What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but I can’t help but spill the beans on a fantastic trip I recently took to Sin City for the launch of Netflix‘s new series, Obliterated. Premiering today on Netflix, this eight-episode series (which our critic, Alex Maidy, loved) comes from the guys behind Cobra Kai, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, and is a gloriously profane and non-PC throwback to their Harold & Kumar days – albeit with a heavy dose of Jerry Bruckheimer-style action thrown in.
The show focuses on an elite team of Navy SEALS, led by Nick Zano’s Chad McKnight, who, along with a CIA agent, Ava Winters (Shelley Henning) and her tech wiz, Maya (Kimi Rutledge), have just taken down a terrorist cell planning to blow up Las Vegas. To celebrate a well-done job, the team decides to do what one naturally does in Vegas – get really f*cked up.
But, amid their bacchanal of booze, drugs, random hook-ups and general mischief, they discover that the cell they took down was a decoy and that they have only hours to take down the actual cell. Now, the team has to battle their various inebriations to save the day in a show like The Hangover mixed with The Rock. Check out my interview with Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald here:
As part of the show’s launch, several of us were invited to Vegas for a tour of the places they shot the show, including the world-famous Little Vegas Chapel, a zip-lining stopover and more.
I’ll be posting more from my Hangover-esque trip to Vegas (which, yes, concluded with a hangover) a little later in the show’s run, but to celebrate the show’s launch today, here are some interviews I was able to do with the creative team involved. This includes Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and Heald, stunt coordinator Marcus Young and military advisor Kevin Kent, who wanted to ensure the action was legit. Check out the interviews at the top of this article.
Sadly, the SAG-AFTRA strike was still on when we did these interviews (it ended right after the junket was over), so we didn’t get to speak to the excellent cast. Like Cobra Kai, Obliterated is well cast, with Shelley Henning and Nick Zano having great chemistry, although the show is all but stolen by 80s icon C. Thomas Howell as the team’s bomb specialist, who goes HARD in Vegas. The show is a total blast and well worth watching.