Zach Woods is 'jealous' of Tom Power's job — so he turned himself into a puppet talk show host

Q35:04Zach Woods: Public radio, The Office, and making fun of yourself

You may know Zach Woods as Gabe Lewis in The Office or Jared Dunn in Silicon Valley, but the actor has another love outside of comedy: public radio.

"I'm really jealous of your job," Woods tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "Perhaps I'm romanticizing it, but to be able to be professionally fascinated by the world … it just seems really interesting."

Woods is now living out his dream on In the Know, a new TV show that follows the staff of a public radio talk show. Woods stars as Lauren Caspian, NPR's third most popular host — though perhaps its most insufferable. His character asks rude and self-centred questions to celebrities such as Mike Tyson, Jonathan van Ness and Tegan and Sara. 

Though In the Know is a scripted show, Caspian's interviews are not. Woods preps questions for the guests, just like a real public radio show host. His interviewees answer honestly and without a script, just as if they were on Q or NPR's Fresh Air.

"Sometimes I would start to resent the comedic aspects of the show," Woods says. "I would just want to be able to ask more earnest follow-up questions."

In the Know's characters are all stop-motion puppets (think Wallace and Gromit). But once again, the celebrities are the exception: they're live action.

"If we can get people into the uncanny valley of talking at length to a puppet who is an NPR host, the strangeness of that will hopefully lure them away from their well-trodden talking points into more interesting turf," Woods says.

WATCH | Official trailer for In the Know:

This tactic worked so well that there will be a companion podcast to In the Know, so viewers can hear longer segments with the show's guests. Now, Woods and his co-creators, Mike Judge (King of the Hill, Beavis and Butt-Head) and Brandon Gardner, are truly making a radio show.

But the creators may have to deal with something they heard about from several public radio employees: hate mail from listeners. 

"We also learned about the venomous voicemails they would get if someone misused a preposition or had too much vocal fry," Wood says. "Because these people donate, like, $3 a month [to NPR], they feel entitled to leave these tongue-lashings on the voicemail."

Power confirms this. He describes a handwritten letter from a listener who disapproved of his Newfoundland accent when he said the word "tour."

The letter said: "While it's nice to see a Newfoundlander with a job, can someone let Power know that there's two syllables in tour? It's too-er."

In the Know may be about a public radio show, but it analyzes the "storm that is raging in the centre of your chest" — whether that be listeners' mean comments or Caspian's own liberal hypocrisy — and why this comes out instead of humanity's "beautiful stuff."

"That's something we really tried to steep ourselves in with this show," Woods says. "Remembering that any obnoxious behaviour is usually just a byproduct of some feeling of inadequacy or some woundedness."

The full interview with Zach Woods is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Zach Woods produced by Lise Hosein.