Strangers with Candy seems too, well, strange to have ever existed. But somehow the show's creators—Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert—wrung three aggressively weird and hilarious seasons and a movie out of a parody of finger-wagging after-school specials, led by Sedaris's self-described former "junkie whore" Jerri Blank, who repeats high school at age 46. Two decades later, we talked to the (still very odd) friends about what they took away from their stunted, depraved heroine.

In 1988, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert met at Chicago improv studio Second City. Six years later, Sedaris and Dinello persuaded Colbert to join them in New York to collaborate on Comedy Central sketch show Exit 57.

Paul Dinello (art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck—pronounced the same way as "King Joffrey"): Stephen stayed at a monastery because he had a wife and one child in Chicago.

Stephen Colbert (history teacher Chuck Noblet): I was living at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in Chelsea. In the summertime, they didn't have students and you could rent a room. I had hot running water, and I don't mind a religious environment. And it was just super-cheap.

Amy Sedaris (former "junkie whore" Jerri Blank): We were always dragging [Colbert] into stuff.

Colbert: Paul would say, "Hey, do you want to do a show?" It'd be at Stella or Luna. I would say, "Great, yeah." He'd say, "It's tonight." "Paul, it's four o'clock. The show starts at eight." He's like, "Yeah, but we're professional comedy writers. We should be able to come up with something." And I'm like, "From nothing?!" It happened all the time.

The acclaimed 'Exit 57' aired for 12 episodes, before Comedy Central unceremoniously dropped it.

Dinello: Amy was going to go pitch something else to Comedy Central, but Stephen and I were working on something else.

Colbert: Mysteries of the Insane Unknown.

Dinello: It was about guys who would ask, "Are the pyramids actually bomb shelters built by aliens 2,000 years ago?"

Colbert: Comedy Central really liked it. They literally said the words, "Let's cut you guys a check." I'm like, "Fuck yes!" Because we were super unemployed.

Sedaris: I had the idea of doing something based on after-school specials. I grew up with them and they were just so queer—they always told us how we didn't want to be. It's the same with The Brady Bunch—when we'd watch that, it was like, Thank God my parents aren't like that.

Dinello: They're so desperate to teach kids a lesson, but they're the last place an adolescent would go for that.

Colbert: Paul said, "Are you available to come over tonight? Amy is pitching something to Comedy Central tomorrow and wants our help." He explained the idea to me, and I said, "Um, I'm happy to help, but you realize they're going to do her show, not ours? That's a better idea."