Kill Pretty: How did you first get involved with Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell?
Henry Zebrowski: I just auditioned for it. As an actor I think a lot of people think we all sit and I have a pile of scripts and I get to just go through shit and be like, “This one’s great, this one’s going to hurt my reputation”. But no, you just take whatever is fed to you like a seal. Then like a seal we’re trained to perform with electric shock. I went and auditioned for the show. I actually auditioned really early and I didn’t hear anything for two months so I figured it was over. Then I got a call back in LA. I walk in and it’s the first time I’m in a room with Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. I go in and I meet Chris Kelly and Dave Willis (the creators) and we just kind of hit it off. I started going off script and they liked that. I knew the vibe they were going for which is Aqua Team vibe, which is really insane circumstances with really casual banter, humor. I just picked up on that and I was just lucky. This is just the type of show that if I saw another dude doing this show I’d fucking kill him in his sleep and take his place.
KP: Did the show always have this heavy satanic vibe to it?
HZ: Obviously, it started out heavy on the corporate comedy side in the beginning. Heavy on the office comedy side and just blowing out the stakes of an office comedy. Things got a little more evil as we go. Partially it was them watching how we reacted to the material and having humans in the room. They weren’t really used to having humans in the room, they were used to having cartoons so they could fix and change whatever tone they wanted. Now they see a bunch of people coming in and interpreting what they put down and they realize this stuff is really fucked up. As it goes on it becomes more of an evil Laverne and Shirley.
KP: What I meant is I’ve seen a lot of Satanic subtext and symbolism in the show.
HZ: Well that’s because one of the guys that does the artistic design, Shane Morton, he’s a for real deal Satanist. He got me into Satanism. We’ve all talked about magickal thinking and layering symbols into the background. It’s partially about hypnotism and it’s partly about making our show into a gigantic magick ritual like all the time. Dave and Casper don’t really like hearing that because Dave has family, he has shit like that where he doesn’t want to talk about it. There’s definitely a magick thing happening.
KP: What do you mean by a magick ritual?
HZ: How do you describe it? First of all putting on the make up you become a different person. You’re donning an identity like what the shamans used to do, they used to put on a mask to reach other levels of consciousness. When I am in paint as Gary I am a different guy. I am more free to be as stupid as I want to be, inappropriate and that’s kind of the idea. It kind of lead to me becoming a more free performer as me as Henry. But the magickal ritual, the human mind works very easily with symbols. All magick is, as far as magickal thinking is kind of self hypnotism. If you can so completely believe something and change your perception you can change your reality, you can make something new, you can make something real. Part of the self perpetuating motion of YPFIGTH is in it when have this self repeating mantra of “five seasons and a movie”. We’re going to openly ask the universe for it and a part of it is sort of pinging the universe with symbols. Using pentagrams, using stuff that’s common and kind of accepting it, that we’re thinking with magickal thought. Cause that’s a part of it, accepting that you’re thinking magickally and you can kind of get your will out into the universe.
KP: I find that fascinating when it’s with something like a TV show because I know there’s people that believe 9/11 was a super ritual and that’s fine, whatever. They put that energy out into the world and got what they wanted but when it’s a show like yours that’s specifically dealing with it I find it fascinating that you’re putting it out into the open that, that’s what you’re doing.
HZ: Well we’re the real deal. I think most people are posers about it. That’s the whole point of me taking the helm of the show and trying to put it out there. Kind of doing what Grant Morrison used to do. Coming out and saying, “Magick works, magick is real.” All the people that I know in the staff, like Vee who does makeup has a full on altar in her home. I have a full on altar in my home. The idea is creating your will, going out there and making something out of nothing. It’s mostly job security. We’re just trying to make cash. I think when it comes down to it the best thing magick can be used for is cash and power.
KP: The great thing about magick, and often the misconception is, at the end of the day you’re still creating a great show. It’s not like you’re creating a dogshit show and doing a bunch of magick and people keep watching because they’re hypnotized. You’re creating a great show but along the way of creating a great show a lot of things can go wrong so the magick just helps guide it a bit.
HZ: It attaches big ol’ batteries to what you do. All you’re doing is adding jet fuel. But you gotta build the rocket. What they say with chaos magick teachings is you can’t make the impossible happen all you’re doing is increasing achievable reality. You’re pushing the boundaries of what can be done but you have to go half way. Let’s say you’re a dipshit working at a parking lot and you say, “I want to be a millionaire” and you do a big extensive magick ritual to get it the way the universe works is that you’ll be a millionaire because you get hit by a truck and you get a settlement and you’re a vegetable in a fucking bed but you’re a millionaire. You have to decrease the chaos that the magick will bring into your life. Increasing magick in your life will also increase chaos in your life so you have to decrease that by including concrete work. I did a magick ritual that I equate me getting my role on Heroes: Reborn to a very extensive masterbation sigil I did. It entered a lot of chaos into my life that was really fucked up. There was a lot of weird things that happened over that year that I paid for.
KP: Can you talk a little bit about what happened that year?
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