‘Common Side Effects’: Adult Swim’s Conspiracy Thriller Tackles Magic Mushrooms and Big Pharma

Adult Swim’s 2D animated “Common Side Effects” couldn’t be timelier in light of the hot button RFK Jr. Senate hearing to become health secretary. It’s a deadpan and surreal conspiracy thriller about the government and Big Pharma trying to suppress a cure-all magic mushroom discovered by offbeat fungi researcher Marshall Cuso (voiced by Dave King). The miracle “Blue Angel” mushroom, which has some trippy mind-altering side effects, is definitely bad for business.

The brainchild of creators Joe Bennett (“Scavengers Reign”) and Steve Hely (“American Dad”), the 10-episode series marks another leap for adult animation. It’s like “True Detective” meets “The Office,” balancing the serious with the absurd, as Marshall stays one step ahead of the DEA and assorted creepy fortune hunters.

But Marshall can’t do it alone and teams up with his former high school lab partner Frances Applewhite (voiced by Emily Pendergast), who works for a sinking pharmaceutical company as the assistant to incompetent CEO Rick Kruger (voiced by executive producer Mike Judge).

“Joe and I got together and we were talking about health and wellness and drugs, both legal and illegal, and psychedelics and mushrooms,” Hely told IndieWire. But the topic of mushrooms went far and wide in the development of the series. “They’re very interesting and strange,” he continued. “Some of them can kill you, some of them are delicious, some of them make you feel funny, some of them make you have visions.

‘Common Side Effects’Adult Swim

“Where do they come from?” added Hely. “Their history and their prehistory seems to extend as far back as we can understand anything about planet earth, maybe to other planets. And all of that is exciting stuff.”

As far as Marshall, they modeled him after an assortment of radical researchers pushing the limits of accepted medicine and science. “We were interested in guys like Terrence McKenna and Paul Stamets and Wade Davis,” Hely said, “fringe figures who, for better or worse, start introducing new, strange ideas to the world, and sometimes the mainstream reacts against them in one way or another. Legal or political or business forces can be brought to bear on them, and that just seemed like a story that could be exciting to tell. We started there and have been going for the last five years or so working on this.”

The international animation was a collaboration between Green Street Pictures (“Scavengers Reign”) and Bandera Entertainment (co-founded by “King of the Hill” creators Judge and Greg Daniels, who also serves as executive producer). The work contrasts a somewhat grounded reality of the external world with more fantastical elements, such as the graphic injuries demonstrating the instant recuperative powers of “Blue Angel.”

Bennett leveraged some of his weird design sensibility that elevated the Emmy-nominated “Scavengers Reign” sci-fi series. This included bobblehead characters with micro-expressions along with fungi-like environments and quirky creatures for the hallucinatory realm that the late David Lynch might’ve appreciated.

‘Common Side Effects’Adult Swim

“There was a feeling that anyone that takes this particular mushroom has sort of a similar experience,” Bennett told IndieWire. “Everyone has their own kind of tailored version of it, but there’s a similar realm with similar motifs that they’re experiencing. And that maybe there’s another presence you can’t quite identify, but it’s watching you. And, with some people, there’s a playful nature to it.”

The creators tease that a metaphysical logic will be revealed later on in the series. “Joe and I were interested in the biology of mushrooms that have this mycelium that they can connect to each other and communicate and share, and it seemed interesting to us,” Hely added.

What everyone on the series was drawn to was combining the conspiracy thriller with a satire of everyday life. “You’re driven by an important mission, but you get stopped to do some tedious chore. That just seemed to us like a reflection of reality as we experience it, and also a chance for comedy and thrills,” Hely said.

But it all comes back to the depiction of Marshall as a mysterious eccentric who wants to save the world. “He’s that kind of guy who’s always playing in the dirt, he’s probably a little smelly, or he’s got just a very strong odor about him,” added Hely. “A guy who’s obsessed with health and eating these special mushrooms, but also maybe having a giant soda: the combination of paradoxes that we see all over the place and wanted to capture.”

“Common Side Effects” debuted on February 2 on Adult Swim, with new episodes airing weekly.