How did you decide it was time to do another musical episode?

We had such a good time doing The Nightman Cometh, and every year since then we’ve been talking about doing another musical episode, or an episode with musical elements. I always thought it would come in the form of some kind of Nightman Cometh sequel or a prequel, possibly. We talk about it every year, and it just never quite materialized. This was interesting because the idea for the episode came first, and it was such an insane idea.

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What was that first version of the idea?

It was an episode where the gang turns black, basically. And we sort of had this idea that it would kind of be a Wizard of Oz thing, and we realized that had been done a number of times in the past – a lot of sitcoms have done Wizard of Oz-type episodes. But we’ve always done our own version of sitcom tropes in the past, so we weren’t totally put out by that. It occurred to us that maybe it should be a musical, but we didn’t do that, we wrote the episode at first as a straight episode, and we realized that a lot of the subject matter in that episode in particular was difficult – we’re essentially tackling the idea of what it’s like to be black in America. But we also recognize that we’re three white dudes, and it’s a little sketchy to have an opinion about what it’s like to be black in America when you’re just a bunch of white guys. Although we do have black writers, the show is still ultimately our show, and the characters are all white. So we knew there had to be some kind of an angle – this would be a lot more fun, and a lot more digestible, if we turned it into a musical.

Were there black writers in the room when the story was broken?

Absolutely. One of our assistants – we have three assistants on the show, and two of the three are also writers. And one of them is black, and I think this year, he was the only one in the room. He was generally in the room the entire time, because we don’t mind pushing boundaries, but it’s never our intention to be insensitive or offensive.

The way the show is described often is “Wow, these guys don’t care.” But that’s not true. I don’t think the show would work if it were truly hateful. It’s one thing for the characters to be misinformed, ignorant or bigoted. It’s another thing for the show to be misinformed, ignorant or bigoted. We can only do so much to educate ourselves about what it’s like to be a black person in America, and eventually you have to talk to someone who has actually been there. We try not to shy away from jokes that might make people uncomfortable, but never at the expense of being sensitive to people’s real life experience.

Over the course of the show, what do you think is the worst thing Dennis has ever done?

I’d say the worst plan he ever hatched – it’s tough to remember, 12 seasons in –certainly, when he talks about “the implication” in season six. That’s about as dark as it gets. He never did it, but he tried. In terms of what he’s actually done, though? I might have to come back to that one.

Has anyone ever pitched something you had to shut down in the room for going too far?

Generally speaking, nothing is going too far unless it doesn’t make us laugh. I remember early on, myself, Rob and Charlie wrote everything. We didn’t start hiring writers until the third season, but by that time we’d had two seasons on the air, and the show had started to accumulate a cult following. So we had a bunch of young writers that were coming and pitching us ideas, and we thought, “Wow, is this what people think our show is?” I remember a lot of it being really gross sexual jokes that were pitched to us, like, “Hey, everybody in the gang gets Aids.”

Oh ...

Right, but once you have Aids, you always have Aids. So you want us to do an episode where the characters have Aids, and then they just don’t have Aids the next episode? It’s just stuff where it doesn’t make any sense or it’s gross because, “Oh, that would be gross. A condom falls in someone’s mouth!” That’s just not funny to me. What’s funny to me is when a character wants something and the audience can relate to that desire, whatever it is. To me, when things go too far, it’s when I don’t know why the character’s doing what they’re doing. It’s not as much about the material or the subject matter, and more about when comedies have characters doing things that don’t make fucking sense. To me, that’s when it goes too far, when somebody puts their dick in something for reasons I can’t understand.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I don’t think the show would work if it were truly hateful.’ Photograph: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

Is there anyone from the show’s past you’ve wanted to bring back?

I kind of regret killing Alanna Ubach’s character Roxie in season seven. She was just so funny, and it was such a funny character. I know the fans responded to her too, but just from our perspective there’s a part of me that wishes we hadn’t killed her. I’m sure we could discover that she’s alive, and it wouldn’t be that far outside the realm of possibility. There’s also a lot of times I actually regret killing Dennis and Dee’s mom in season two, because that was a really funny character. And I find the longer we go on, the more we have a desire to do at least a few episodes here and there that feel grounded in the emotional reality of the characters, and when you want to do that it’s nice to have family members to draw on.

We get a lot of details or hints about different parts of the gang’s lives. Is there a part of their lives you’d want to do a flashback episode for?

Another episode that’s been on the writer’s board every single year, and this is another thing we get a lot of requests for, is a lot of people are like, “You should do an episode where we see how you guys got the bar.” And I would really like to do an episode – and we’ve pitched or broken an episode that showed them at 21 years old and how they bought the bar. But the thing that’s prevented us from doing that is that we tend to bristle a little bit at things where we have to ... I’m 40 years old now, so for me to play 21 would just kind of be weird. You can do it, but we’re just like, “Are we really going to do a whole episode where we try to make ourselves look 21 years old?” I would actually personally be OK with it, but I think Rob and Charlie don’t like the idea of us trying to play 21.