CBS Eye AnimationBack in 2020, during the lockdowns that required people to remain in their homes, there were a few collective touchstones that people indulged in to remain sane. For starters, the complete original series of Avatar: The Last Airbender dropped on Netflix, allowing old fans to take a trip down memory lane and new fans to discover Aang and the gang for the first time. Warner Bros. and HBO Max released multiple films straight-to-streaming and in theaters, including Godzilla vs. Kong and the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot. And of course, there was Among Us.Initially released to little fanfare back in 2018, the social deduction/online party game experienced a surge of attention during lockdown from people whose only interaction with friends and the outside world came through the virtual space. The gameplay loop involved a group as small as four or as big as 15 trying to deduce which crew members on a spaceship are actually alien impostors. The game’s cultural ubiquity didn’t go unnoticed by a certain Owen Dennis, the creator of the short-lived and beloved animated series Infinity Train and now the creator and director of Paramount’s new Among Us show.“I do remember it being like, ‘Wow, this is quite the phenomenon,’ because I played it and had fun with it,” Dennis shares with Inverse. “And then I remember my next-door neighbor had a birthday party and kids were driving by with Among Us characters hanging out their doors. I’d go to parks and see it graffitied on stuff. It was everywhere man, it was nuts.”Even though Among Us doesn’t have a canon narrative the same way that something like Resident Evil or other adapted video games do, it’s still an intimidating task to try and bring to life a project that has such a dedicated fan base and such a presence in contemporary pop culture. Just like the game, the show follows a group of 11 crewmates on board the spaceship Skeld, who discover that there’s a malicious alien impostor among them who plans on picking them all off one by one. Unlike the game, however, Dennis got to build a star-studded ensemble from the ground up, replacing the wordless amorphous blob avatars with tangible characters inhabited by a buffet of recognizable character actors.The show pulls off an incredibly tricky balancing act of paying homage to the recognizable aspects of the game while also bringing its own identity to the table. | CBS Eye Animation“It was nice to try and figure out an ensemble cast,” says Dennis. “I haven’t really had to do that before. It was very much like, ‘Oh, I need to think of 11 different people and how they all interact and what their relationships are while treating none of them like the main character.’ That’s an interesting space to be in.”That ensemble includes veteran actors such as Yvette Nicole Brown, Elijah Wood, Dan Stevens, Randall Park, and Kimiko Glenn. The show both invents its own unique visual language with its animation while also staying true to the minimalist character designs of the game, and at first glance, you’d think that would be an obstacle for voice actors who are used to inhabiting expressive, full-bodied characters. But according to Park and Glenn, who play the spaceship captain Red and the new-age spiritualist geologist Cyan, it was no problem at all.Without the show’s sizeable and committed voice talent, it simply wouldn’t work nearly as well. | CBS Eye Animation“I always assume, especially when you’re joining a project that obviously has a stacked cast and an awesome creative, they’ve got you,” Glenn tells Inverse. “There was so much on the page to play with that, even if they were just the color brown or whatever just floating in space, I think people would still enjoy it because the script is so good. It’s so funny, the characters are so fleshed-out and rich. I didn’t have any concerns about that.”Just by the nature of the eclectic characters and the incredibly versatile and talented voice cast, viewers will certainly get attached to the crew of the Skeld — hopefully just not too attached, as the very design of the show requires one of them to perish rather horribly once per episode. As to be expected from a show based off an interactive multiplayer murder mystery, there’s a commendable body count amassed by the end of the season and a lot of animated viscera, which was part of the appeal for both the creator and the actors involved.Kimiko Glenn plays Cyan, the ship’s resident geologist who most assuredly reads her horoscope every day. | CBS Eye Animation“I feel like it’s always very exciting to be a part of something like that,” Park explains. “I think of the movies I grew up with as a kid, like Predator and these action movies where castmates that you love would just slowly get picked off. I always feel like that’s super fun.”Dennis echoed that same sentiment, saying he wanted each character to kick the bucket in an affecting way. “I want them to be at a certain point in their arc, like ‘things are going great for them.’ It’s going to be great and then it’s going to hurt, which is also very funny because these characters look ridiculous.”Even though the stakes are fatal, there’s something immensely funny about seeing colorful cartoon blobs be torn to pieces. | InnerslothAmidst all the blood and guts and hilarious sight gags and ridiculous character quirks, the show also rests atop a vital foundational critique of capitalist workplace exploitation. Along with being victimized by a shapeshifting alien, the crew of the Skeld have to contend with being underpaid and generally undervalued, which isn’t necessarily present in the game but can be found in the DNA of the game’s major inspirations, such as The Thing and Alien. For Owen Dennis, that element of the show came naturally, but it’s also inescapable given the premise of the show and the game to an extent.“I have some feelings about capitalist workplace culture and I think the people who made the game also have some feelings about that as well,” says Dennis. “It’s a spaceship where the corporation doesn’t give a sh*t about the people that are working there. Is it a critique or is that just what life is? These giant corporations own everything and make us all deal with their bullsh*t all the time because they don’t really care about workers. So I’m perfectly happy to have some characters show off their Union Medicare card. Right now we are in a bit of a problem with the corporations, and I think we could stand to have a little more power to the people.”Among Us is now streaming on Paramount+.