Dropout’s hit improvisational comedy interview series, “Very Important People,” returns with a star-studded second season. Vic Michaelis will once again lead the series as “Host Vic,” interviewing oddball eccentric subjects. Each episode features a comedian who is given a complete makeover, including makeup, costumes, prosthetics, and wigs. They quickly work out their character and embody this strange individual in a completely improvised interview.

The first season of “Very Important People” included many comedians that Dropout fans are familiar with, including Izzy Roland, Zac Oyama, Ally Beardsley, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and more. The second season will include some returning guests as well as a number of exciting new contenders, with Bobby Moynihan (“SNL,” “DuckTales”), Nicole Byer (“Nailed It!”), Danielle Pinnock (“Ghosts”), and Echo Kellum (“Arrow”) to name a few. While comedy is at the heart of this series, it also allows the comedians to show off their acting chops, with each guest completely embodying their characters.

In this exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Michaelis teases the season 2 premiere and the impressive roster of guests. They also break down how “Host Vic” has evolved going into the new season and the process of finding the comedic chemistry with each guest. Michaelis also discussed the possibility of making an appearance on Dropout’s “Dimension 20.”

Vic Michaelis Talks Season 2 Premiere of “Very Important People: I Curled Up in a Ball on the Ground”

Temple of Geek: I was dying during the first episode of the new season. It was so good!

Vic Michaelis: Caitlin, thank you so much. That means so much. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve been using this all day, but it is true, and there’s literally nothing else to say about this other than Anna [Garcia] walked out of hair and makeup and I curled up in a ball on the ground.

And then they had to drag me to set and retouch my makeup because of how much I was crying. I was laughing so hard. I think, again, we used breaks in the first episode. There was literally no cutting around it. There was no point. The information had to get out, and there was absolutely no cutting around the laughter. I love Anna so much, and she really was rocks.

Temple of Geek: When the reveal happened and she saw herself and she was cycling through the characters, and she had the moment where she’s like, I’m going to be my first character, but as rocks. I was like, I don’t think you’re going to do that, but God, I want that as an outtake episode.

Vic Michaelis: It was incredible to watch. And also too, there was a moment midway through filming where I was just like, this kid, you can’t see Anna at all. Somewhere in her lurks that fourth grade boy, you know what I mean? So there was this moment where midway through the episode I was like, this kid is going to get me in trouble. And I was like, this is not a kid. It’s Anna!

Comedians Fully Disappear Into Their Characters

Temple of Geek: I think one of the things I love about this show, because the comedy is such a huge part of it, but I think something that doesn’t necessarily get talked about enough is how much it shows the acting abilities of everyone.

Vic Michaelis: Oh, Caitlin, that means so much. Yes, I totally agree.

Temple of Geek: They just completely disappear into these roles. Watching the first episode from season one and the first episode from season two, you would not think that’s the same person. It’s unbelievable. How do you think having that layer of the makeup and the prosthetics and the costumes really allows each of these comedians to fully become these characters in a way we may not see in other Dropout shows?

Vic Michaelis: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, I think it is something too, to having time with this, right? One episode is dedicated to one, sometimes two comedians and that’s it. You have the time to get into it. Also there’s a little bit of the pressure off all of us. Most of us are first and foremost improvisers, and so this is what we’re doing on stage all the time.

Dropout shows are so wonderful, but even Make Some Noise, which is also an improv show, is short form improv. You’re getting the prompt, which is sort of like the joke or the game of the scene, and then you’re doing your take on that. Whereas this, it really is like we got an hour just to stretch. Even though it is unique to the viewer, it’s not unique to people that are seeing them on stage.

This is what I know these performers to be, and I think people are falling in love with their comedic minds and their personalities on some of these other shows. And then people are getting to see them as the performers that they are on this show, which I think is really special. I’m so grateful that we have the time and the space to do that and Dropout is excited about showing that side of things.

Vic Michaelis Talks Returning & New Guests From Dropout, Ghosts, & SNL in “Very Important People” Season 2

Temple of Geek: I love the build too. As things are revealed in season one when Beardsley’s character is, my mom wasn’t actually stomped on by a dog. It’s just so perfect because in no universe would I have thought that was where it was going. Can you talk about that? I know you guys have the back and forth because that is improv comedy at its core, but kind of finding almost the storyline and figuring out where to put twists in this that are going to make the audience laugh, but also make it so you don’t necessarily break every time you’re in a scene.

Vic Michaelis: Oh, that’s a really great question, Caitlin. It’s interesting because the beauty of the editing is we can be liberal with the breaking and it just doesn’t make the final cut. We can chop, chop, snip, snip. Also, I think we all speak a very similar improv language. We all come from a similar improv training, and so we all sort of know how structure of a scene works, and we all have been taught it and learned it and perform it in very similar ways.

And so yes, we’re not necessarily utilizing the traditional rules of improv, but we know where we’re going. It’s also different too, because even with some of the people who I speak the same improv language, as I think Nicole Byer is a really good example of somebody who we both came up in UCB. I’d never performed with her before, but in this one, we can immediately do a scene together because we both are building off of the same shared knowledge.

Whereas I used to perform twice a week with Beardsley and with Zac and with Jacob. We’re all on an improv team together, so it’s very, very easy to hop in to things like that. And so with something like Ally, they and I also just on stage, I think a lot of our dynamics of how we perform on stage also showed up in VIP. Zac and Beardsley make me laugh harder than maybe anybody else on the planet. There’s just something about their sense of humor that really just cuts me.

It’s like the thing that makes me personally just belly laugh the hardest. It’s a little bit of that unpredictability. It’s a little bit of playing it totally deadpan, totally straight. That just really, really gets me. So in terms of the twists and turns, I think it really is just like a yes, anding. I was going to say the finish line, but it really feels like to hell to death. Yes, anding until one of us dies.

It’s like a race to the guillotine. That is not something we planned at all. That is truly just where that ended up. It was like, okay, well, you don’t sound sure about that. I think if I’m remembering correctly, in the past, the thought process of that, this was over a year ago that we shot that, but it was turning into Beardsley was Pig #2 from this fairytale story got red pilled into Incel anti-vaxxer.

So kind of turned into this villain. So from our improv, the funniest choice to me was to make it so that way they were a character, that their point of view and their worldview couldn’t be right otherwise. I think that that was sending kind of a bad message. So it was sort of a problematic message. So the funniest choice to me in the moment was to be like, oh, it wasn’t actually this big horrible thing.

It was just a random accident from a small little dog, which was, I thought, a funny choice for a character like that. A long-winded answer to say, I don’t know. How did we come up with it? I don’t know. We got in there, we played, we just were trying to out silly each other in a very grounded way. And I think you can tell from that episode, I did not keep it together very well.

Temple of Geek: One of the things I was curious about, you kind of touched on the first season was a lot of folks that you had worked with either like improv on stage and/or Dropout. This season, we have some folks you haven’t necessarily worked with before. What was it like having kind of the first time one-on-one dynamic on camera?

Vic Michaelis: Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, there were some people that are new to the show that are deeply not new to improv or to me. We had Corin [Wells]. Corin and Echo [Kellum] were two of my absolute favorite people to perform with at UCB. We do ASSCAT together quite a bit over there. I was so happy that they were a game to come and play with us this season.

And then Bobby [Moynihan] is also somebody that I’ve been unbelievably fortunate to be performing with a lot again over at UCB. For him to be amiable to coming and doing this was, I mean, just a dream, truly a dream. Paul [F. Tompkins] is, again, new this season, but I’m very lucky to get to perform with him a lot of on Bang Bang. It’s nice to have some of those relationships.

But then we had people like Danielle [Pinnock] who I was truly just a fan of from Ghosts. Our casting director Jazzy was like, well, I’ll reach out. We know that she did comedy because she has a lot of these comedy videos online. At one point I was looking at one of her videos and Viola Davis had commented on one of her videos and was very funny and we’re like, yeah, it is very funny, Viola, you’re correct. It was unbelievable. She’s so funny.

So we were like, let’s reach out and see if she would be interested in doing the show. She was. Came in and just crushed. So to answer your question, it’s just a gamble, and we’ve been very, very fortunate that the people that are new and that I’ve never performed with have come in and just knocked it out of the park and been really amiable and really game.

I feel really grateful that the people that we brought on have been so wonderful and excited to be here. We’re just really game to try everything. We also have a lot of protection with, we do edit this show, we go for an hour, but we do edit and we have Tamar [Levine] and Paul [Robalino] and David [Cyr Kerns] on the other side of the camera.

Who are there to, it hasn’t happened yet, but if for whatever reason people were to get stuck, they could be like, oh, well, what about this thing? Or we can cut to a game. We just have so many tools at our disposal that we can keep basically anything going but also haven’t needed. Everybody has been so wonderful.

Success Has Gone To “Host Vic’s” Head in “Very Important People” Season 2

Temple of Geek: That’s fantastic. I have to talk to you about your host character. I love that you’ve said that you want this continuity with the character a little bit. Can you talk to me about weaving that into the episodes and also just sort of building the backstory of the host?

Vic Michaelis: I am a huge fan of pathetic characters just in general. They’re my favorite characters to watch. Characters that think they’re high status, but are actually very low status. Characters that think that they are too good for the position they’re in and have aspirations of greater things. I think for this show, something Tamar and I talked a lot about. First season, it was sort of that this character really just wanted, it honestly is just a trick for the improvised interview, first and foremost.

Not a trick, but it’s a tool that I use for the interview because we have these insane characters coming on. So in order to stay grounded, this is a character that really needs this interview to go well, because I want to be doing interviews on CNBC. So they are going to see this interview, and this is going to be my calling card to get to do that show. So it’s like this host has so much invested in this show going well, but at the same time thinks that they’re way too good for it and are way above this interview.

I think that that’s where a lot of this host character intricacies come from. They’re deeply insecure and are exactly where they should be. This show is probably even too good for the host character of Vic, but they don’t think that. It’s a very fun character, I think to poke fun at too, because they think that they’re very high status but aren’t. So, it was important to us to also make sure that the character was ripe for guests to build upon and poke fun at and things like that too.

For this next season, we won a Webby, People’s Choice Webby in between seasons. And so the Webby plays a big part in next season. We really, over the course of the season, played with this idea of this character finding success like the show did last season and that success immediately going into their head. They got a little bit more money for this next season and spent it in all the wrong places. Host Vic has a big problem with the PAs and the crew. Instead of hiring new PAs and new crew, they bought nicer chairs and a fish tank. That’s where Host Vic spent their money.

They now are fused with this show. They got everything they wanted, but not in the way that they wanted it. They found success, but not on a CNBC or a CBC or one of those big news platforms. They found it on the show that they really think that they’re too good for and now are stuck to it and are trying claws in to hold on to the little bit of success that they have found. That is sort of what is going on with Host Vic. So they are desperately trying to make this work.

Temple of Geek: That’s so great. They’re like, I’m too good for this show. Oh no, I did well.

Vic Michaelis: Yeah. There’s nothing that I love exploring more than somebody getting their dreams, but not at all in the way in which they wanted to get them. I just think it’s such a fun trope to play with, and I’m so grateful that we get to explore it here. Honestly, it was a bit of a surprise how much people grabbed onto it last season. Because it is a fun thing, where most people are interacting with this show in clips that they’re seeing online.

So it was important to us that there was stuff for those people and that it could live in these moments. I think it was some of the brilliance of Sam [Reich] and Paul and David and what they do with making sure that the clips are all really friendly for people that are accessing them online. Then there also is something more for people that are viewing the show in its entirety, like on proper Dropout.

Will Vic Michaelis Ever Make an Appearance in The Dome?

Temple of Geek: I know you’ve been on Rotating Heroes Podcasts before. When are we going to get you in the Dome?

Vic Michaelis: Oh man. An amazing question. I have played a lot of, not a lot. I had a home game that I played with Ruha Taslimi, Angela Giarratana, and Izzy Roland, that was DMd by my longtime improv coach, Alex Fernie. We played that game for a long time. I would say I don’t totally understand how D&D works. I spend a lot of time asking questions about the mechanics, and then it just kind of turned into us playing storytelling with improv, which was so fun.

I loved doing Rotating Heroes. I think Jasper is brilliant. Zac is obviously unbelievably funny, and Rashawn is one of my favorite people to play with. It was so, so fun. Nothing scares me more than D20. It’s become a show that I travel and I listen to it a lot. I’ll put it on as I’m doing stuff. It is so fun, especially when I’m not at home, just listening to my friends talking and having fun.

So I’ve listened now to a huge chunk of the D20 catalog just to, I don’t know, listen to my friends when I’m out of town. It’s been really lovely and it’s such a skill and it’s so talented. So the non-answer to your question is, I don’t know. I am such a fan, and the idea of performance D&D is very scary to me.

About “Very Important People”

“Comedians are given makeovers to be transformed into someone completely new, and then have a fully-improvised interview with host Vic Michaelis.” Check out the first season and second season premiere on Dropout now!