ROB MURRAY: Appearing this weekend at the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo is actor and comedian Dave Foley. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

DAVE FOLEY: Thank you for having me.

RM: The big news to talk about, of course, is a brand new season of Kids in the Hall premiering May 13th  on Amazon Prime Video. I know you’ve gotten together with the guys in the ensuing years since the last season to do some other projects, but this is the first proper Kids season 27 years. Why now? How did this all come together?

DF: It came together, well, in typical Kids in the Hall fashion. It started out as a desire to celebrate the 30th  anniversary of the show, but that’s passed by a few years now. We started talking about, well, we should do something, and then we started talking about what it would be, and eventually it led to putting together this deal with Prime Video to do a new Kids in the Hall sketch show. We haven’t done sketches together on television for 27 years.

RM: What was that creative process like, getting back together with them and working on sketches?

DF: It was as exciting and as infuriating as it ever was! We’re a pretty fractious group. Everyone has pretty strong opinions, but when it comes down to it we also make each other laugh. Certainly, from my vantage point, the other four guys make me laugh more than anybody else in the world. That’s always the thing that keeps us together, just how much fun we have when we’re actually together.

RM: I’ve watched the trailer. It’s kind of hard to tell – is it’s going to be like the original seasons where you have sort of a series of disconnected sketches in front of a live audience, or are you doing something a little different this time around?

DF: It’s all sketches. It’s a little different that there’s no live audience for this season, COVID made that kind of impossible, so it’s all single camera style. The old show was about half single camera and half multi-camera in front of an audience, but the Shadowy Men (on a Shadowy Planet) still punctuate every sketch.

RM: Something from the trailer as well – you’re definitely reviving a lot of those classic characters that we all know and love. What was it like sliding back into the skin of some of those people?

DF: It was interesting. It was weird doing Don and Marv from Brain Candy. Only we would start out our show by revisiting our biggest failure – that’s the Kids in the Hall way. It was interesting to get into that character, and then look in the mirror and go, boy, Marv sure got old!

RM: Do you have a particular favorite character that was really fun to revisit again?

DF: Scott and I do a new Bruno and Francesca sketch, which are the two South American movie star characters we used to do. That was really fun, just because I always loved playing Bruno Puntz Jones because I could always kid myself that I was handsome is that character. I got to be a swarthy chain smoker, so I felt very sexy as that.

RM: I’m a huge fan of Kids in the Hall. I grew up watching the show.

DF: Thanks. I grew up making it!

RM: I love the Kids in the Hall pushed a lot of boundaries, both with what sketch comedy was, especially in the later seasons, but also, back in the late 80s and early 90s, having an openly gay character on TV…I mean, nowadays it’s pretty normal, but back then it was a novel thing. Was it really intentional? Did you go out to really push those boundaries, or was it more of an organic thing that developed with the group?

DF: It was more organic. I mean, one of our members happened to be gay, and none of the rest of us had any problems playing gay characters or, you know, obviously playing female characters or lesbian characters. So at least a fifth of what was written for the show was written by a gay guy, and the rest of us had to play all the other characters. It just kind of came naturally that we were representing one of the members of the group more than anything else. Yeah, and the truth is, back in those days, that was pretty much forbidden on television. Even on HBO you weren’t getting a lot of gay material. Comedy that was on HBO was very male, heterosexual comedy in those days,

RM: Looking back, do you consider yourself trailblazers on that front, considering where we are today in the media landscape?

DF: I think so. I hate to talk that way about us, but we definitely were aware that we were kind of blurring all the lines of gender and sexuality in our show. Back in the late 80s, the idea was to try and just ignore that there are any differences between people based on their sexuality or their gender, that you could just talk about people and write about people and treat everybody the same. I guess that was, for lack of a better term, a little ahead of its time. It offended a lot of people back then, which is hard to imagine now, how offensive people found the show.

RM: The last thing I saw you in was something else on Amazon Prime Video – Last One Laughing Canada. A group of comedians in a room together, trying to not laugh. That must have been really bizarre. Can you tell me about your experience on that show?

DF: It was dreadful! I mean, it was fun, but it was so weird because I was in a room with some old friends of mine, and some young comics who I had just met. The instinct, especially for Canadian comedians, is to be supportive of one another, and to laugh, and to encourage, and you pick up on a thread and you go with it. The idea of trying to deliberately not give a response to another comedian is so against my nature. It was a very strange experience. It was much more liberating once I got kicked out and was in the room with Jay Baruchel, then you could be a human being again. But it was fun. I’m glad people seem to really like it.

RM: Yeah, it was a funny show. Last question – what brings you to the Expo this weekend? Are you looking forward to your trip to Calgary?

DF: It’s just the chance to get out and meet fans, and I get to hang out with some old friends that are going to be there. I’ve never actually done an Expo before, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m told it can be a really wonderful experience. My old friend, Brendan Fraser is going to be there. I’m really looking forward to seeing him. I haven’t seen him in a long time.