In Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s eyes, creatives have only just scratched the surface of what types of stories can be told in the animated television space.
As the creator of the adult tragicomedy BoJack Horseman, Bob-Waksberg’s no stranger to subverting expectations when it comes to animation and humor. Since the critically acclaimed show ended in 2020, the writer and comedian has experienced some major life changes — chief among them becoming a father of two — that, at least partly, influenced his latest Netflix offering, Long Story Short.
“I find myself thinking about family a lot more than I was when I was making BoJack Horseman and thinking a lot about what I received from my parents and what I want to pass on to my children — what do I feel like I can’t help but pass on to my children?” Bob-Waksberg tells THR.
Rather than simply opine, the showrunner opted to make “something productive” of his ponderings, infusing them into the series, which centers on a middle-class Jewish family: the Schwooper siblings and their parents, social worker Naomi Schwartz (voiced by Lisa Edelstein) and math professor Elliot Cooper (Paul Reiser), who combined their last names to create the children’s unique surname. Ben Feldman voices the eldest son, Avi; Abbi Jacobson plays the middle child, Shira; and Max Greenfield is the voice of the youngest of the bunch, Yoshi.
