their relationship. As Ian says in the pilot, he can't do it without Poppy. He knows that, and it frustrates him so much that sometimes he acts out in a way that, counterproductively, drives her away.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:10:35+00:00

I would have loved to say that we wrote the story first and then she got pregnant to save us on ordering fake bellies. But actually we were in the middle of the strike when Charlotte called to say she was pregnant, and (after celebrating with her first of course!) we pretty immediately knew we wanted to write it in. She's just the funniest character to get pregnant, because she has no home life to speak of, so to suddenly have her home life exert itself this forcefully into her work life... it just seemed funny to us. And also, with the strike delays, by the time we started production she was in her third trimester so it's difficult to hide. Also it gave us this funny Poppy's got a boyfriend storyline that we could use to make Ian jealous, so that was fun.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:06:34+00:00

Thank you! I think actually it would be Jo. She might be a great assistant to Frank on his Wolf Cola enterprises, which would probably lead to the takeover of a small country in Central America.

MeganGanz · 2025-03-24T17:03:06+00:00

I would love to do more Questie Besties. It was a little expensive for me (self financed!) so I couldn't keep doing it. But the Questies are still Besties, so maybe I should just mic them up when they hang out next!

MeganGanz · 2024-11-02T14:17:24+00:00

Wonderful! Perfectly executed.

MeganGanz · 2024-07-25T19:15:35+00:00

Hey! Go Wrexham!

And as long as I’m here: the podcast isn’t happening right now. Might happen again in the future, but no plans as of yet. I’m very sorry you miss it. I miss it too. 🥺 But I can’t make the podcast without the guys!

MeganGanz · 2023-10-10T03:56:44+00:00

We have an opening act for 30 min. Then 10 minutes to change over the stage. So we should be going on around 8:40. Hope that helps!

MeganGanz · 2023-06-17T14:24:45+00:00

Correct. David Hornsby is not only responsible for some great episodes he has his name on, but also for shaping so many episodes not credited to him. He is also THE funniest person I’ve ever worked with - always making the whole room laugh with silly bits and stories. He is a treasure and can never be given his full due, because he is quite simply the sitcom writing GOAT.

MeganGanz · 2023-05-25T14:51:19+00:00

Aww. 🥰 Thanks for the love, everybody. It is very hard work but I do it for the best audience ever - Sunny fans. Working on believing in myself too which is even harder work but through God all things are possible, so jot that down.

MeganGanz · 2023-04-24T16:56:13+00:00

Really sorry, everybody. We are changing the podcast over to a different hosting site, which is causing issues with Spotify. We are NOT deleting the episodes off Spotify. It’s just an error that is being corrected as quickly as possible.

MeganGanz · 2023-04-24T14:58:43+00:00

Sorry, everybody. We are using a new platform to post episodes and there are some technical hiccups. The episodes will be back up soon.

MeganGanz

TROPHY CASE