Production
Smiling Friends was created by animators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, noted for their individual successes as content creators for Newgrounds and YouTube. Already well-acquainted with each other online, the pair conceived the idea for the show in 2017 whilst dining at Gus's Chicken in Burbank, California (during a visit from Cusack, who is based in Melbourne). Hadel stated in an interview that the pair's goal for the show was to base it around "a group of lovable characters, with a simple kind of concept, which we could take anywhere we wanted to". They settled upon the premise of a hotline for people who were unhappy, which became "the connective tissue that made it all click together". He said that although "the company is an important aspect of the show, it's really the springboard" and that they "have episodes where it's not even about the job at all". The pair singled out South Park and Seinfeld as amongst the show's biggest influences. The duo developed the show's art style as a 50/50 blend of their own individual styles, though Cusack noted that his own drawings tend to go through a "final Zach gloss". Early in development, the series went under the working title Little Helpers, with an entirely different cast.
Hadel and Cusack pitched the series to Cartoon Network, which greenlit production on the pilot for the network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim in 2018. Hadel had previously attempted to sell his and Chris O'Neill's web series Hellbenders to the network, but the project was not picked up while an independently produced pilot was shelved during production. O'Neill would later compose the Smiling Friends theme song. Meanwhile, Cusack created the Rick and Morty parody Bushworld Adventures, which premiered as an April Fool's Day stunt on the network in 2018, and also created the series YOLO, which premiered in August 2020.
The Smiling Friends pilot, which the pair consider the first official episode, aired on Adult Swim on April 1, 2020, to positive reviews and became the most viewed episode of any show on the network's website. The network subsequently ordered seven additional episodes in May 2021. Serving as showrunners, Hadel and Cusack were hands on in all aspects of production, from writing, storyboards, character designs, final animation and sound design, which the duo considered unusual for an adult animated series. According to Hadel, the budget for the entire first season was equivalent to that of a single episode of Family Guy (an estimated US$2,000,000).
Adult Swim renewed the series for a second season on February 9, 2022. On May 18, 2022, Hadel announced on Twitter that a special would be released sometime before the second season. A listing for an episode titled "The Smiling Friends Go to Brazil!" appeared on Rotten Tomatoes on July 21, and was confirmed by Hadel and Cusack at Adult Swim's San Diego Comic-Con panel the next day. It aired on August 6, 2022. Lead-in promotion to the episode purposely suggested a more conventional vacation episode than what was actually presented, with a poster of the Smiling Friends relaxing on a Brazilian beach, and a summary suggesting that the episode would be about the gang relaxing in a beautiful Brazilian beach town.
During Adult Swim's panel at New York Comic Con in October 2023, it was confirmed that the second season would premiere in 2024, and would continue to explore a variety of animation styles, such as stylized 2D, 3D, stop motion, flash animation, rotoscoping, and live-action content.
On June 13, 2024, at Annecy International Animation Film Festival, it was announced the series was renewed for three additional seasons.
The first two seasons were primarily animated by Studio Yotta and Princess Bento Studio, a joint venture between the Melbourne-based media company Princess Pictures and the American animation studio Bento Box Entertainment. The studio has additionally worked on Cusack's other animated series, such as season 2 of YOLO and the Hulu original series Koala Man. Since Cusack lives in Australia and Hadel lives in the United States, the show is produced remotely. Starting with the release of season 3 in 2025, production was fully moved to Williams Street in-house, with additional animation services being handled by Saerom Animation in South Korea and Dinamita Animación in Colombia, with specialty animation done by ZAM Studios: a new Los Angeles-based studio founded by Cusack, Hadel and Aron Fromm. The final two episodes of the third season (and by extension, the series overall), however, were animated by Titmouse in Vancouver alongside ZAM still providing specialty animation for those episodes.
