Fred Armisen has been a cast member of Saturday Night Live since 2002, making him the second-longest-running current performer on the show, behind Seth Meyers. Before joining the SNL cast, Armisen had a career as rock drummer in the band Trenchmouth, and his talents for music and comedy come together in his new IFC show Portlandia, which premieres January 21, 2011, at 10:30 p.m. EST. Portlandia finds Armisen teaming up with former Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein for a series of sketches set in Portland, Oregon, gently satirizing the laid-back, hyper-liberal culture of the Pacific Northwest city. I got a chance to chat with Armisen before the show’s premiere to get his take on this latest project.
How did you and Carrie Brownstein first start collaborating?
I used to just visit her in Portland, and we were just friendly. I couldn’t figure out some activities for us to do. It was just out of nowhere like, “Why don’t we make some videos?” It was like a version of playing instruments together. I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t want to form a band or anything. So I was like, “Well, I do comedy. Maybe we’ll just make some videos just for fun, for the hell of it.” And I always found her to be really funny. I just thought it would be interesting, and then it just happened. And then we just would make one, would have it edited and then would put it up online, and before I knew it we had a bunch of them put together. It was kind of nice -- we didn’t have any pressure from anybody to make it really funny or snappy or anything.
When did it go from a casual online thing into becoming a TV show?
Last year. It was just a thing of, we had so many episodes, but they were very sporadic. So it was a good way to kind of give it some discipline. It’s like a natural thing of, “Okay, what can we do with it now?” And it wasn’t like, “It’s gotta be a show.” It was more like, “Oh, let’s see if we can make it into a show. Let’s see what happens.” And then a lot of things fell into place around it, so we got this director who I really like, who I’ve worked with before, and this other writer, Allison Silverman, and before I knew it we were doing it.
Did you ever consider taking this material over to Saturday Night Live?
It just is kind of like -- it was different than SNL. And because it’s with Carrie, who’s not in the cast. It was very specific to that. Everything about it was meant for this. The language is a little different, because there’s no live audience, so it’s a little more contained, in a way. I’m not conscious of it, but I’m sure there are elements of stuff that I’ve done on SNL.
What makes Portland especially ripe for comedy and satire?
I think there’s just something that’s very utopian and friendly about it. It’s the city that -- from what I saw; I haven’t experienced enough to know the bad parts of it -- everything seems to work really well, and they have this extensive tram system, there’s bicycles everywhere. It’s like this happy little place. I can’t even describe it. It’s little, but it’s this happy city. I think when things are positive like that I just always want to be a part of it. And I feel like, “Well, what can I do with that?” There’s something about positivity sometimes that just -- we’re not really making fun of it. We’re just kind of embracing it a little bit.
Has the response from Portlanders been positive?
Yeah, absolutely. Also, our crew and everyone, they were all from Portland, and I can tell just from them that they were supportive. I could tell that they wanted to be part of it. And also, everywhere we shot, people were just so open. It was crazy. No one said, “Hey, wait a minute, what are you doing?” Even the feminist bookstore -- that is a real place. And we didn’t touch the set. There’s signs up saying, “Don’t be ageist.” There’s so many rules everywhere. It’s just such a specific kind of store. And they were so friendly to us. I walked in in this ridiculous wig, and Carrie’s got this wig, and of all people, you would expect them to say, “Hey, what are you doing?” and they loved it. It was just such an open place.
