Director's Notes – Episode 80

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

Joseph and I met the author Maureen Johnson on twitter a few years back. (She's @maureenjohnson. Go follow her. Do it now. You will not regret it.) She found our show about a year in and started talking about how much she liked it. We developed a twitter friendship with her, and that would have been a terribly confusing sentence for all of us just 8 years ago.

Maureen is a delightful, funny, and wise person. And like we do from time to time with people we enjoy, we named an intern after her*. Intern Maureen first appeared in Episode 35 "Lazy Day" on Nov 15, 2013. 

Maureen responded on Twitter immediately to her namesake's debut (note the timestamp):

But as with most Night Vale radio interns, something terrible would befall her, and in episode 38 "Orange Grove" from Jan 1, 2014, Intern Maureen drinks the orange juice that causes her to flicker out of existence. 

Maureen Johnson responded a couple days later:

On twitter, @NightValeRadio & @maureenjohnson teased back and forth about this unfortunate occurrence, until Joseph and I decided we would bring back Intern Maureen IF Maureen Johnson agreed to perform the character live on stage at Town Hall for our 2nd anniversary show (Episode 49 "Old Oak Doors" in June 2014). She did, and she was great. 

Once we cast an actor as a character, it gives that character a fuller life, direction, and personality. Maureen Johnson's mock-angry glares on social media really informed the character of (former) Intern Maureen's true angry glares at Cecil. 

Even when the actor isn't voicing that character - as is the case with Maureen in the newest episode where Cecil runs into Maureen, and she is, unsurprisingly, annoyed with her old boss - that actor has still strongly informed who that character is. And having spent a lot of time with real Maureen this past year (GeekyCon, NerdCon, the Night Vale book tour event at WORD Bookstore in Jersey), her namesake was fresh in our minds. We couldn't resist bring her back into podcast.

I mean, it's probably just for this one small part. I'm sure it's just a one-off scene and will never to come up again. I mean, why would it?

- Jeffrey Cranor
December 15, 2015

* a few other intern-naming notes: Intern Dana was named after one of our podcasts earliest fans; Intern Vithya was named after one of the first people I met in college; Intern Zvi was named after choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, whose work I saw once and liked; Intern Hannah was named after a winner of WNYC's excellent gameshow (& podcast) Ask Me Another.