Matthew Senreich has never doubted that work can be fun. In fact, the co-creator of Adult Swim’s… Matthew Senreich has never doubted that work can be fun. In fact, the co-creator of Adult Swim’s ‘Robot Chicken’ has based his entire career on that principle. When Senreich met actor Seth Green, the two kindled a friendship forged in geekdom, and their mutual love of action figures and Gen-X pop culture led to the creation of what is now Adult Swim’s highest-rated original show. How did a mild-mannered magazine editor from New York become one of Cartoon Network’s clown princes of comedy? The Pitt News spoke with Senreich to find out. The Pitt News: What did you want to be when you grew up? Matthew Senreich: [laughs] You know, I think I grew up a little early. I always wanted to work in comic books when I was growing up, and when I was 16, I had the chance to intern at Marvel comics. I realized at a very young age that I could do what I love, which was really nice. TPN: Did you ever think back then you would be making a living off of action figures? MS: No, the fact that I get to play with toys and get paid for it is baffling. It’s been a really nice ride. My parents are still shocked that I’m getting paid to do this. TPN: What did they expect from you? MS: You know, my dad’s a doctor, my mom’s an accountant, they were looking for one of the two, but they’ve been nothing but supportive. My mom actually drove me to Marvel comics and sat in the waiting room while I had my interview. TPN: What’s the dynamic like between you and Seth Green? It seems like you just met through Wizard [Magazine] and hit it off. MS: Yeah, I think our love of toys and comics really connected us. We just do things that we think are funny for ourselves, and we hope other people are in on the joke with us. We share a very small office because we have separation anxiety from each other. TPN: You get quite a variety of celebrities on the show. How do you tap these people? MS: You know, when we started, it was one of those situations where nobody knew our show, and it was a lot of calling out favors. But we had this influx of people at the beginning ‘mdash; Burt Reynolds, Dom Deluise, Ryan Seacrest, people who we just reached out to and begged and pleaded with, and they took a chance on us and had a good time. After that it became easier to get people to come in, because they realized we’re just goofing around and playing with toys and having fun with all this. Cee-Lo (of Gnarls Barkley) tracked down Seth at a concert and said, ‘I want to do Robot Chicken.’ It’s been great like that, and we’ve been very blessed with it. TPN: Stop-motion animation comes with a lot of technical limitations. How is it a good or a bad fit for the show? MS: It’s good in the sense that it’s 3D and it’s tangible, you’re actually seeing the toys you grew up with come to life. But we need an animator on stage moving them in increments and moving them frame-by-frame. Each animator does about eight seconds a day, which is an exhausting process. It’s hard for us to do political humor, because we’re writing it now, and it’s going to come out after the election. So we can’t really do jokes about [Gov. Sarah] Palin or put [Sen. Barack] Obama in there, you just don’t know who’s going to end up winning. If this comes out May of next year, it’s just going to be pointless.