WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for Hoops, available now on Netflix.
On Netflix's new adult animated comedy Hoops, Ron Funches and Cleo King play very different characters. King's Opal is principal of the local high school, and while she often has to discipline foul-mouthed basketball coach Ben Hopkins (Jake Johnson), she can give as good as she gets -- and every once in a while she likes to sing a vulgar torch song, too. Meanwhile, Funches' Ron is the yin to Coach Ben's yang, calm, collected and polite where Ben is hot-headed, angry and rude -- but he can afford to be, since he's also sleeping with Ben's estranged wife. King, who's appeared in everything from Deadwood to A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Funches, who's been seen and heard in properties including 6 Underground and Harley Quinn, are veterans of the big and small screen, and both bring their own brands of comedy to the show.
CBR spoke to King and Funches about tackling the show's crude humor (or not), improvising with the cast and bringing their characters to life with only their voices.
CBR: What attracted you to Hoops?
Ron Funches: What attracted me to the project was simply the cast. Just seeing so many talented people and friends and people who I had not met, like Cleo, but who I was already fans of. And just that it was going to be a fun and enjoyable project that they let me know they were going to let me be myself, and I was like "That's easy." I don't even think I saw the script until the day I showed up. So it was an easy sell for me.
Cleo King: See, I loved it. I loved it. When I got the script, what I was auditioning with, when I got that and I read it and I came in, I was like, "I love this character," because she gets to be inappropriate. She gets to say things and she gets to tear into him, into Jake's character. So when I see characters like that, it’s so much fun for me because it's rare. I don't get to do it a lot, but I do get to do it, but when I do, I'm all in.
And then you see the talent around you, it just makes you want to do your best. In order to show up, do your best, but then to just have fun. Like there's no other reason then to have fun and tear into each other, and then do the next page and then do the next thing, you know. So for me it was truly the words on the page, and then the people, because I have to enjoy what I'm doing or it doesn't work for me.
The show's humor is very adult, and Cleo, you get to indulge in a lot of that.
King: I do! [Laughs]
Was that something you enjoy tackling?
King: It is. I love doing that because I'm the type of person, I don't use that language in my life. Well, you know, sometimes. But I don't use that language in my life on a regular basis, so when I get to do it at work, it makes it even more fun for me. So I like tackling things like that….
I did this movie called Magnolia once where they handcuff me to a couch and I had to use all those f-bombs and all that stuff. I love that type of writing because so many people thought that I was improving. And when I do it, they always think improv, but it's always the words on the page. So the good thing for me is, when I see it, it's fun, and it reads improv for some reason for people.
Ron, on the other hand, you are the nicest, most polite character on the show.
Funches: Mmhmm.
Did you feel like you missed out or did you like being that guy?
Funches: No, that's kind of what I like about the show, that it kind of lets us go towards our strengths in humor, and I've never had a strength in that background. I've been doing stand up for 14 years but I've never really been into shock humor, crude humor, and I don't particularly like to use curse words in my act. I like to use them as tools but never overindulge in them. So I really like that I got to be myself and I don't feel like I missed out because that doesn't interest me that much. And I think it helps me stand out more that I'm kind of doing something a little bit different.
You definitely play a very sweet character in comparison to everyone else.
Funches: [Laughs] Thank you.
The thing your characters have in common is that you're both friends with Jake Johnson’s character, Coach Ben. What was the process of conceiving those friendships for both of you?
King: Well, you know, it's on the page, so you just come in and it's on the page. So like with my character Opal, Principal Opal Lowery, she and Ben were friends and they go way back, and like any friendship, if you can't tell each other the truth, what is it? So they go back and forth, and then, we get to do what they've written and then they allow us to do improv. So I like that a lot because I always feel like once they get what they need, then they allow us to just rip.
So when we can get off-page and then do the volley back and forth, it's great because when somebody throws you a ball one way, you throw it back that way and they throw it hard, you throw a little harder. So when they told us that Ben and Opal were friends, and then she gets to chew him out a bit but she has to do it three or four times before he even stops, that’s sometimes like a real relationship, whether that's your family or whether that's your friend. So I liked it very much. It came very natural for me to rip into him and him come back and me keep going. So I liked it. I truly loved it.
Funches: Well, my relationship [with Coach Ben], I think, just is based off the differences in our characters. It’s just that I'm kind of his polar opposite; where he's very aggressive and very much ruled by his emotions, my character is very patient and loving and giving. And that's how their relationships work is that I'm not bothered, I'm very patient, I'm kind of above it. And then at the end of the day I'm like, "Well, you know, I'm sleeping with your ex-wife, so whatever."
You’ve both done live-action, you've both done a lot of voice work. What do you like about both, and especially the voiceover work that you're doing for Hoops?
Funches: Well, with voiceover work I like just how quick it is. I like how, as a person who just grew up in love with a lot of animation and cartoons and anime and different styles, the fact that I get to now act in all these things that I grew up loving is something I love. And it's just a part of having a well-rounded background for me.
I love doing stand up and having people of a certain age be fans of mine, and then tell me, "Hey, my kid loves you, and they don't even know you besides being like a giraffe in Trolls." And then I like it when people are just stoners, who’re like, "I like Hoops." [Laughs] ….I just don't like being bored and I love challenging myself so I think I’ll always try to bounce around between just performing live, doing live acting and doing voice acting as long as they'll have me. I just like to work.
King: Oh I get that, I understand that. I love on-camera and I love voiceovers. Now what I love about voiceovers is that you can go in the booth, you don't have to have on makeup, you don't have to have hair, you don't have to do any of that. You go into work, you get your coffee, and then you're in the booth with other people so you're not just doing it over and over by yourself, you're doing it with other people, and then you're done. Like, even during this time when we're on Zoom and stuff like that [because of the pandemic], I love all this stuff because we don't have to look for parking, we don't have to get dressed, we don't have to shower. I love all that.
And then when I go to work and I'm on set, I do love that I'm in the makeup chair for an hour and a half or two hours. I love that they're on my hair for 30 minutes. I love that, sitting there and letting them pamper me. I love it because I'm still getting paid. All of that is fun when I get paid. I live for it. So, I enjoy both.
I love being on camera. Like when I see myself on camera I'm still blown away, even though the first time I saw myself on camera was like 100 years ago. I love both, I really do. I love it, it's something that I never get bored with. I never not watch myself. I'm still one of those that watches everything after the fact. But I do, I enjoy it so much. But learning in this time of Zoom, how not to travel and not to do stuff and yet we can still show up and have a great time, this is good stuff..
I have to agree with that. It's pretty nice to be able to do this from home, especially in LA.
Funches: Yes, it's nice going like, "What? I didn't have to be making these 45-minute drives every day? I could have been in my house?"
King: Exactly, exactly.
So was the voiceover work on Hoops completed at a distance?
King: We did it all beforehand. We did it all before the pandemic started. So, we were really in the booth with each other. We were really feeling the other actor read back. We would do table reads and then I'm sitting next to Ron, and we're all kind of crunched at the table and doing the reading. And…, for me, you can't do that and get that feeling in a Zoom Room. You can get a table read but it's not that feeling of everybody eating bagels, everybody's got coffee and juice, and you're crunched in at the table -- no matter how many seats there are at the table, it’s still crunched -- and you're meeting people that you haven't met, you see people you love and respect their work. It's just an incredible feeling, so we did it all before the pandemic.
And you actually recorded together? A lot of animated shows don't do that, they record separately. Was recording together part of what you think is essential to the essence of the show?
Funches: Well, it was a mix, sometimes we recorded separately as well. But I think having it together it makes it so we can improvise off of each other. You can really feel the energy between each other, and you can play more. I know it was very helpful for me early when we started working because just learning the relationship between Jake and I, and then once we figured that out and I could just play off of him, and the softer I was, the louder he got, it just made it a lot more fun. When I was separate from him, I still knew what the relationship was.
Voice acting seems challenging because you don't have the costumes and the sets and all of that. So, what is your process of developing a character solely with your voice?
Funches: Well, for me it's difficult and not that difficult…. There's people who are tremendous voice actors, tremendous mimics, they work a lot with different dialects and regions and they can do so many different voices, and that's not me, and I will never try to pretend that I'm them. I have so much respect for people who can do like eight or 10 voices in one show. What I have is a weird voice that people made fun of when I was a child and now I use that and hone that to make money, and I like it.
So when it comes to me messing with my voice it's just different energy levels. Like, what is this character, is he more reserved, is he more outspoken, is he louder, is he showing off? And that's kind of how I can change what I do a bit. But I never go in and go, "Okay I'm going to be this type of character, this type of voice." If anything, what [Hoops creator] Ben [Hoffman] taught me to do more is just to be more myself, and the more I tone into being me, the funnier it has been and just more enjoyable.
King: Yeah, I so get that. You know, for me it's the words on the page. If I can read it and then feel who this character is, and I'm always basing it on me or somebody in my life, that's just how I do it. I don't just do a character and try to find a voice… I put my mother's spin on it. If [the character’s] bossy it’s my mother. I'm totally bossing like my mother because she can boss like no other, honey. She raised six kids by herself, she had to be bossy. So for me when I get those words on the page, if I can do it myself at home, and I know who she is and then once I'm in the room with other performers and we do a table read or we hear somebody sing a little lick of a song or something, then I feel like I'm in there.
But I do the same process that I would do for on-camera when I do voiceover. I don't have a separate thing that I do. It's all acting for me, so whether I'm in a coat acting, or whether I'm in jeans acting, it's acting, so that's what I bring to the table with me. And I love doing it, and if I'm basing it on somebody I know, I know how that person acts. So for me it's all fun, it's all good. And if I can get those words on the page to kind of make me chuckle before I get in that room, then, hey, I just go for it, because like [Ron] said, Ben’ll always pull us back, Ben will always suggest another flavor, so I think we're good.
Starring the voices of Jake Johnson, Ron Funches, Natasha Leggero, Cleo King, A.D. Miles and Rob Riggle, the 10-episode first season of Hoops is currently available on Netflix.