Welcome to Night Vale‘s Cecil Baldwin discusses the podcast’s evolution into an international phenomenon

The fictional community in Welcome to Night Vale is more H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham than Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon. In less than three years, the podcast about a strange desert town has become an international phenomenon with a novel slated for a fall release through Harper Perennial.

The voice of Night Vale’s community-radio station is Cecil Palmer, played by Cecil Baldwin. His performance and the writing of creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor create a vivid and odd world for listeners. Though the show has had hundreds of live performances, with guest stars such as Wil Wheaton and Andrew W.K., and a series of sold-out European dates last year, Baldwin says it hasn’t always had such a strong foundation.

“The first couple of episodes, we were just trying to figure out what the tone was, what the comedy [was], what would the show sound like,” he tells The Pitch. “The next couple of episodes is all about, who is this person who’s talking to us?”

The Pitch caught up with Baldwin before the crew headed out on tour to discuss the show’s evolution from podcast to live show to book.

The Pitch: These touring shows that Welcome to Night Vale does are essentially one-man performances, yes?

Baldwin: I’d like to think of them not as one-man shows because we have a lot of really talented actors who travel with us, not to mention a lot of really talented musicians also performing with us, as well. I like to think of myself as the traffic cop who knows who’s coming in next and who’s leaving next. It’s my job to stay grounded and stick up there while the guest stars come in, you make them look as good as possible, and then they can drift away again and the traffic cop is left to keep the show moving.

On “The Librarian” live show, you have those bonus cuts that come with it, featuring the different interns. I think they offer a sort of window into how that show changes from night to night.

Oh, absolutely. It’s always really great … one of the cool things about Joseph and Jeffrey is that they write comedy in a voice that they enjoy, in a very dry, almost under-the-radar type of humor, and then they give it to actors, myself included, and they say, “Be you. Just find yourself in this.” And you’re sort of left to make your own decisions.

So it allows for the freedom of having Molly Quinn and Wil Wheaton do the same part, you know?

I’ve noticed that your performance changes based on the people with whom you’re interacting. Is that a conscious choice or something that just happens in the moment?

There definitely is a lot of room for whatever happens in the moment. For “The Librarian,” we tallied it up and we performed that script over 75 times, I think almost 80 times. It definitely makes you — when you’re up onstage you want to serve the audience that you’re performing for. And if they are really into something, you feel like you want to give them more of that. But sometimes you also recognize that you’ve put together a show, and you have to kind of stick to what the show itself needs. You make certain decisions and you’re like, “Well, let’s stick to that.”

If an audience is not particularly vocal, your instinct as a performer is to ratchet up the humor, to be like, “I’m going to get a reaction out of them. I’m gonna make them laugh.” When, in fact, they may be enjoying the show perfectly well; they’re just not a very vocal audience. So your instinct is to force them to enjoy themselves a little more when, in fact, your job is just to perform the script to the best of your ability. Now, when you have a bunch of hilarious guest stars like Hal Loveland, you know, it’s really just playtime.

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When Night Vale started, it was just you. The addition of actors and characters seems to have really allowed you to express more of your character because you have something to play off.

Oh, certainly. There are very specific moments where that has come about in live shows, where I’ve been onstage performing with somebody, in one of our anniversary shows or in one of our live shows. I’ll make an acting choice based on who I’m with, and then that acting choice will carry over into the podcast. So, in the past, the podcast was creating the material, and the live shows were just there, literally like a live taping, where now it’s gotten to the point where the live shows themselves are just as influential over what gets released online. It’s really interesting.

Is there a specific example to which you can point?

My initial reaction to Steve Carlsberg. Cecil always had that sort of fear and loathing for Steve Carlsberg from the beginning, but it wasn’t very over-the-top. It was just like a kind of general grumbling about Steve Carlsberg. I really want to say that it was in a live show – I think it was our one-year anniversary show – where Hal [Loveland] comes onstage, and we do a scene, and just because I wanted to try something new, I kind of stepped away from the microphone and just started screaming at him as loud as I could, like a huge temper tantrum. And it got a huge laugh, and everyone said it was hilarious, and I just kept it for the next show. And then it just kind of followed us around, so that way in, like, every show where Hal Loveland does Steve, there’s usually some moment where Cecil just loses his cool and freaks out. I think we’ve carried that over into the podcast at least once.

I think it’s “The Debate” where you screamed so loudly that I had to bite my hand to not disturb other people at work.

But that reaction would have never happened if it had been just me alone onstage, you know? It’s because I know Hal is so funny, and he will take it and he’ll just look at me with those big sad eyes and then sort of laugh and shrug it off. He understands that how the actor understands the function of Steve is to be this sort of punching bag of Cecil’s and just sort of shrug it off and laugh a big goofy laugh and then be like, “Oh you don’t really mean that.” You know, he gets it. And having smart actors makes all the difference in the world.

Having smart writers definitely helps. The character of Steve Carlsberg is obviously sort of Cecil’s punching bag, but he’s also sort of the punching bag for the whole town because he sees through everything. He’s been presented in a sort of loving light.

Right. I think Steve Carlsberg is kind of a pet character of Joseph. I think Joseph really likes Steve. Joseph has mentioned many times that, in how he started thinking of Night Vale is that he was always really interested in conspiracy theories, and I think he saw that potential in Steve Carlsberg, so he’s kind of a favorite of Joseph’s.

Like, in “The September Monologues,” he gave Steve Carlsberg this monologue that kind of presents the other side of Steve Carlsberg, the human side, kind of the inner workings which, you know – nobody in their own mind is a villain. They all have reasons for doing whatever it is that they do, and Steve Carlsberg is not a villain, by far. But the fandom kind of locked onto this idea that Steve’s a horrible person because Cecil says he’s a horrible person, but they never really stopped to analyze: “Why are we taking Cecil’s word for it? What do we really know about him?” So this was just a chance to offer another point of view on this relationship.

There’s that idea in fiction of the unreliable narrator, and I think Welcome to Night Vale explores that explicitly in that Cecil has a definite opinion.

Oh, of course, yes. You know, it’s interesting that the evolution of the show itself, the first couple of episodes, we were just trying to figure out what the tone was, what the comedy, what would the show sound like. And then the next couple of episodes is all about, “Who is this person who’s talking to us?” There’s the episode where Cecil gets a name. He starts expressing opinions on the stories he’s talking about. He starts expressing his opinions about his relationship, with this crush on this scientist, Carlos. And then as the show goes on, it becomes about interaction with other people around him, for good and bad.

And, you know, it’s a really great, amazing opportunity to tell a story in a long format, where, I think we’re up to episode No. 63 by now. You get a little bit of information every week about this character, Cecil Palmer, and you get to build on that so slowly that it’s like a really good stew, you know, where you don’t get everything in all at once, and then you get out. You put just a little bit in and then you let it simmer, and then you put a little something different in and you let it simmer. Yeah, I love telling stories in this sort of epic long format, just because it helps you bring out the nuances: your character, their relationship with other characters, it’s really great.

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Up until Welcome to Night Vale started really doing live shows, the fandom depiction of Cecil is quite different. I think the only thing they got right is the fact that you have glasses.

Yeah. Yeah. [Laughs.] It’s very weird, right? It is completely invented by the Internet.

And he looks kind of like a blond-haired combination of the Egon from the Ghostbusters cartoon, and Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I could see that. I’ve heard him described as a — if Tim Gunn were one of the cast of Mad Men, you know. Stuff like that. I want to say it was Mike Rugnetta of PBS Idea Channel. He and I were talking, and he put forth this idea that, “If you can’t cosplay it, does it really have a fandom?” You know, it’s sort of the eternal question of the Internet.

But the fans, in this sort of world of cosplay and Comicon and, if you’re at a Comicon with 10,000 other people that are all playing different things, how do you find your fellow Night Vale-ians if you don’t even know what you’re supposed to look like? So, out of necessity, the Internet and its groupthink decided to create certain signifiers, so that way they could recognize a Cecil Palmer from a distance. Where they came from, we’re all pretty baffled, I mean we know that it came from Tumblr.

There’s going to be another incarnation of the series in book form later this year, and I’m curious if there was any sort of feedback, like in terms of your involvement with that book, or is that strictly the creators?

The creation of the book is strictly Joseph and Jeffrey. It’s their novel. They’re writers, and this is the novel that they wanted to write. However, I am definitely doing the audiobook, which is going to be a lot of fun for me. It’s just very different. In the world of the Night Vale podcast, I’m kind of like a co-creator, in that I’ve been working on this project since the beginning and kind of started at the ground and influenced the writing with my acting, and their writing influences my acting.

But I am really looking forward to recording the audiobook. It’s a normal-size novel, so it’s going to be a big chunk of time, and I’m really excited to kind of use the understanding I have of Joseph and Jeffrey’s comedy and use of language and infuse it into a project that is told from a different point of view than the podcast. I just think it’ll be a real interesting challenge, and hopefully the fans of the podcast will enjoy listening to 11 solid hours of me talking, or something like that.