The Big Picture

Sausage Party: Foodtopia
is a spin-off series with the original stars and some new cast.
The show pushes boundaries with food vs. human humor and Amazon even required a warning for explicit content.
Characters like Frank, the sausage; Brenda, the hot dog bun; and Julius, the orange, explore societal themes disguised in pun-filled humor.

You can likely tell by the sound of it: Sausage Party isn’t for kids.

The explicit animated romp hit theaters in 2016 with an all-star cast, including co-creator Seth Rogen, voicing anthropomorphic food items in a supermarket. Now, the pun-filled feature has a spin-off miniseries, Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Available streaming on Amazon Prime, Foodtopia brings back original stars Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz, and Edward Norton and adds newcomers Will Forte, Natasha Rothwell, Sam Richardson, and Yassir Lester (Black Monday) to the mix.

Sausage Party: Foodtopia expands on the food vs. human humor with jokes that had Amazon requiring a warning in front of one particularly offensive episode. Collider’s Steve Weintraub sat down with Rogen, Wiig, and Richardson, who respectively voice Frank, the sausage; Brenda, the hot dog bun; Julius, the orange, to discuss the boundary-pushing they do in the recording booth for a show inspired, in part, “by oranges having butt holes.”

Sausage Party: Foodtopia (2024) Following the events of the 2016 film, Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy try to build their own food society.Release Date July 11, 2024 Seasons 1

COLLIDER: Seth, originally, I heard that you were thinking about making this as a movie sequel, and then it obviously became an animated series on Prime Video. How much of the ideas when you were thinking about the sequel were actually with this series, or was it radically different?

SETH ROGEN: No, it was similar. We always had this idea that you followed the victory of food over humans and what happened in the wake of that. And yeah, a lot of the ideas that we had been kicking around worked their way directly into the show. So it was something we never stopped talking about. We liked the people; we liked making food jokes and puns with one another, and we felt as though there was an opportunity to do more of that. Whenever I try to answer these questions too seriously, it sounds insane because it’s a show about — it’s a talking food show. I’m aware of that.

I’ve seen the first six episodes and there is a joke that’s aimed at, like, five people. It’s about Call Me By Your Name. I lost it because of the deep cut. So I have to know, where did this thing come from? Because, again, there it’s aimed at five people, and I’m one of the five.

KRISTEN WIIG: My favorite joke.

ROGEN: That’s what this allowed us to do.

Where did it come from?

ROGEN: I think maybe Kyle or Ariel, one of the other writers originally thought of it. And yeah, the idea is that you’re holding on Will Forte eating a foot as he weeps. And it’s the same shot from the end of Call Me by Your Name. And as the credits roll, we play the song from the credits of Call Me by Your Name, which I was just explaining was incredibly hard to do. We had to get Luca Guadagnino and Sufjan Stevens personally to sign off on it, which took a lot of letters back and forth and showing them the scene and convincing them that this would not hijack the way people view the film forevermore. But yeah, I think it worked well, ultimately. But yes, a lot of effort went into that joke.

Image via Sony Pictures Classics

It’s a home run. There is some pretty filthy stuff in this. Is there one joke that you still can’t believe is in this show?

SAM RICHARDSON: That’s a tough one.

WIIG: It is a tough one because what’s so great about the show is that nothing’s really too filthy for it. Anything is possible. It’s a show about hope.

ROGEN: It’s about potential.

WIIG: Anytime you’re in the booth, and you have to do — like, we were talking about the sex noises. I mean, that’s just awkward, anyway, but knowing that it’s for food and what it is — because you’re doing it seriously, and then there’s that awkward silence when you’re like, “Is that good? Do you want more?”

RICHARDSON: Like I’m doing a record for getting rimmed out.

ROGEN: That’s the line on the ADR: “Getting totally rimmed out.”

RICHARDSON: “I’m gonna give you three of these, some space, and then we’ll just go on.” Something I haven’t done in regular action; honored for the opportunity.

ROGEN: Push people’s limits. And I’m always like, “You’re recording, right?” Because when you do it, and they’re not recording, it’s extremely embarrassing.

WIIG: Oh, it’s awful! And then you have to do it again.

ROGEN: “I got to do it more?” “We didn’t get that.” I’m like, “Oh, no, I was just doing it?”

It is very weird to do a junket like this after all the serious ones I’ve done where people can talk about a rim job.

ROGEN: Getting rimmed out is my favorite expression of all time.

Amazon Required a Warning in Front of One Particularly Explicit Episode

It’s insane. Seth you have put on the air some pretty fucked up stuff. I love it, but there is a note at the beginning of, I think, Episode 5 or 6 where Amazon made you put up a warning. So what is it like after all the fucked up stuff you’ve done that Amazon said, “You need to put a warning up.”

ROGEN: Honestly, it was confusing, that of all the things we’ve done on Amazon, that was one of the ones that have required a warning.

WIIG: Well, that gives credit to Amazon because I feel like most people would just cut it, and they said, “No, we want to let them do what they do.” I think that’s actually really cool.

ROGEN: That was actually the conversation: “This is so crazy, we might need a warning.” And we were like, great. Just keep it.

WIIG: Just keep it

ROGEN: They truly didn’t make us cut anything, and it was fine. I don’t care if there’s a warning. Every episode of South Park has a warning. If anything, it was funny to us. And I think we wrote the warning, which was nice. We got to write our own warning.

Do any of you want to tease what this episode has that caused a warning?

RICHARDSON: “Tease” is the exact word.

ROGEN: I think “tease” is the exact word. I think we finally explored the sexual potential that our world has, in a world where food and humans coexist.

It’s also a great joke.

ROGEN: Yeah, it’s funny. Mainly, the Scott Mayo joke was where they bristled but we got off.

Sam Richardson’s Orange Julius Plays a Major Role
Image via Complex Pop Culture

I definitely want to touch on the character that you play, Sam, which is Orange. He wants to be a leader, there is some coercion. There is some stuff going on there. Maybe this is based on someone in the real world?

RICHARDSON: I think truly it’s just based on the fact that — tell me if I’m wrong — just that Orange has a butt hole.

ROGEN: It’s true. Honestly, it was not to be a direct political commentary — it was more meant to be like a broad societal commentary and more a commentary on starting a society. And the fact that it is an orange is because oranges have butt holes. That was ultimately — maybe you haven’t had it revealed yet — but it becomes a very intrinsic plot point to the whole show. And so I think that that will soon be revealed to you as you finish out the season. But the idea was not actually meant to be anything anchored to our specific moment other than the oranges have butt holes, which is necessary for us to do the storytelling that we wanted to do.

Something I want to touch on is one of the reasons I think the show is so good is that you’re dealing with political, real-world stuff in a show that also has food fucking and everything else. The jokes are very funny, but then it’s really real. So can you sort of touch on that?

ROGEN: Yeah, I mean, to us, as the people working on it, it’s fun to engage things that we actually find interesting and to like, I think, you know, we all, all of us had read that book Sapiens. That was actually a big inspiration to us because it was about the formation of society and how people paired off and grouped up and made cities and towns and made money and all this stuff and currency. That was actually a big inspiration, was how you start from nothing and create a society and how hard it would be and how much conflict there would inherently be between people serving their own interests and all this stuff. And so that was really what inspired us was this idea of just how society forms, in general, and a lot of food puns as well. And that oranges have butt holes.

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Is there anything you guys want to add?

WIIG: I think comedy — sometimes people are always like, “Oh, but it’s got heart,” or “It’s got this message.” I think you need that in order to make the comedy work, and I think you need the comedy for the emotion to work. And because if you just have joke, joke, joke, you’re not going to be as invested. So I think, again, we’re talking about a show that has talking food, but it’s really smart, and the writing is really good, and I think they are touching on some important things in a very, very funny way, and that’s harder than it looks.

RICHARDSON I think the best art, be it drama, has levity in it. The best comedy has stakes in it, and these stakes talk.

ROGEN: I knew he was going there.

WIIG: You win.

All eight episodes of Sausage Party: Foodtopia Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video now.

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