Will Arnett doesn’t care what the critics have to say about his newest Peacock series, Twisted Metal. The actor and executive producer only wants to hear what the original fans of the PlayStation video game think of the world they were able to re-create for television screens.
“All of the characters they love are there, whether it’s John or Quiet or Sweet Tooth, but it’s scary because there are no fans like video game fans. Maybe Taylor Swift fans, but it is sometimes a tough task doing that since the fans are really paying attention,” Arnett told Los Angeles.
“They love certain characters, they love certain elements of the game, and if you don’t hit those notes, they’ll crush you,” he added. “I was intimidated. We knew that we had to really deliver and I hope we did. I hope the fans who are big fans of the game really like the show. We’ll get reviews here and there, but what’ll really matter is what the fans think.”
The half-hour live-action TV series is produced by Deadpool’s Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and written by Cobra Kai’s Michael Jonathan Smith, offering their original take on the classic PlayStation game series. Twisted Metal follows a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. All goes smoothly until the outsider is faced with challenges such as surviving Sweet Tooth’s Las Vegas residency.
According to Arnett, who only voices the Sweet Tooth character, there was never a conversation of him physically playing the character on the screen with prosthetics.
“Prosthetics? What are you talking about? Excuse me, they said I was too ripped, too yoked. That was the word from the studio,” he joked.
“No, there was never any danger of me physically playing Sweet Tooth. I think it would’ve looked weird, but Samoa Joe, who physically plays Sweet Tooth, did such an awesome job,” Arnett said. “I’ve done a bunch of animated films and animated shows and stuff, but I’ve never done something like this where I had to do the voice of somebody else doing the character physically on screen… So on a bunch of levels, I don’t want to disappoint the fans, then he puts out this great performance and I’m watching all the dailies and I’m like, ‘Joe’s killing this and now it’s on me. He delivered the ball the whole 99 yards and I’ve just got to take it one yard and I might fumble this.’”
But Arnett’s voiceover became just as successful as his work battling for the rights to the beloved Playstation game.
“We had to convince our friends at PlayStation that we weren’t going to ruin their franchise,” Arnett said. “We were so lucky to get Reese and Wernick to come and agree to help us develop this story, and then of course getting Michael Jonathan Smith, who wrote just amazing, amazing scripts.”
“It’s not always easy to make those kinds of adaptations from a game to a show and it always comes down to the writing,” he added. “These guys just had such a great idea and the story was so strong and really fun. I think that was the thing everybody responded to.”
All episodes of Twisted Metal premiere July 27 exclusively on Peacock.
