Your elite special-ops team has just foiled a plot by a Russian arms dealer to nuke Las Vegas into kingdom come — and now it’s time to party like nobody’s business in Sin City.
It’s against protocol, but hey, you worked hard for six months and need to blow off some steam, so what the hell, right?
But, wait … seems like your team was fooled, and you’re ordered back in to finish the job — all while you’re plastered and zonked on a mixture of booze and chemical substances — as the clock ticks toward nuclear armageddon.
Welcome to the world of “Obliterated,” a raunchy Netflix ensemble comedy series, with touches of “The Hangover,” shot mostly in Las Vegas with stars Nick Zano (Navy SEAL Chad McKnight); Shelley Hennig (CIA agent Ava Winters); Terrence Terrell (Navy SEAL Trunk); C. Thomas Howell (bushy-bearded, far-out Army explosive expert Haggerty); Eugene Kim (straight-laced Air Force pilot Paul Yung); Paola Lázaro (Marine sniper Angela Gomez); and Kimi Rutledge (nerdy National Security Agency information expert Maya Lerner).
Costa Ronin (“The Americans,” “Homeland,” “Gotham”) plays bad-guy Russian mastermind Ivan Koslov.
“Obliterated” was created by Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg -— the team behind “Cobra Kai” and “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” — who spoke to The Post about the series, premiering Nov. 30.
Were there any other cities considered besides Las Vegas?
Josh Heald: It was born out of our love of all-things Vegas and putting it there added yet another element — it’s not like they’re in Chicago in the middle of winter and have to get the project in by dawn, but that they have to get that nuclear bomb in Las Vegas while the city is partying and life is going on like there are no other problems in the world. We’ve all been at the Christmas party where things go too far, and you witness people behaving in a far-from-professional way. We also thought of this idea of what it’s like to be a member of an elite special forces team that does something so unbelievable to preserve the safety of the homeland … how do you release that stress and energy you’ve been carrying? This is a group that knows they did something special and unbelievably unique and demands a party … and then all the bad things that happen at a party and then the ultimate punishment: You have to go back to work.
Hayden Schlossberg: We tried to do the entire production in Vegas, but it was not feasible for a variety of reasons, so we shot a lot on a stage in Albuquerque [New Mexico] and a lot of the desert stuff in Albuquerque, but we did shoot a significant portion in the city of Las Vegas. This is meant to be a fun, Netflix action comedy series, and “The Hangover” was huge for Las Vegas in terms of promoting tourism … and, at the end [of the series,] you realize Vegas is a really fun place to go. It was very tricky and rewarding [shooting there,] but was very rewarding, and we loved what we got out of the city.
How important was the casting?
Jon Hurwitz: Casting was everything on this project. Instead of shoe-horning certain famous names into different parts that didn’t feel right or authentic, Netflix tasked us with finding people that truly embodied the characters, both from the best-of-the-best and saving the day standpoint, but also being able to be hilarious and play the comedy and the party scenes strongly. The dynamics you see on the show … a lot of the camaraderie is real; Nick and Shelley are kind of butting heads throughout the series (when they’re not hooking up,) but in real life, that chemistry was instantaneous. They both knew what they were in for and were ready to play.
What was your inspiration?
Schlossberg: A big part of why we made this series is that we like to examine heroes and heroism. We grew up in a time where we celebrated [on-screen] military heroes, whether it was [Arnold] Schwarzenegger or [Sylvester] Stallone — we had these big, iconic, old-school warriors who fought for our country. You don’t know these people, they don’t get a parade — the people celebrated nowadays are the DJs, the influencers, people who are questionable in terms of what they’re actually contributing to society. What’s it like to risk your life saving your country only to see some Vegas DJ getting all the adulation? We were going for that commentary, too.
The series is very racy. Does its content lend itself to a streaming audience?
Hurwitz: We always envisioned this as a Netflix series. Before we made “Cobra Kai,” we all came up [in the business] making R-rated comedies — “Harold & Kumar,” “Hot Tub Time Machine,” an “American Pie” movie — that kind of comedy where people laugh out loud and the shocking surprise of the comedy where anything can happen. There aren’t enough of these in the TV space these days. So we had this idea of a supersized, R-rated summer blockbuster comedy merged with a big summer blockbuster action film — to mush those two things together into a seven-hour super-series. Netflix was the perfect home for this.
“Obliterated” debuts on Netflix on Thursday, Nov. 30.
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