One of the highlights of last year’s con season was getting to attend the premiere of the pilot of Public Domain, Matt Cohen’s new creative project that stars lots of Supernatural actors.
The premiere came with a viewing and a party at the last Austin convention.
Matt hosted along with talented writer Sean Flanagan.
There was cake and goodies and lots of excitement – and then lots of laughs because Public Domain is hilarious!
I loved its humor and I also loved its biting commentary and how much I could relate to many of its characters. They might be (former?) Hollywood stars and I might not be, but the things they’re struggling with are the same things we all have to confront sooner or later.
Alex Calvert joined me in the audience, which gave Matt an opportunity to call him out and ask if he’d be in a subsequent episode (of course, he said yes). That also gave the woman sitting on the other side of him a heart attack when she realized she’d been sitting next to Alex Calvert!
I caught up with Matt via Zoom last month to get his thoughts on the premiere and the reception to Public Domain, and to share how much I loved it.
Lynn: What was the response to the Public Domain premiere after people watched it either in person or online?
Matt: The responses have been great. The pilot episode or the first episode of anything isn’t my favorite, because you’re setting up all these characters, all the potential, but you have to know all their names by the end of it. So this pilot sets up middle aged, washed up, kind of once-iconic, let’s call it teen star or young 20s star, and now they’re all waiting for their second chance in Hollywood.
Lynn: Middle age or worrying about getting there, that’s probably something a lot of people can relate to.
Matt: Much like myself, right? I’m a guy who worked on a show called South of Nowhere when I was a kid, in my early 20s. It was great, and I didn’t know what I had at the time or I would have cherished it more.
Lynn: I think that’s the case for alot of us when we look back on our twenties!
Matt: So they all had this bright, budding circumstance of wow, I’m gonna make it in Hollywood, or Tinseltown as we like to call it on Public Domain. They all had some success, but Hollywood is a real beast of a machine and it can really eat you up. Our show delves into that, it’s a little bit of inside baseball of Hollywood, almost Entourage in the way we’re peeling back the curtain – industry jokes, treatment, mistreatment, and the misinformation within the world of Hollywood that everybody thinks is oh-so-glorious. It’s a struggle like anything else, and I think the people who’ve watched the premiere have kind of related to what we’ve done.
Lynn: I know I did. And it’s such a great idea, they’re all familiar characters – who are quite literally in the public domain.
Matt: Yes, and there’s some nostalgia in seeing characters that have existed for your entire childhood and then being able to re-see them as a somewhat different and more relatable reality. A character that is struggling, has ups and downs, has disabilities, has mental illnesses and things to overcome. Why should any Disney princess or your favorite animated cartoon character differ, right? Or you hear a curse word and all of a sudden that character becomes a little more authentic to you, or you see a little bit of weakness in a character’s decision making and you’re like wow, okay, I relate to this character.
Lynn: I definitely did.
Matt: And my big pitch with Public Domain has always been that you don’t have to sit down and learn 50 new characters – you’ve watched these characters your whole life, we’re just gonna open up a little bit of their story with some of the questions that haven’t been allowed to be asked. Like, what happens if the Little Mermaid and King Kong go on a date?
Lynn: It humanizes them, but the show also has these kind of universal messages about aging and looks and power and manipulation and obsession with celebrity, and how that impacts all of us really. Yes, it’s inside baseball, and you get a lot of insight from a very different perspective on Hollywood, but it’s also just human. There were so many things in the pilot that I can relate to, and I’m not an actor, but it’s universal.
Matt: All applause to Sean Flanagan, the writer, he’s got a good finger on the pulse of Hollywood-meets-this-weird-animated-sitcom, we love these characters, so what are our version of these characters, and how do we connect that with people? And it’s Cheers. Cheers is the connecting tissue – what Cheers taught us is that if you have a thumping heartbeat of a place for these people to be, everyone wants to come to this place, because that’s where you celebrate, or that’s where you drown your sorrows, from the beginning of time to now.
Lynn: Yes, still very true
Matt: Cheers would allow you to walk in as a guest star of the week or whatever, and they’re in the home setting. So now you’ve got a new character who opens the door and it’s what’s their story, why are they here? Who in this home setting is gonna help them or nurture them through whatever they’re going through, and does that evolve into a love arc or a second B storyline in any way?
Lynn: It’s a perfect way to introduce everyone and then start exploring that character.
Matt: A bar is a place for people to talk. Next to a therapist’s office, which is one of my favorite places on Earth.
Lynn: Mine too since I’m a therapist…
Matt: The bar is a lot of people’s therapy, in a way. It’s a dark atmosphere where you come in, you meet a stranger, and you can talk and they can talk, you share perspectives. I want to hear all these characters’ perspectives on who they are, why they’re here, who they love, what Hollywood taught them and what it did to them, and how they’re going to get up and move forward and always keep fighting.
Lynn: You don’t gloss over the fact that these characters are struggling, which again, I think most people can relate to. Public Domain stars many of the actors who you worked with on Supernatural – it’s a treat to see so many fan favorites getting to work together again! Have the actors seen the finished product?
Matt: Some have, yes. Jake Abel (Adam), Briana Buckmaster (Donna), Ruth Connell (Rowena), I got to ask them after they saw it and they really loved it. My goal was to get everybody a job again, and that’s exciting to put who I think are some of the most talented people on TV in something that could evolve into a really fun animated comedy where everybody has a job they can do alongside their other jobs. They have other roles or they’re working on other things, but they can do a voiceover, basically record it on your iPhone from a quiet spot. Over the pandemic I thought okay, we’re not going back to sets and we can’t get close to each other, so the idea of doing an animated show with the cast of Supernatural was just something I loved. They played strong characters in live action shows, so now let me allow Richard and Rob and Ruth and Briana and all these people to play iconic animated characters and tell their stories the way they would never have been able to.
Lynn: They all did such a great job too, like really getting absorbed in the characters but recognizable voices.
(In addition to Jake, Briana and Ruth, Public Domain stars Jim Beaver (Bobby), Rob Benedict (Chuck), Richard Speight, Jr. (Trickster/Gabriel), Adam Fergus (Mick Davies), Tahmoh Penikett (Gadreel), Chad Lindberg (Ash), and Gil McKinney (Henry Winchester), and features music by Louden Swain. There are lots of SPNFamily involved too, including a character based on Krista Martin, who we all loved and who we lost way too soon. Big shout out to my friend Abby DiLeonardo, who’s so talented and who has done such an awesome job on getting the word out about Public Domain with her great social media content!)
And of course, it also stars Matt himself as proprietor Shep Salazar. Who also has great hair.
Matt: My big note to everybody was please allow the audience to know it’s you. Then do whatever you want, whatever your imagination can serve up to you within these characters. Like you see Jake Abel took on this doofy, muscle-y guy thing (as Hercules) that is just so fun. And I’m the one kind of straight man through the whole thing – Shep Salazar is the original character we created for me to host all these hooligans at the bar and help them through their thing.
Lynn: As a huge Supernatural fan, I love that you got so many Supernatural actors involved
Matt: My dream is that each and every one of my Supernatural friends can be on this show. It’s not locked into Supernatural, but that will be the heartbeat of the show. And when I can get a Jared and a Jensen, we’ll have those roles. As the project hopefully gets picked up and we can order more episodes, I can start cameoing my big friends – our Jeffrey Deans and our Jensens and our Jareds and our Mishas. That’s to come, and we’re saving some iconic Public Domain roles for some of your favorites.
Lynn: How many characters are in the public domain?
Matt: There are 100 plus available, from Phantom of the Opera to Cthulhu to Frankenstein, God, all the Disney princesses, all the Winnie the Pooh characters, Popeye… just so many fun characters. I want to be able to put a paycheck in the pockets of all the people who have been by my side for so long and do something that’s fun and creative and also earn a little bit of a living while we make entertainment and serve up this really fun cartoon.
Lynn: Well, it really is. Do you have a plan going forward?
Matt: Sean has gathered some interest from a couple different people, without spoiling too much, Danny McBride has an animation company, Ryan Reynolds has an animation company… I think inevitably Public Domain will get picked up and land somewhere and we’ll be able to shoot more episodes.
Lynn: I can’t wait! But you’re a busy man, you have a lot of other projects going on too.
Matt: Sean and I took on like twelve different projects at once – our feature film Exes just got worldwide distribution in the first quarter of 2026 so we’ve had to go back and add some things to the movie, so that’s been on our plate and we’ll roll into the new year with the release of that movie. I also just did a movie called Christmas At The Zoo for the last few weeks in Chicago, where I play a zookeeper who’s very passionate about what he does – it’s a big Christmas love story, and that will be out in 2026 too.
Lynn: Oh that’s awesome! And aren’t you on a soap opera now too?
Matt: Yes, I’ve walked into Genoa City and I am Young and Restless-ing as Detective James Burrow. I’ve done a handful of episodes and am shooting some more, so we’ll see how long they want to keep me around. Right now it’s a lot of fun. They created a character for me based off of Idris Elba’s in Luther, so my detective is dressed very cool, he’s kind of got some real unique swagger, where you don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy in all situations. But he usually comes out on the right side of things.
Lynn: Intriguing. And it seems like they must be pretty invested in that character.
Matt: I’m certainly invested in it! It’s probably the coolest I’ve ever looked playing a character, and because it’s the soap world, the payoff of moving at the pace they move is, I love that idea of you gotta show up really prepared because you’re gonna get one or two shots at this scene, and if you mess it up, that’s on you. I kind of like that, it’s like being live on the stage.
Lynn: I would hate that, I’d be so anxious, omg what a nightmare!
Matt: It’s my favorite thing! Doing the Supernatural conventions have made it my favorite thing on Earth, to be up on a stage not knowing what happens next. I just love it.
And I think we all know he’s very good at it.
I can’t wait to see more Public Domain episodes, and I can’t wait to see Exes, and Matt as a passionate zookeeper in a Christmas movie, and I can’t wait for more of dapper Detective James Burrow. Lots to look forward to – for now, go watch the premiere episode of Public Domain and sound off in the comments about what you like about it!
Watch the pilot here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm35G48YCZg
And check out some of the Supernatural cast recording their characters here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbCydZSBC9E
Happy New Year from Public Domain – and from me!
— Lynn
You can read Matt Cohen’s inspiring and
personal chapter about his journey on
Supernatural in ‘Family Don’t End With
Blood’, info on that book and more books on
Supernatural on the home page here or at:
