When you break up, who gets to keep the cat? In Aubrey Plaza's 'Kevin,' nobody does

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The co-creators of the new Prime Video series “Kevin” tried to make the show “as personal as possible,” says Joe Wengert, explaining that he and Aubrey Plaza looked back to the end of their relationship nearly two decades ago for inspiration.Then, Wengert says, they focused on “the emotional story and investing in the inner lives” of the main characters.

(Plaza’s production partner, Dan Murphy, was a third co-creator.)And, Plaza adds, they strived to give the show a real “groundedness” in its specific New York neighborhood — Astoria, Queens, where she and Wengert lived together — while also “infusing some of my film nerdiness and love of New York films.” There’s even a rooftop scene that’s a homage to Al Pacino’s first leading film role, in “The Panic in Needle Park.”OK, so all of that’s totally true, but “Kevin” is mostly a silly, raunchy animated series with a star-studded comedy cast about talking animals and their escapades in a life generally free of human owners.The show opens with a couple, Dan (Mike Mitchell) and Dana (Plaza), breaking up and their cat, Kevin (Jason Schwartzman), deciding he’s done with both humans and will find his own way in the world.Television Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and supervising producer Lisa Hanawalt discuss how the show time-jumps between moments from the 1950s to 2020s, including the COVID-19 pandemic.“Joe and I were talking and realized we both weirdly wanted to do a cat comedy, and he had this idea and I loved it,” Plaza says, explaining that when they broke up, Kevin and another cat, Howard, passively went with Wengert.

(Howard died relatively young, but, spoiler alert, Plaza says a cat named Howard will make an appearance as a tribute.)“Joe was then doing a lot of comedy about being a single guy with cats.”Wengert, who serves as showrunner, says the breakup was “a significant momen...