The IFC comedy series Brockmire originally started life as a viral short on Funny Or Die, and has since gone on to follow Jim Brockmire (Hank Azaria, who created the character and executive produces the series), the famed major league baseball announcer who suffered an embarrassing and very public meltdown live on the air, as he tries to reclaim his career and love life in a small American town. As he calls games for the Morristown Frackers, Brockmire has to figure out how best to navigate his relationships with Jules (Amanda Peet), the strong-willed owner of the team, and Charles (Tyrel Jackson Williams), the enthusiastic intern who really doesn’t know much about the game of baseball.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor Hank Azaria talked about how reassuring it is to already have a second season pick-up, how Brockmire went from Funny or Die to IFC, how much the character evolved, shooting awkward sex scenes, what he’s most looking forward to with Season 2, and how many seasons the see the series going. He also talked about what it’s meant to him to have been a part of The Simpsons for nearly three decades now, and how much he’s learned, as a result.

Collider: First of all, congrats on the Season 2 pick-up! Having been in the business as long as you have, how nice of a feeling is it to have a network stand behind you like that?

HANK AZARIA: It’s quite a rare thing. Although, it happened on Huff. They announced our Season 2 pick-up before we premiered, or as we premiered, but Huff was so difficult to make that it was almost like, “Guys, are you sure? It’s really hard!” This is hard to make, too, but in a much more fun way.

How did Brockmire evolve from Funny or Die to IFC? Had you been looking for a bigger platform to continue with this character?

AZARIA: I was looking for any platform to continue with this character. I always thought, from the time that I was a teenager and through my 20s, 30s and 40s, that this character might lend itself as the center of a comedy, but figuring out how took me a long time, ruminating on it. Just even getting to the short phase, eight or nine years ago, I felt like I had cracked something. And then, it was really when Joel Church-Cooper and Tim Kirkby got involved that it got solved, as more of a long-form piece. It was their sensibility combined with mine that made it something beyond just a sketch.

You’ve said that this was an idea you’ve had in your head, since you were a teenager. Have you ever had another character stick with you for that long?

AZARIA: Not quite that long, no. I have to give my agent credit, too. About ten years ago, I walked into my agent’s office saying, “Guys, I sort of need to restart. I have a bunch of characters that I feel like I want to play, comedically, and that I’ve been kicking around, in one way or another, for awhile. But I’m not on SNL, nor am I going to be.” And they were like, “Well, Funny or Die exists now.” That was a novel idea, ten years ago. Now, it’s more the norm than not. I remember my agent saying, “Do one of these characters there, and if it’s popular, maybe it can develop into something.” I met with Mike Farah, who was the head of production at Funny or Die and now he’s the CEO. For Mike, I auditioned seven or eight different characters that I had, and he singled out Brockmire as something that would be fun to develop into a short, so that’s what we did.

How has Jim Brockmire, his background and his story most changed, throughout the course of doing the short and then doing the TV series, or is he pretty much the same guy you always saw him as?

AZARIA: He’s pretty much the same guy. By the time I walked into Mike Farah’s office at Funny or Die, I knew the idea of this guy having a meltdown on the air is what I wanted to do. I identified that as one of the comedic premises, along with, do guys like this sound like this in their personal lives? What I did with that short, I wrote it with a bunch of friends and what I had to offer with this character was well-observed and pretty funny, but basically a joke. It was a sophomoric, prurient and funny thing. The character’s alcoholism, to me, just existed as an excuse for him to flip out. But Joel is the one that saw the deeper layers of the guy and treated it as though it were real. What if a guy like this really existed and was a tragic, modern figure? I saw him more in a joking way. I credit myself with, once Joel wrote that and Tim shot that, I was ready to act that. It wasn’t what I intended, originally, but I’m thrilled that that’s where it went.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you wished you could just honestly lay it all out there, in the way that Jim Brockmire does?

AZARIA: Don’t we all? There have been a lot of characters like this. It’s always rich fodder, if you can find a new take on a character who cannot tell a lie. There are a million examples of this kind of character, at the center of something. However a character gets there, it’s fun to break through societal etiquette and tell people what you really think. When you do it in a baseball announcer voice, it’s the same thing with how Brits can say anything with that lovely accent. Brockmire has nothing to lose. He’s at the bottom. It’s terrible, but that’s also a powerful place to be. To quote Janis Joplin, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,” and that certainly applies to Brockmire.

Some of the dialogue in this is very raunchy and some of the scenes are a bit out there. Do you have to get into a specific headspace to pull this guy off, or is it just unbelievable fun?

AZARIA: It’s more the latter. I don’t know if it’s a comment on me, and I don’t go around saying these things or doing these things for people, but this is not far from my monologue, at all. Joel, the guy who wrote this stuff, is a pretty twisted guy. It’s a character that I created and that I feel pretty intimate with, but Joel writes and thinks as this character, much more than I do now. I can interpret it and I relate to it, but it’s weird to have somebody else embodying this more than I do. But no, I have no problem flipping into the character. Maybe now that I’ve been doing it for so long, in one way or another, this character just feels like second nature. It’s genuinely fun. What informed this character was, when we shot the short, we shot a lot of material for it. It was only two days, but we shot a lot of broad comedy and, much to my surprise, we found that the more realistic, emotional, intimate and genuine the circumstance the character was in, the funnier it was. I was surprised by that. He’s so out there, with his voice and his manner, that he has to be happening in the real world, and you need people responding to him as if he were real, in order for it to be funny.

To that extent, are sex scenes easier to shoot when they’re awkward and funny? Did you have some moments that were hard to get through without cracking up?

AZARIA: I didn’t, but Amanda Peet couldn’t get through it without laughing. Amanda can’t do anything that isn’t really honest. She’s one of those actors. And there was no way that she could just be into it, sexually. She had to either be laughing or telling me to shut up, so that’s what we did because those are both perfectly believable reactions to this freak, announcing sex.

How has it been to have someone like Amanda Peet to explore the rather unique dynamic between Brockmire and Jules with?

AZARIA: She was our first choice. I don’t know if it was written with her in mind, but once it was written, we agreed that she was the prototype. We never thought she would do it. We were just like, “Well, let’s offer to her, and then she’ll say no and we’ll figure out where to go from there.” One of our early votes of confidence and when we felt like we were on the right track was when she agreed to do it. All I said to Joel was, “You know, he should probably fall in love with the woman who’s promoting the team, or owns the team.” That’s as much as I gave him to go on. If he’s written what Amanda calls “the girl part,” she probably wouldn’t have done it. But because he wrote such an interesting, independent, funny character, in her own right, Amanda was drawn to it. One of the things I thought would be funny about this character was to show whether this guy sounds this way when he fights with his girlfriend, and he does. Amanda is so raw and real, and there were times when she got really upset. As an actor, I felt like I better honestly take care of her, but then I knew that I had to do it coming out of the Brockmire voice, and that just sounds insincere and weird. I did my best, given that I had to sound like that, but it made for odd moments. But, that was the fun of it.

At the same time, Brockmire is saddled with someone who doesn’t know anything about baseball, when it comes to Charles (Tyrel Jackson Williams), the intern. Is that a fun relationship to play, and are you hoping to explore that more in Season 2?

AZARIA: Well, Season 2 is already written and that relationship does get explored much more fully. I’m a 52-year-old white guy, having to relate to this young black kid, and Tyrel is very conversant in social media and the digital world, and I am not. It’s almost another language to me. He also doesn’t love baseball too much. The Brockmire-Charles relationship isn’t too far, at all, from the Hank-Tyrel relationship. Tyrel is also so gifted. One thing that Joel, the writer, doesn’t understand is how a 16-year-old black kid might express himself, so it was up to Tyrel to transpose it to what sounded natural to him, and he did that. He’s also a very good comedy writer, in his own right. He probably ad-libbed more than anybody, on the set, which I thought was great. I really never knew what he was going to say, and I honestly didn’t understand about half of his references. 

What are you most looking forward to getting to delve into with Jim Brockmire, for Season 2?

AZARIA: Season 2 gets even darker than Season 1. It gets a little more real than Season 1. Brockmire’s career progresses, but so does his alcoholism and drug addiction. He and Charles are still involved. The primary relationship is between Brockmire and Charles. They have a very bizarre co-dependent, alcoholic and caretaker relationship. I just love it. Once again, I don’t know how I got so lucky to hook up with Joel Church-Cooper, but he’s done an unbelievable job of continuing down this path, in ways that are surprising me. There are a couple of episodes in Season 2 that are mind-blowing. As a producer, I have no notes, and it’s the same with the network. IFC is amazing, and Showtime, who I also work with, is like that, as well. They’ll give some suggestions and say, “Take what you like and leave the rest. Do what you’d like. We trust you.” I think the reason the Golden Age of television is so golden is because a lot of folks are willing to let creators do their thing and live or die by their own muse. They certainly allow us to do that.

There are actors who are good at both comedy and drama, but it takes a special skill to be able to do both, as well as you do, in the same character. How long of a life do you think this character has? Would you like to see him go beyond Season 2?           

AZARIA: For sure! Joel said that he can see five seasons, and he has trouble seeing past that, so we’ll see. I trust Joel’s journey with this character very much. He has very decisive and strong instincts about where to go, and I know that he already knows what Season 3 is going to be. We haven’t talked too much about Seasons 4 and 5. Another great thing about cable is that you can do as many episodes as necessary. If it feels like it should be 6 or 8 or 10 or 12, that’s what you do. And when you’re done, you can be done. When you’ve said what you want to say, you can stop.

There really hasn’t been a more successful or beloved animated TV series than The Simpsons. What has it meant to you to have been a part of that show for so many years?

AZARIA: Talk about the show that never ends! It’s really meant a lot to me, on so many levels. I can’t even quite process what it’s meant to me. First of all, having any job in show business for 29 years, even if it’s a craft service job or a gaffe job or a sound job, is insane, let alone being a part of this cultural phenomenon that’s indelibly a part of pop culture, forever and ever. As a comedian and as a voice guy, a mimic and a vocal artist, it’s meant the world to me. It was my first job in show business. I auditioned when I was 23 years old. I’ve been doing it for well over half of my adult life, and I’ve learned an unbelievable amount, doing it. Watching Harry Shearer and Dan Castellaneta do what they do, I really learned how to do comedy, or at least the rhythms of comedy and what comedy should sound like inside and out. I’ve learned from those guys, and from the writers. Not to mention the financial stability. As a result, I’m free to pursue projects like Brockmire. It took me eight years to get this thing going, which I might not have been able to see through and do, if I hadn’t had the financial stability of The Simpsons. Every five or seven years, there’s a new generation of college kids that have grown up with it. That’s old hat now. It’s wild! It’s a weird view of society that I have, being one of the people involved with The Simpsons for 30 years. It’s crazy! My son is only eight. He hasn’t even seen The Simpsons yet because I haven’t let him watch it yet.

Brockmire airs on Wednesday nights on IFC.