‘SuperMansion’ Christmas: Keegan-Michael Key Says American Ranger ‘Came From An America That No Longer Exists’
Next to the Meisterburger and the Heat Miser on your list of the best stop-motion Christmas villains, get ready to add Mr. Skibumpers, the diabolical fiend looking to ruin the League of Freedom’s holidays in Supermansion: War on Christmas. While fans await the upcoming second season of the superhero show, co-creator Matt Senreich and Keegan-Michael Key, who plays both the Captain America-inspired American Ranger and the Nick Fury-inspired Sgt. Agony, got together to talk about the Christmas special.
Senreich is no stranger to the territory: Robot Chicken has done seven Christmas specials already. But he says they found a new way to approach the myth of old St. Nick: By digging in and “really exploring what a job it is” to deliver all those gifts. “I always come back to our Emperor phone call sketch on Robot Chicken. This guy is a beleaguered CEO. For Santa Claus, this is a man who is under a lot of stress and a vey short amount of time to do what he needs to get done.” It’s the key to the humor of both Chicken and SuperMansion, Senreich says. “We like to take absurd worlds and make them mundane.” Of course, in this case “mundane” also includes a megalomaniacal Santa Claus throwing fireballs at Titanium Rex.
Key has less experience with Christmas comedy. On Key and Peele, “We never got to do this kind of stuff,” he says. It was ten months between writing and airing, so they rarely did anything seasonal (aside from a reimagining of the “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” song). “War on Christmas,” he says, “is kind of a fulfillment” of that creative dream.
For both of them, it’s not getting to play with Christmas that’s really the joy: It’s exploring what Christmas means to the characters. Senreich is used to only having fleeting moments with characters on Chicken. Here, “We can actually see how our characters interact and whether or not they love the holidays, what their holiday traditions are.”
In the episode, American Ranger must contend with a multicultural holiday season — a societal development he missed by being frozen in ice since WWII. Key relishes the position that puts him in as a comedian. “The best way of doing satire always is when you have an innocent character,” he says. Sgt. Agony (also played by Key) and Jewbot have to explain what happened to Ranger’s traditional 1940s celebration of Christmas, while also making a case for Hannukah and Kwanzaa.
American Ranger has a surprising amount of complexity — certainly more than you’d expect from a stop-motion puppet. “He came from an America that no longer exists,” says Key. “So, he’s wet behind the ears culturally, but there was a world that — as far as he was concerned — was black and white and worked in a very particular way and now it doesn’t. It’s fascinating.”
Key has another connection to the Captain America-like character. “I never told you this, Matt,” he says, his voice lit with enthusiasm. “When I was a kid, there was a Thor cartoon, a Hulk cartoon, a Captain America cartoon, Spider-Man — which had a little more activity to it. Of all of those, Captain America’s shield, to me, was the coolest weapon in the world. So I would actually pretend to be Captain America.” Key adds that while he eventually moved on to the X-Men and Wolverine became his favorite hero, “Even now, I still get chills when I see Chris Evans throw the shield.”
SuperMansion: War on Christmas will be available to stream from Crackle on Thursday, December 8.
