ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with musician and actor Vince Staples about the Netflix series The Vince Staples Show. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
“Who’s Vince Staples? Well, that’s a tricky question,” reads the series‘ synopsis. “He’s kind of famous, but he’s not. He’s kind of rich, but he’s not. He’s also kind of a criminal. But he’s…not? Follow him on his daily adventures, where anything that can go wrong usually does. From the mind of Vince Staples and executive produced by Kenya Barris comes a limited series of satirical tales created by Staples, Ian Edelman, and Maurice Williams.”
Tyler Treese: I wanted to ask you about the format. You’re playing yourself, and you’re just trying to go through your day, but you just get sucked into these surreal, ridiculous situations. It’s very much like Curb Your Enthusiasm in that way. Was that always the format that you had in mind, or how did it develop?
Vince Staples: Yeah, that was always the format that you have in mind. But when you’re scaling things up to meet the time of a 30-minute sitcom, you want to find ways to expound these ideas while also making the ideas bigger. So we really spent a lot of time figuring out the composition of our shots, figuring out how we wanted to drive the narrative engine, what we wanted to show, what we wanted to say … We really spent a lot of time thinking about the ways to kind of keep the idea as small as possible while making sure it still had legs and could kind of live in its own space.
What really impressed me was that some of the biggest laughs for me came from the smallest details, like the little audio announcements that you’d hear in the background. It’s very easy to miss some of these jokes. How was it going over and adding in all these small touches that really make the show great?
I think it’s really in preparation from the starting point. I knew we wanted layers to the show. I knew we wanted layers to the jokes. A lot of the time, we would get notes and be like, “Oh, this sounds great. We love the episode, but can you tell us where the jokes are?” And it’s like, “Oh, the jokes aren’t necessarily there yet in this specific section because the jokes are visual.” We just had so much trust and so much support from the network in and of itself just to allow us the leniency to put those things in later.
But it really comes with preparation. You have to be able to communicate what you want to create from the ground level. We were able to do that, I think, in a really unique manner. Because in every episode, there are small things going on that are really the punchlines, but they’re kind of in the background.
You’re known for being very quick-witted. Was there much improv while filming the show?
Near zero, to be honest. When I think about it, pretty much most of it — if not all of it — was the script. But a lot of that has to do with me writing it myself. I feel like a lot of the other actors, of course, made informed decisions based on the situations at hand. There are some riffs here and there, but everyone was just so good, and their timing was just so perfect that I couldn’t even point out to you what felt like it left the page because the execution of it was just so spot-on to what I intended it to be, that it just felt like it was directly from the script, even if something was slightly altered.
We see a lot of Pokémon merch in the Episode 5 flashback in your room. Who was your favorite starter Pokémon?
Uh, I don’t know. I see, some days you want to go Squirtle, right? Then, some days, you want to go Pikachu, but it’s never Bulbasaur, because that’s just weird, you know? That’s just weird.
Yeah, it’s weird. I’m feeling you there.
We never get there. [Laughs].
The Rick Ross cameo was great. How did you get him involved?
Just within the storyline that, coming out of that meeting, I wanted to have someone there who contrasted Vince a lot in their disposition or their perception, as far as how the world viewed them, but had the business acumen that Vince was looking to gain. So I feel like he was the perfect person for that moment because even though Rick Ross is a hyper-successful musician, a lot of that success is just attributed to his amazing music career and not really his wise business decisions. So him being there to give Vince that information was very integral to the storyline.
I’m a big fan of My Hero Academia. Do you still think Deku’s a hoe?
Yeah, I had to stop watching. It was too much crying. Too much just ungratefulness. When All-Might got skinny, I turned that shit off. But I’m going pick it up again.