Broad City is coming to 4Music ShowTime and we were lucky enough to be invited to a preview of the show that has taken the States by storm.
The series follows the hilarious adventures of Abbi and Ilana, two twenty-something best friends living in New York City. They are broke, sometimes stoned and your new best friends.
Broad City was created by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer who are also the show’s stars. They met at an improv class in New York, Ilana said of their first meeting: “When I met Abbi I felt an instant contact. I thought Abbi was… just bad-ass…very smart and chilled. The voice of the show is really the middle of our two individual voices.”
The show began as a YouTube series, Abbi explained why: “It wouldn’t have happened any other way for us. For three years we were trying – and that’s not even a long time to try to be an actor – but we were like, we’re not getting cast in things…I was like Fuck this I’m good. Let’s just do this.” Ilana puts their success down to their audience: “During the web series we were never viral. It was always just the quality of the viewers. We just started to get a response from our community – the comedy community in New York – and that was enough to make us feel like it was something good and relatable and that we should keep making them.”
One member of the New York comedy community who liked the web series was Amy Poehler. The Parks and Rec star wanted to be in the Broad City finale and went on to be the executive producer of the TV show. On the difference between a web series and a TV show Ilana noted that: “There are way more characters and plotlines now, where there used to just be a little vignette of a story. Now there’s so much more detail.” Abbi added: “Deciding on the level of absurdity to take it is a challenge. We had a fantastical dream sequence in a webisode that ended with waking up in a rush, and then it turns out to be another dream…We couldn’t do that for 21 minutes – we couldn’t even do that for a whole act.”
“Broad City in real life gave us so much drive and purpose that these characters are much more aimless than we were.” Ilana says, “Broad city is like the New-York-slash-life-agitation of ‘Ugh, God I just want to be there already!’ Whether that’s existential or literal, I relate to that agitation.”
We certainly do!
Broad City airs on Monday 6th July on 4Music.
