First of all, before I even get into this Upload Series Comic-Con At Home panel recap, if you haven’t watched Upload yet, WATCH IT!
It was so freaking good! Omg!
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out the way … let’s jump into this recap, shall we?
(Just so you know, if you want to watch the full panel, the YouTube video is at the end of this post. If not … just keep reading.)
During the Amazon Prime Video Upload Series Comic-Con At Home Panel creator, executive producer and director Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and stars Robbie Amell (Code 8), Andy Allo (Pitch Perfect 3), Kevin Bigley (Undone), Allegra Edwards (New Girl), and Zainab Johnson (American Koko) discuss how they brought this futuristic comedy to life, share behind-the-scenes details from season one, and tease what fans can expect in season two. The panel was moderated by Engadget’s Cherlynn Low.
Upload season one is a ten-episode, half-hour, sci-fi comedy that takes place in the near future, where people can be “Uploaded” into a virtual afterlife of their choice.
And it’s good, trust me!
(Totally freaking weird, but good!)
Click here for a full description of the series, and to check out the trailer.
Amazon Prime Video Upload Series Comic-Con At Home Panel Recap
So apparently, the original idea for Upload was inspired by ads for CD players?
WTF!
First of all, CD players were SO LONG ago!
So that’s crazy!
Plus that shows how long ago creator, executive producer, and director Greg Daniels spent working on developing the idea for this!
I also learned that …
All printers are made the same!
They’re all the same speed.
So “slower printers” are just the fast printers with a chip inside of it that slows it down!
That way they can sell these “slower” models at a cheaper price. (Now all I need to do is figure out what this chip looks like, where it is, and how to remove it. Ha!)
However, the same concept is applied in the show, where the 2 Gigs (folks who don’t have an unlimited supply of everything they “need” or want when uploaded to Lakeview) are given fewer resources in order to make folks want to save up throughout their lives to be able to afford more gigs.
The more gigs you have, aka the more money you have, the more things you can buy!
And when Allegra Edwards (who plays Nathan’s girlfriend Ingrid in the show) is asked ‘what it was like to “date” a ghost’ …
She describes her and Nathans’s relationship as a “long-distance relationship”.
Which I guess is a really cool way of looking at it. But … the issue is that, with her being alive, and him being dead, they can’t ever really TRULY be together right?
Whereas in a long-distance relationship you can just go visit them for the holidays.
But that’s where the “hug suit” comes in handy. The hug suit allows those that are still alive to be able to “hug”, as well as feel, touch, and you know … do other things, with those that have already been uploaded.
(Okay, yes, sex … I meant sex! Gosh.)
But when the cast was asked if they’d actually ever use a hug suit in real life …
Allegra said that …
“I think the idea of it is better than putting it into practice. It’s very hot, very sticky and very difficult to hear.”
Zainab said she wouldn’t do it if it was rented!
(And I’m right with you sis!)
She also mentioned that people who clean the suit have what we call “low-level” jobs, which means they probably don’t care about their job as much as they should which would result in them not cleaning the suits properly, and that’s just not a risk she’s willing to take.
Robbie, on the other hand, said he’d like to be the one to try it FIRST, and then anyone else can use it after him. Basically, he’s in as long as he’s not using the hug suit after someone else. It’s gotta be brand spanking new!
Could you use a hug suit?
Photo Credit: Katie Yu
However, what I loved more than the hug suits is Kevin’s analogy for his character Luke.
Which was …
“Luke is like a hamster who really digs his cage.”
And honestly, if you watch the show, which again, you should, then you know how true this statement is! This was such a GREAT analogy for Luke. He was really comfortable at Lakeview. Like WAY too comfortable.
But Kevin did speak a bit about WHY he thinks Luke was so comfortable and he basically said that because his former life was so hard, Luke was basically hanging on to all the good things in his afterlife to ignore what life once was like.
I mean … if your life was super hard, and then you got uploaded into an “afterlife” that was WAY better than real life, with all you can eat tacos and shrimp, and a huge buffet breakfast, a few illegal parties at a forbidden club with “real” hot chicks, I’m guessing you’d be happy about your afterlife too. I know I would be!
Oh and of course, after the analogy, came a crazy animal combo to describe Luke.
“If I were to compare Luke to an animal it would probably be something like a shark.”
To which Greg then replied, “Half shark half hamster?” So yeah … Kevin is now happy with his animal mashup, and is now on the lookout for someone to draw this as fan art or a tattoo!
So if you’re an artist, get to work!
Draw it up and tag the man on social!
Give him what he wants!
And if that animal combo wasn’t strange enough, Zainab confessed the most shocking thing of all …
She thinks Aleesha (her character in the show) is grateful for Luke!
You’ll get why this is so shocking after you’ve watched Season 1 of Upload on Amazon Prime Video, however her reason for saying this was “because he made things fun”.
And who doesn’t love the person at work who makes things more fun?
Zainab also got in on the “animal combo” fun and said that Aleesha would probably be a tiger and a bear.
(Which Kevin HATES by the way.)
Zainab did also mention what she hopes will happen in Season 2!
She specifically said that she can’t WAIT to see why Aleesha has SO many jobs and if she has the same disdain for those jobs as she does for her job at Horizon.
Greg didn’t exactly confirm this, but keep reading to see what he DID share about Season 2 below.
Before I get into what may or may not happen in Season 2 …
The cast also discussed what their favorite piece of tech in the show was.
Zainab likes the consent forms in the Nightly dating app but mentioned that a food printer would be super useful right now ’cause Corona out here tripping B. (She ain’t say all that but I know that’s what she meant. Just trust me on this.)
Allegra said she’d take a self-driving car … without the ethical questions!
Although Kevin’s a little worried that if he did have a self-driving car he’d randomly wake up in Vegas one morning after a drunk night with friends since they always make the craziest decisions when drunk, and all it takes is for one of them to say “go” and they’re off!
However, Robbie did mention that … “once you die in one, you no longer want one”.
(So ya know … if you ever get your hands on a self-driving car, do us all a favor, and maybe don’t die in it? Cool, cool!)
He did say that he loves the memory parlor though. Which I also loved!
Photo Credit: Amazon Studios
A few more fun facts l learned about the show were that …
- Greg came up with all of these ideas by himself over the years.
- The ideas were inspired by computers and how we can just press a button on a computer and poof it happens.
We also got to watch a deleted scene from one of the episodes where …
Ingrid is in a self-driving car with Nathan’s niece (played by Chloe Coleman) and she asks her if she’s ever had real food before.
Like … non printed food!
Which of course this girl thinks is disgusting!
There’s also another deleted scene where someone tries to plant seeds but apparently it’s illegal to grow your own food so they stop her! It’s basically the way the big corporations in Upload control everyone.
And this brings up an excellent question.
Is the food from their food printer in Upload even healthy?
To which Greg replies, “Not everything is great in this world.”
But hey, with a chance at an afterlife who needs healthy food right? (Kidding.)
Last but not least, before we get into S2 …
The cast also gave their opinions on whether or not they’d like to be Uploaded if that was ever a real possibility.
Greg, Andy, Robbie, and Kevin all said yes!
Robbie did mention that he looks at ‘uploading’ as the in-between. Basically, you can continue living in some version of yourself, despite not actually being alive.
Greg feels the same way and thinks that in a few years, give or take a hundred, it could become a medical treatment to stay alive with friends. He also says that “maybe the body isn’t the important part but maybe it’s the consciousness that’s really important.”
Meaning, does it really matter if your physical body isn’t around if your loved ones can still talk to you because your conscious is?
Kevin, while agreeing does understand that there are a few negative consequences that would come into play if people could upload. For one, removing ‘fear of death’ means that people would no longer have a reason to be good people.
If you’re no longer afraid to die because you KNOW you’ll just keep on “living” there’s bound to be at least a few people who slip up and get crazy just for the hell of it right?
Zainab thinks the idea is pretty cool but doesn’t know if she’d be able to trust the big cooperations to be in charge of her body or well being. She then spilled that there are a few restaurants right now where you have to ASK for a real egg! She didn’t mention which ones, but I might have to tweet her real quick to find out, cause I could have sworn we were all eating real eggs! What is going on!
And if folks are doing this now, imagine what they’ll do if Upload was real?
Andy may have been the only one super excited to be Uploaded!
Like if you told her this was possible a few years from now, I’m sure she’d start saving.
Finally, here’s what Greg “spilled” about Season 2 of Upload …
While he couldn’t mention much because they’re still writing the script and things could change, he did mention that some of the things mentioned in this panel may be coming in Season 2! So yay Aleesha!?
There’s also some new tech coming, so I’m excited to see what they’ll think of next!
And … Nora and Nathan (awww, someone carve that into a tree with a heart around it for me) will definitely be shaking things up at Lakeview. Okay, so maybe he didn’t use the phrase “shaking things up” fine!
But he did say they were gonna change some things, so hopefully, those 2 gigs will have a better life in Season 2!
And that’s pretty much it!
If you want you can watch the full video below in case I accidentally missed something, but that pretty much covers the entire Comic-Con Upload panel so I think that’s it for this recap.
Watch the full panel below
Click here to watch Upload on Prime Video.
