Danny Pudi is a fast-talker, but the kid is smart, too. Ask him a question-- any question, really-- and he is able to fire off an answer immediately, barely even pausing for breath. It is as if he can anticipate exactly what you want to know and start formulating his own thoughts before you even finish yours. His energy and intelligence in that way greatly mirror that of his NBC Community character, Abed, a Greendale student with an interest in film studies and an encyclopedia of knowledge about pop culture in his brain.
Abed could have easily been a character just pushed to the side, somewhat lost in a sea of louder, more veteran comedians (let's face it, the guy is in scenes with Joel McHale, Chevy Chase, Ken Jeong, and Yvette Nicole Brown, for crying out-loud!). But due to Pudi's own genius sense of comic timing, he has actually emerged not only as a fan favorite, but a critic darling, as well. Abed could have been a token, trotted out only for the occasional one-liner, but creator Dan Harmon really saw the potential in both Pudi and his character and ran with it.
"I'm very fortunate," Pudi admits, "because I think the writers have given me so much to work on and expand on, and you kind of never know in comedy how these things will work out being a side character. I'm just one of the ensemble, you know? [But I've been fortunate enough to have] been given all of these great, rich things to work on...We move together as kind of a funny amoeba!"
Pudi, an actor and comedian but someone who never went to film school, says he is learning a great deal by working with the greats who have come through both Community and the subsequent web spin-off videos of Abed, Troy, and now even Senor Chang. The newest one debuted on NBC.com yesterday ("Spanish Video Assignment") in two parts.
"Technology has come a long way," Pudi acknowledges, when asked why do a web series. "For me as an artist, it's just another outlet for creative expression."
Pudi continues: "I think what's great about these webisodes-- or even the tags at the end of our episodes-- is that they're designed for our generation. They're thirty seconds of fun that people can pass on, and they may not tell you what the show's about, but they give you a sense of the show, these characters, and the world in a quick, funny way to grab your attention."
After all, attention spans seem to be dwindling these days, and more and more people are taking to watching content on their computers anyway, so why not produce new, original programming made exactly for the medium?
"I think that there's a sense of freedom that comes to the web stuff that we're shooting. We're able to "go for it" a little bit more," Pudi explains, when asked what's most fun about the new medium. "We're not really constricted to the story, per se, because as long as you have pretty specific characters and points of view, you can kind of go anywhere."
However, he has found at least one pitfall of the shorter clips format: "You also don't have a lot of time for really honest, slow, patient moments. Like in ["Contemporary American Poultry," the April 22 episode of Community], when Jeff (Joel McHale) walks in on me, and he's going to sabotage the fry machine, there's probably a good ten to fifteen seconds of silence. That's something that's tricky in terms of web stuff because with those slow beats, I think people will tune out."
Pudi equates web series almost to Twitter in terms of the nature to be precise with a joke. "[They're] great little exercises to be like 'How concise can I do this??'"
Luckily for Pudi, though, he gets to do both-- television and the web-- right now. It's like having his cake (or chicken fingers, if you will) and eating it, too!
Community airs on NBC on Thursdays at 8pm. You can catch a behind-the-scenes moment with Pudi from his latest web project below.
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