Funny or Die: Adam DeVine talks Norelco webseries

Writer-actor-comic Adam DeVine is already at work prepping the next seasons of Comedy Central’s Workaholics. The network has ordered his other series, Adam DeVine’s House Party for the fall, and he cameod in Arrested Development. Between all of that, DeVine found time to do a web series… selling Norelco shavers?

That’s right: The company approached the actor with a pitch, he says: They’d partner with DeVine and Funny or Die for a series of “funny little videos” about the highs and lows of body hair. DeVine said yes — giving us “Special Unit’s Unit” earlier this month, with two more videos to follow.

The newest one is called “Dude House.” DeVine plays a dude. Shaving (and humor!) is involved. Watch the video, and read our chat with the actor about the ins and outs of his Norelco partnership, below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I wanted to hear about how this whole thing came together.

ADAM DeVINE: It was cool: Evidently, Norelco thinks I look like a dude who really takes good care of his chest, back, and ball sack. They’re like, “That guy really does a good job trimming.” Luckily they were right and Funny or Die, I really respect them. I think they’re a great website and put out a lot of great stuff.

How’d you come up each of the three videos — was it one big brainstorming session?

I’m pretty busy working on my shows right now. I didn’t end up writing these, but like I said, Funny or Die, they’re so good that when they came to me, we sort of brainstormed a bunch of ideas and I thought playing these big crazy characters with weird facial air and weird body-grooming techniques would probably be pretty funny. And then I was like, “It’d be cool if we did some sort of reality TV show spoof — but every reality show is about taking care of your body hair.” I thought it’d be fun and then Funny or Die went off and wrote the scripts and came back to me and I punched them up a little bit. They were already great. They actually let me go off and do whatever I wanted to do, as far as improv and all that stuff goes — which is good. Using words that I can’t change is an issue. I don’t know if I could be in a Kevin Smith film.

It’s kind of funny to me that Norelco was behind this, that they wanted to be a part of it. It’s a weird branded thing for them, I thought. Was it weird on your end, to be approached like, “We want you to be a spokesperson”?

Yeah, just because I’ve never been a spokesperson and I’m like, “Am I going to have to go to weird conventions?” But they were like, “No, it’s not like that at all. You can just do different fun characters and they’ll just be funny little videos involving these shavers.” I’m like, “Let’s do it!”

Have they seen all three videos? What was their feedback?

As far as I know, they love them — they’re pretty stoked about them. I think that’s kind of who they’re trying to reach is the audience that watches Workaholics and watches my stand-up and that kind of stuff. And I think that’s a good way to reach people now is by taking someone that they like and that they think is funny and incorporate a product into what they do — and I think it’s an easier pill for younger people to swallow than a straight-up commercial just like, “Please buy our shaver!”

Are you ready to be recognized on the street as the Norelco Guy? People are going to come up to you and be like, “Hey! You convinced me to buy a shaver!”

Yes, and I’ll demand to see their pubes every single time. I’ll be like, “What’s going on down there?”

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