‘Bajillion Dollar Propertie$’ is a Breakthrough for Seeso and Showrunner Kulap Vilaysack

Kulap Vilaysack has been working in and around TV for the last decade, recurring as a nurse on Children’s Hospital, getting one-off guest spots on network comedies. She didn’t have a single TV writing credit when she started pitching a reality-show parody to cable and streaming networks.

This is usually where a TV executive will say he loves the concept but would really like to see the show creator paired with a more experienced showrunner to steer the writers’ room, show the show creator the ropes, and help her build a show from scratch. In Vilaysack’s case, the TV executive — Reno 911! co-creator Tom Lennon — put her in charge.

“Tom Lennon said, ‘You’re going to showrun this.’ Him giving me that permission and that certainty has changed my life,” Vilaysack said in an extensive interview with Decider.

It’s easy to say that the stakes were low — an eight-episode show with a modest budget and an unknown cast on a start-up network — but the result is a stunning proof of concept. Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ is one of the best new shows of the 2015-16 TV season. Bajillion‘s characters are hyper-specific and hyper-real, and the jokes land in exactly the right place.

Vilysack has spent years working in the Upright Citizens Brigade improv theater, which is becoming something like a 21st-century film school for comedy performers, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that she’s an experienced writer, producer and actor. With Bajillion premiering this week onNBCUniversal’s SVOD start-up Seeso — the pilot is available on YouTube but you’ll have to subscribe to see more — we sat down with Vilaysack to talk about the show and how her UCB experience prepared her to make it.

How did you develop a show for Seeso when there weren’t any shows to look at for a sense of the network’s comedy brand?

It’s a couple of things. We had this idea for the show and they were buying our idea, so they knew our aesthetic. We were setting out to make the show that we sold. The other thing is that we were very impressed with what the network was already doing — picking up Monty Python and converting it to HD, their general philosophy.

Scott Aukerman, one of your executive producers, was the creator of Comedy Bang! Bang! on IFC. Did Evan Shapiro at Seeso develop that show when he was at IFC?

Yeah, Evan green-lit that show at IFC, so Scott knew him from there.

For the record, you and Scott Aukerman are married.

Totally married.

How did Seeso describe to you what the network was going to be?

They described it as like a record shop — like a highly curated record shop. They wouldn’t be trying to get everybody. They wanted tastemakers and comedy-influencers to be curators of comedy. I know it sounds hokey, but they wanted a more artisanal approach to comedy.

Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ is essentially a parody of the Million Dollar Listing reality show. Was that the idea?

We look at the show as a parody of that the way Reno 911! was a parody of Cops, which is that it was set in that world and where you begin but Reno was so much more than a parody of Cops. I thought that real estate world world — high-stress, high-stakes — and that style would lend itself to comedy. Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant, the geniuses behind Reno 911!, are executive producers on our show, and I learned a lot from them.

Did you start with archetypes, or did you have particular actors you were building characters around?

I started with the characters and the relationships, and then we did auditions for the main cast. The only person I really had in mind for a role was Paul F. Tompkins.

He’s really funny on the show. Is that beard fake, or did Tompkins grow it out for the show?

It’s fake. It’s a good fake, right?

Did you shoot the whole season in a block, or were you writing at the same time?

Our main stories were workplace stories, and then we had to shoot the real estate stories anytime they would fit.

So whenever you could get a house to shoot in, that’s the day you would shoot it?

Yeah, we had to find houses, and then we were shooting multiple stories in the same house and making it look like different houses.

Were those all location-scouted houses, or did some of those houses belong to people you know?

They were all from location scouting, and we got some fantastic houses. David Lyons was the location scout and did an amazing job.

Do you watch a lot of reality TV?

Oh, yeah. I love HGTV. I really like House Hunters, and then I discovered Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles and New York. It’s Bravo doing what Bravo does best, which is creating drama and soap opera elements.

Walk me through the archetypes. You’ve got Victoria as sort of the hot girl.

She’s like Josh Altman from Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles in a pair of Louboutins. She the killer. She’s the machine, the bully with daddy issues.

Baxter and Andrew are the partners — one gay and one straight.

We called them The Bros. They are highly co-dependent. They live together in a two-bedroom, but they sleep in the same room and use the other room for their clothes. They’re the party boys who make a lot of money and spend more money than they make. They’re very irresponsible.

I like Drew Tarver who plays one of the two partner guys. He reminds me of Roger Bart with that rubber face and the insecurity. If you told me one person from the show would be a breakout star in five years, I would guess him.

He’s an amazing improviser. He does multiple shows a week at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles and is an adorable person too.

You have some star wattage in your guests — Adam Scott, Jason Mantzoukas, Gillian Jacobs.

Scott Aukerman and I have been in the alternative comedy community for years and have built up a lot of friendships with people. We knew we could lean on those friendships and that those people would want to be a part of the show.

When I talked to Paul Rust for Love, which I know you were on for a couple of episodes, I asked how much of the scene with the friends in his apartment was casting and how much was people he knew, he said it was all his friends. Is that how your world works?

Yes. We did auditions for our main cast, but we reached out personally for a lot of the guest actors and casting is dealing mostly with the business part of it. It was the same for Paul Rust with me on Love. He texted me about doing the show, and then our business people talked. It’s being a part of this supportive, super talented community.

People are doing a lot of different things. Someone like Lauren Lapkus will do a podcast, then a TV show, then a $200 million movie, and then a live improv show for an audience of a hundred people.

She’s going on tour with Scott for Comedy Bang! Bang! in May that has multiple sold-out dates.

How did the comedy world get to the point where you’re working on so many different scales at the same time?

You put in an hour or two hours for a podcast episode that’s beamed to all these people, and you’re inside their head in this really intimate way. With videos, you’re uploading your work in a way you couldn’t do 10 or 15 years ago. And you’re going on auditions. I think the discipline of constantly putting material out leads to a lot of opportunity.

Twenty years ago, a lot of film actors wouldn’t do TV shows. Now big film actors will do Funny or Die sketches. There’s no penalty for working in a smaller medium as long as it’s good.

There’s not much penalty, period. I would love to be in an awful film. I would love to be in an Adam Sandler film. If a podcast doesn’t work, nobody cares. Do another one.

You have worked in a lot of different capacities on different projects. Does that come from getting asked to do specific things? How does that happen for you?

My initial goal was to just be an actor. My resume is primarily based on relationships. Rob Corddry put me in Childrens Hospital because he knew me from UCB. If you do well, you get asked back or get asked to do a new thing. And sometimes the phone doesn’t ring as much, so I made videos and the podcast came along and was something that I could do every week.

UCB trains you to perform improv on stage, but is it before more like a film school that teaches you directing, producing, etc.? Every UCB person I talk to says it’s where there learned to write and direct and be everything else on a project.

UCB creates community. I have friends who are straight actors and I see them struggle, and it seems harder not to have a community. My friend June Diane Raphael started the UCB branch of volunteering called The Corps. That’s how deep the place goes. We hang out all the time, so let’s do some good. Let’s go and work at the L.A. Food Bank. It creates a place where people can thrive. It’s tough to survive on improv, so you have to learn how to do other things. You learn how to write. You learn video. It has become a kind of a comedy university.

Is there something in the education and the way UCB does things that says it’s not a place for ego or for taking credit for things?

There’s ego. There’s always ego. The inherent nature of working together is that you have to work together. You have to listen. It’s the nature of the method.