FAIR PLAY

THE TRIO BEHIND WORKAHOLICS DISCUSS COMEDY CENTRAL’S HOTTEST SHOW. BY MAXWELL WILLIAMS. PHOTOGRAPHED BY SHANE MCCAULEY

Adam DeVine and Blake Anderson are wearing novelty bikini T-shirts and discussing their life-threatening injuries on Muscle Beach in Venice. At a party three years ago, Anderson leaped off a roof and fractured his spine. But DeVine has him beat: A cement truck hit him when he was 10, sending him into a weeks-long coma. Then last season, while shooting a basketball scene for the show, DeVine tore an ACL. “I’m unscathed, man,” chimes in Anders “Ders” Holm, the third member of the comedy trio, whose insanely popular show is in the middle of its fifth season on Comedy Central. “But I’m waiting for my day to come.” Anderson, the one with the curly red hair, raises his eyebrows. “That’s some Final Destination shit,” he says with a laconic California drawl.

What made Workaholics into a huge success is how the three heroes feed off of each other, and even when the topic is near-death, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. In real life, they are buddies to the end. On the show, they are three guys who bumble, bungle, and party their way through a grab bag of Kafkaesque situations and ribald gags, between the Rancho Cucamonga party house they live in and the single cubicle they share at a call center (though you never see them doing any actual work).

In reality, they are constantly hustling. Today, their PR person is shuttling them from one place to the next. Our interview is done in between taking selfies with superfans and talking down an Austrian muscleman who is trying to get Holm to wrestle with him. “See that moving building?” says Anderson, pointing at a muscle-bound iron pumper easily curling what looks to be about 200 pounds. “That’s a human.” Perhaps Holm’s comeuppance is sooner than we thought. But the shirtless Austrian turns out to be

just another fan, having seen the show in his homeland—Workaholics is beamed into nearly 30 countries at this point.

As the guys are shuttled to a nearby photo studio to finish up their shoot, they discuss their origin story: Anderson and DeVine were in the same improv class at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, and then DeVine moved to L.A., where he met Holm at the Second City improv school. While hanging out one night, DeVine showed the YouTube videos he’d been making to Holm and Workaholics director Kyle Newacheck, which turned into a “video-off”; talk quickly turned to collaborating. “We were like, ‘We’re going to make a video once a week, every week,’” says DeVine. “And the first four came out hot,” says Anderson, who shortly thereafter moved to L.A. to join the group, then called Mail Order Comedy.

Comedy Central noticed these YouTube videos and signed them on. Now, five seasons later, the budgets are bigger and they no longer actually live in the Rancho Cucamonga house, but the setting still works. They credit their success to being completely different, but somehow fitting into a comedy archetype.

“I’m the dad, Blake’s the mom, Adam’s the kid, and Kyle’s the weird uncle,” says Holm.

“I think Ders brings the—what is the brain in Ninja Turtles?—Krang, because Ders was a writer first. He was always like, ‘I don’t even know if I want to act,’” says DeVine. “I don’t even know if I want to be in this group,” deadpans Holm.

“Adam is just our shotgun blast,” says Anderson. “He is like the fucking grenade you roll into the battle. He’s got stories, he’s got jokes, he’s just a naturally funny dude. When you put Adam out there as the face, people are drawn.”

DeVine disagrees, pointing out that when he met Anderson, he felt he was the funniest person he’d ever met. “We’ll look at the same thing, and he’ll look at it differently than me, which is good on any comedy team, because the opposite side of the joke might be funnier. Also, he wears cool skateboard clothes, so he really ups the fashion game for our crew.”

As we wrap up, the guys divulge that they’re in the middle of expanding their comedy to the big screen. Hoping to shoot this year, the film will, without a doubt, be a comedic success. “We’ve been writing it and rewriting it just trying to zero in on that gold,” says DeVine. “But we got Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Scott Rudin to help us produce it, so we’ve got a good squad behind us.” And before that silverscreen adventure comes together, DeVine has May’s Pitch Perfect 2 to look forward to, where he appears opposite Rebel Wilson as Barden University’s new campus security officer.

The guys might be the voice of a new generation of comedy, absurd and gross and referential, but they’re also sweet, taking a moment to chat with each of their fans. So the success? It couldn’t have happened to a better team. Now if they would just stop getting injured....