Here are three things we recently learned about Drunk History: 1) host and co-creator Derek Waters once had a comedy troupe called Haja Fresh ("haja" rhymes with "Baja"), which he also considered naming Bon Joki; 2) the first episode of Drunk History just might have inspired the musical Hamilton; 3) while the show's narrators may veer off-topic, convulse with hiccups or attempt to kiss Waters on the lips, the basic facts of each segment are verified by a team of in-house researchers. This last discovery is the most telling. It reminds us that both the show's creators and its plastered storytellers are genuinely invested in the stories they tell. Maybe that's why the show is now enjoying its third season on Comedy Central, having originated as a one-off web video in 2007. Its premise is both boneheaded and universal: as Waters puts it, "From the dawn of time, people have liked to get drunk and reminisce about the past."
We met with Derek Waters and his partner, director Jeremy Konner, at their offices in downtown Los Angeles last month, two days before they attended the Emmys as nominees for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. Read on for their thoughts on the key to classic Drunk History narration, the best way to present Hitler and the distant possibility of an OJ Simpson segment. But first, click on the video above to see Konner take a long-overdue turn in front of the camera, struggling mightily to tell the story of the Los Angeles aqueduct with help from Kyle Gass and Jack Black (who once employed Konner as a personal assistant). It is meta-Drunk History at its finest.
Tell me about the first episode you ever made.
Derek Waters: All the online ones worked so well because I was asking [the narrators], "What is the moment of history that you love and you feel like more people need to know about?" I remember the phone call [with episode 1 narrator Mark Gagliardi]. He goes, "I just saw a documentary about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and I would love to talk about that."
Jeremy Konner: He had watched some six-hour special on Alexander Hamilton. Remember we got there and he talked for about six hours straight just about meritocracy?
Waters: Oh, I remember that word. And it never really got good until one shining moment. Now we know what it is from doing it so many times. It's just a little switch that's like, I'm here but I'm not here anymore. I'm just telling you what I love. I'm not trying to be funny, don't give a shit about the cameras. I'm just present, and I'm just telling you why I love it. That was 2007. I had hopes that maybe it could be a monthly sketch on a show. I sent it to The Daily Show, Conan, Saturday Night Live. And... silence. So we decided to put it on the Internet right before Christmas, thinking how people are always bored during the holidays and maybe this could be a video that they liked. We put it up December 23rd, and like a week later it was on the front page of YouTube, and it just took off. Jeremy was working with Jack Black, and Jack saw it and said he wanted to be Ben Franklin. Michael Cera [who plays Hamilton] started it, but Jack Black is the reason it continued.
Konner: Can I mention this Hamilton thing? Mark said that he met Lin-Manuel Miranda, the guy who wrote and stars in Hamilton, and [Miranda] said: "Oh my god, you're Mark Gagliardi from Drunk History. I saw that and then wrote Hamilton!" We weren't there, and maybe he was just talking about two completely separate events: he saw Drunk History and then wrote Hamilton, and those were not connected. But that might be the biggest thing to come out of this, if it's true.
Jeremy, you're finally taking a turn as narrator.
Konner: I'm doing my best to burn down the post facility before anyone gets to see it. [laughs] No, it was really fun. I drank too much, couldn't tell the story, sat there while everyone got frustrated with me, going, "Jeremy, come on. You know how to do this!" And I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing wrong." And then everyone was like, "It's been eight hours; tell the fucking story!" To be on the other side, realizing that this is what everybody goes through...
Waters: And the goal with anyone is to get you out of your head, when you know the thing so well. And you add alcohol to that, and knowledge that he shouldn't know, thinking about cutaways...
Konner: Honestly, I've watched the footage but I don't remember it. I remember sitting down, and then this general feeling of struggle, for hours.
What were you drinking?
Konner: I drank almost a bottle of whiskey and then Derek and I did some tequila shots.
Dear god.
Konner: Somehow it ended up that we were shooting at noon at an Airbnb. I had woken up at ten, and I was already trashed by twelve.
Waters: Didn't you go home to your wife with a Game of Thrones reunion or something?
Konner: She had like 12 people over watching Game of Thrones when I came home. Everybody was like, "Hey Jeremy!" I just went into the bathroom and puked for hours. I could hardly move for two days. But honestly, half of it was just the depression of thinking I didn't tell the story, I embarrassed myself, it's so awful... The final cut, I think, is very good. It's just if you watch all eight hours of me, it really is brutal.
Waters: With anybody. They always feel bad the next day and think that they didn't do a good job.
Konner: Alcohol is a depressant. In every manner of speaking.
Have you encountered any controversy over the versions of history that you've chosen?
Waters: We like to just tell stories. Nothing political. Nothing that has an angle except, This is what happened. It's not forcing you think one way or another. It may have something to do with something that's happening today, but we don't want to preach. Our goal is always the best stories that inspire you, whether it's as a storyteller or like, "Oh, I can be like Claudette Colvin and stand up for myself." And I think humanizing anything makes me more interested. Learning a story about a president, it's usually like, "And they were soooo important..." And they were, but they're also no different from you and me. History books immortalize instead of humanize.
Konner: Sometimes our narrators will have takes that we don't expect. This year, in our Space episode, we talked to Matt Gourley about rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, who was in many ways the father of modern rocketry and space travel. And we did not realize that he had such a sordid past with the Nazi party. Matt really wouldn't let him off the hook and wanted to tell a different story than we originally thought he was going to tell. So we went with his take.
Waters: One of our best ensemble members, JT Palmer, is playing Hitler, and JT's black, so that's pretty cool. Black Hitler.
Konner: Name one other show with black Hitler.
Waters: Why give the man the dignity of having people look like him? Let's not do that.
Konner: Weird Al was Hitler last season [in the "Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling" segment].
Waters: He looked just like him. That was creepy.
Is there any area of history you've shied away from?
Konner: One day we might do OJ. People have definitely pitched that.
Waters: I just think that story is so great. I think if we did it in a way where it wasn't about the murder...
Konner [to Waters]: Just about his time filming the Naked Gun series?
Waters: I mean, that day was so crazy, with the Bronco. But the stories that there's theories about, you know, I stray from. It's a dark story no matter what, and it wasn't that long ago. When something's so long ago, your heart isn't as sad when you hear someone died at 40. I mean, we have pretty modern stuff now. We just did Griselda Blanco and she was killed in... 2008? 12? 2012.
What's the most mind-blowing story each of you has encountered since you started making the show?
Konner: Oney Judge.
Waters: I love that story. And I also really like the Claudette Colvin story. She did exactly what Rosa Parks did a year before Rosa Parks, but because she was 15 and pregnant out of wedlock, the NAACP just didn't think she would be a good role model, and they planned the whole thing based off that. It's not like, "Forget Rosa Parks." God bless her, it made sense, but we should also remember: it was just from one girl who had a heart and said, "I'm not going to take this." It's pretty cool. She's still alive too.
Do you think she's seen the episode?
Konner: I think she did. I saw something on some Facebook page that gave me a clue that she's probably seen it.
Waters: On her Wikipedia page it says, "See reference: Drunk History." That's pretty nuts.
Waters and Konner at Drunk History HQ, September 2015
