Joey and Matthew Lawrence on Launching Their New Graphic Novel, ’90s Nostalgia and Hopes for an Animated Series

The Lawrence Brothers are embarking on a new adventure as detectives — at least, in the comics. Last summer, Joey, Matt and Andrew Lawrence announced that they were teaming with the Berkowitz Brothers, Sean Von Gorman and Z2 for The Lawrence Brothers Detective Agency, an original graphic novel series. They made their announcement via a Kickstarter campaign that allowed fans to be part of the project from the start, as well as appearances at San Diego Comic-Con. The fruits of their effort is now available for purchase online and in stores (a deluxe edition featuring an exclusive retro Trapper Keeper-style slipcase is available for purchase at Z2’s website). The story reimagines the former child stars as reluctant heroes battling a conspiracy that’s warping the very fabric of fame. The tale, set against the surreal backdrop of a corrupted Hollywood, follows the brothers as they survive a monster outbreak at a fan con, among other adventures. It’s describes as “a satirical fever dream about identity, memory and the absurdity of pop culture. Think BoJack Horseman meets Chinatown. Smart, surreal, and completely not what anyone expected … and that’s exactly the point.” The brothers were heavily involved in the creation of graphic novel, which they co-created and wrote with the Berkowitz Brothers (Josh Gad’s The Writer), a production company founded by Ben and Max Berkowitz that creates and develops original comic book IP as a direct pipeline for film and television. Additional writing for the graphic novel came from Brian Yuran, with art by Eisner-nominated Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot, Pawn Shop) of Comics. Z2 is comic book and graphic novel publisher that woks with closely top artists and musicians. The darkly funny, satirical graphic novel pokes fun at their past as child stars; their collective credits include such TV shows and movies as Gimme a Break!, Blossom, Mrs. Doubtfire, Boy Meets World and their own sitcom, Brotherly Love. (More recently, the trio reunited onscreen for the indie holiday film Mistletoe Mixup and a sequel. In addition, they co-host the Brotherly Love Podcast, which features confessions, behind-the-scenes stories and their takes on growing up famous. Joey and Matthew also joined other ’90s icons recently for HGTV’s renovation competition Totally ’90s House.) “We made [the graphic novel] for the for the fans and the community that supported us for 45 years, so hopefully you guys [the fans] will enjoy it,” Joey Lawrence tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s what it was intended to be: absolute pure enjoyment. Hopefully, you’ll laugh and you’ll reminisce a little bit, and then hopefully you’ll want to come back for more. That’s what it really is; there’s nothing more complicated than that.” Joey and Matthew Lawrence recently talked to THR about their new graphic novel, the current wave of ’90s nostalgia and their hopes for an animated series. How did the idea for the graphic novel come about? MATTHEW LAWRENCE We’ve always loved the format because you can have so much fun with it. We used to do these family vacations every year, and one summer family vacation, probably 15-20 years ago, we were coming up with these storylines. Somebody had lost something on the beach, and we were like, what if the Lawrence brothers formed a detective agency? We were just joking around. We came up with all these plot twists, and we thought, this would be a great graphic novel or animated series. Honestly, it’s always been in the back of our minds since then. Then, we were … introduced to the Berkowitz Brothers. They were like, hey, do you have any interest in doing one of these? And we said, well, actually we’ve thought about doing this for a long time. And, of course, they’re brothers, we’re brothers, so it just kind of made sense, and this is the product that came out of that. JOEY LAWRENCE We were all big fans of Scooby-Doo and the Hardy Boys, and we thought, man, it’d be so cool if we could sort of do like an origin story, sort of an adult Scooby-Doo, because there’s nothing like that out there. And that’s why we have the van. Honestly, it’s an ’80s van, it’s the A-team van, but with Scooby-Doo colors. (Laughs) MATTHEW LAWRENCE We blend a lot of different genres. JOEY LAWRENCE Obviously, our way in was through nostalgia and the era with slime and Gak, making fun of ourselves and self-deprecation. If we get a chance to do more of these, it will be standalone cases like Scooby-Doo and ideally an animated series — that’s what we want to do. And like Matt was saying, the art form, the genre is so expansive and very forgiving in terms of what we can get away with, and that’s always fun. MATTHEW LAWRENCE Literally, if you can dream it and draw it, you can make it happen. As you mentioned, you do poke fun at yourselves, which was really fun to see. Was that hard to do, or do you generally have a sense of humor about all of this? MATTHEW LAWRENCE That’s how we face everything, including tragedy and sad moments in our lives. We always try to find levity in most situations, and most of the time, yes, we’re very self-deprecating. We get it. We want people to know that we’re part of the joke as well. JOEY LAWRENCE If you can’t have fun with yourself and make fun of yourself, honestly, I feel like — you’ve just got to get over yourself. How much of your actual personalities is in these characters? Is it all you, or is it an exaggerated part of you? MATTHEW LAWRENCE Whether you’re an actor or you’re a voice-over actor, I think you always put a shred of yourself in everything, right? And then you take dramatic license, and we have some fun. I feel like basic principles, like the birth-order thing, like I definitely play the middle, Joey’s the older, the leader. But they’re really exaggerated. And I’ve got a chameleon [as he also does in the graphic novel]; I’m a big, reptile guy — that kind of stuff. JOEY LAWRENCE It’s real and then we expand upon it and make it nuts. But the dynamic is real. Can you talk about the process of coming up with the storyline? How hands-on were you? JOEY LAWRENCE We knew the world we wanted to put it in. Obviously we had never written a graphic novel, so we relied on, like Matt was saying, the Berkowitz Brothers to help us out with that, and they really crafted it into the story. But we were back-and-forth every step of the way, and we thought it would be fun to do sort of a Hollywood story, not in Hollywood necessarily, right? So we set it at this con, which is Hollywood-adjacent, and then somebody’s kidnapping these lost ’90s stars. MATTHEW LAWRENCE And by the way, there’s kind of a deep metaphor there as well, especially when you see a lot of child actors really face a lot of turmoil in their lives, and especially from the generation that we were in. A lot of the people that we came up with aren’t around anymore. So there’s this deepness to it that we then just kind of put all this real fun craziness around, but there’s a current, like the lost ’90s stars, child stars, there’s a current there that we wanted to have a little bit of a deeper meaning. And the ’90s is back in a big way. What do you attribute to that coming back, and how do you feel being part of that revival? JOEY LAWRENCE I think people are really craving a little more analog world. I think they’re craving a little bit more of how things used to be. I think there’s a lot of buyer’s remorse is this sort of new-age technology, everybody being downloaded every five seconds onto something new with a new password, a new code, a new update. I think it’s just an anxiety-ridden time, and I feel like people are really going, man, I miss the days of riding my bike and shooting some hoops and gathering around a TV to watch something or making a mix tape or a mix CD. MATTHEW LAWRENCE You were actually having family dinners that weren’t technology. And you had to talk and enjoy each other. JOEY LAWRENCE I really hope we find a balance. Obviously, this technology world has been thrust upon us and we’ve become frenzied with it. But I’m hoping that like a pendulum, it’s so heavy, and I feel now we’re sort of going, wait a minute, put a couple of rocks back on this side of the scale and maybe we’ll find a balance. I really hope we do. I feel like we kind of had the perfect balance in the late ’90s, to be honest with you. We could text, we had our phones, we had internet, we had cable. But yet we weren’t consumed by the technology. So I feel like that is probably why people are really craving that old-school world. Were you all big graphic-novel fans growing up? JOEY LAWRENCE We were always comic book fans. We loved the comic book world. Andy was nuts [about it]. MATTHEW LAWRENCE Andy actually introduced me to all this stuff. JOEY LAWRENCE Andy collected everything he could, like original Superman comics. MATTHEW LAWRENCE He was a big comic book guy, and this is the one moment where I really wish he was sitting here right now because he would go into his whole collection. [Andrew was busy with a work commitment and couldn’t be present for the interview.] JOEY LAWRENCE We love the world. We think it’s so much fun. The original Scooby-Doo is an incredible graphic novel. I feel that entertainment used to be much more just entertainment, and not so much real realism. The balance there is out of whack too, in my opinion. It’s mostly realism and very little entertainment. People crave fun, escapism type of entertainment. MATTHEW LAWRENCE I’ve been really impressed with the younger generation. I thought it was we were lost totally, but the younger generation has been pushing back. They want more analog. They’ve been going to the malls. Now that they’ve discovered the ’90s, they’re like, yeah, I don’t want AI. I’m kind of hopeful that maybe the kids have got us covered. With your graphic novel, how much input did you have in the artwork and the drawings of yourselves and how each of you looks in graphic-novel form? MATTHEW LAWRENCE We were very involved with the artwork, the color coding, the way things looked, the individual looks of us — JOEY LAWRENCE — the way my back muscles look in that one picture. (Laughs) MATTHEW LAWRENCE And the chameleon I had. I was very specific. That’s one of my favorite pages — you flip the page and there’s just a spotlight on a little chameleon. I love that part. We were very involved, and [illustrator] Sean Von Gorman was awesome. Is it surreal to see yourself in comic-book form? JOEY LAWRENCE It is. We were in San Diego last year. We had a big panel to sort of launch the Kickstarter for the book, and it was [surreal]. MATTHEW LAWRENCE And really cool. You mentioned wanting to turn this into possibly an animated series. MATTHEW LAWRENCE That’d be awesome, especially if we could have a new generation discover this. JOEY LAWRENCE The Hardy Boys, grown-up Scooby-Doo. That’s what this would be, and it’d be so much fun to do it in the animated space. And voiced by you all, I presume? JOEY LAWRENCE Absolutely. Nobody can do this voice, man. (Laughs) You also have a podcast that you do with Andrew. Can you talk about that experience? MATTHEW LAWRENCE It’s like this little thing we never expected. We do it in our basement. It’s really homegrown; we don’t run ads. It’s just us. We get to reach people, and the response from the fans when we — whether we’re just having fun and talking, they get to feel like it reminds them of their family or that we brought up an issue that really helped them. It also it brings us closer every week. We got to sit down whether we like it or not. Most of the time he doesn’t like it. (Laughs) JOEY LAWRENCE I have to drive here. I have to schlep. (Laughs) MATTHEW LAWRENCE It’s in my basement, so I’m lucky. I just get to wake up, put on a T-shirt, and roll down. (Laughs) JOEY LAWRENCE Not me, I get all four children ready and I come here, you know. (Laughs) No, it’s great. It’s like the little engine that could. It just keeps growing and never would I thought that almost four years ago, that we would be still doing this.