Creed Bratton’s commitment to his art was on full display on the set of Smiling Friends.

Painting himself fully green for “Le Voyage Incroyable de Monsieur Grenouille,” an episode in the adult animated sitcom’s third and final season that brought the show its first Emmy nomination, The Office alum must have hoped to get the paint off by the end of his guest star appearance.

Per the show’s co-creators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, though, that’s not what happened.

“He was so good and really fun to work with. He was painted green fully all over the body,” Hadel recalls during an appearance for Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio. “He had to go film a movie the next day and apparently still had some green on him. So the green lasted many weeks.”

Watch the conversation with Hadel and Cusack here.

The film Bratton was going to shoot, we’ve confirmed, was Primetime, A24’s crime thriller starring Robert Pattinson as To Catch a Predator‘s Chris Hansen, which we scooped in 2024.

Incredibly, the paint hadn’t completely come off even by the time Bratton was done with that project.

Cusack said, “He told our friend, the one that hired him, he said he went to the doctor a month later and they’re just doing a basic checkup. And he’s like, ‘Why is your skin slightly tinged green?’ And he’s like, ‘No, it’s not a health problem. I just painted myself with paint that never comes off, so it’s totally fine.’”

Smiling Friends is an absurdist, mixed-media comedy starring Cusack and Hadel as Pim and Charlie, employees at a company whose job is to help make unhappy people smile.

Bratton painted himself green for a live-action appearance as the father of Mr. Frog, a character Hadel describes as “the dumbest” in the show, which the creators conceived early in the design process on Smiling Friends. Over the course of the show’s Emmy-nominated episode, we follow this supporting character — a “hollowed out” TV star,” in Hadel’s words — from his leap to President and then ruler of the world. The episode then goes as deep as is possible, in the span of just 11 minutes, into what makes Mr. Frog tick.

The intention, Cusack says, was to see what would happen in devoting “a cinematic, prestigious TV episode” to “the stupidest character in all of animation.”

Of the show’s Emmy nomination for Outstanding Animated Program along long-running and beloved series like The Simpsons, Cusack said, “We feel very honored. Obviously, we grew up with all the shows that we’re against and respect them very much. We would’ve never thought in a million years that our little quarter-hour show that we did for Adult Swim would be in this league, so we feel very honored by it and it’s a very nice feeling.”

In the conversation with Deadline, Cusack and Hadel underscored that it’s easy to underestimate the rigors of crafting a 2D animated series, frame by frame, in 2026, putting the ambition of their process in context.

Dave Marsh, the influential and widely read rock critic for Creem, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone and the author of the foundational Bruce Springsteen 1979 biography Born to Run, died Friday, August 14, at his home in Connecticut. He was 76.

His death, reported by Deadline sister publication Billboard and confirmed on Facebook by Marsh’s friend Jim Rotolo, followed an extended period of declining health, although a cause has not been disclosed.

“Dave wrote several books about Bruce as part of a remarkable body of work spanning some 25 titles,” Rotolo, host of the radio show The Wild & The Innocent with Jim Rotolo. “A longtime rock critic for Creem and Rolling Stone, he was also one of the creators of E Street Radio and hosted Kick Out the Jams on SiriusXM for 19 years. Rest easy, Dave. Thank you for everything, my friend. You will be missed.

Marsh, alongside a coterie that included his friend and mentor Lester Bangs, launched his career as a critic and founding editor and writer of the highly influential Creem rock magazine in the late 1960s. An early champion of such ’50s and ’60s musical styles as soul, girl groups and what was starting to become known as garage rock, Marsh would later lend his considerable support to punk rock. Indeed, he is widely credited with coining the phrase, having first used it in a 1971 article about ? and the Mysterians, the band behind the 1966 hit “96 Tears.”

A native of Pontiac, Michigan, and a devotee of Detroit’s Motown as well as Motor City scenesters Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Marsh was instrumental in launching the Detroit-based Creem, and wrote for the magazine through the early 1970s. By the middle of the decade he began a multi-year tenure as an editor and critic at Rolling Stone, and shepherded the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide in 1979.

A prolific author, Marsh wrote two books about Springsteen: In addition to Born to Run, which chronicled the singer-songwriter’s early career and initial fame, Marsh authored the 1987’s Glory Days, continuing the Springsteen life story through the peak MTV era. In 2003, Marsh combined the two biographies into the single-volume Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts, adding an addition chapter to update the story.

Marsh also wrote 1983’s Before I Get Old, the biography of rock band The Who, and 1989’s The Heart of Rock & Soul in which he named the 1,001 greatest singles ever. (His #1 choice was Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”)

In addition to the biographies, Marsh collected his reviews and essays in a number of volumes, including Fortunate Son and Kick Out the Jams. His 1993 book Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock ‘n’ Roll Song chronicled the cultural impact of that 1963 hit song.

Along with his old Rolling Stone boss and colleague Jann Wenner, Marsh helped found and maintain the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

Marsh joined SiriusXM in 2004, and for 19 years hosted the weekly Kick Out the Jams show. He also launched the Springsteen-centric programs Live from E Street Nation and Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams.

According to Billboard, Marsh is survived by his wife Barbara Carr, a longtime Springsteen co-manager as a partner in Jon Landau Management. He was predeceased by daughters Kristen Ann Carr and Sasha Carr. A complete list of his survivors was not immediately available.

A toast is in order for Arthur, which became a comedy classic despite a quiet release 45 years ago. After penning Carl Reiner’s 1978 comedy The One and Only starring Henry Winkler, Steve Gordon was hired to direct his own Arthur script for Orion. Gordon initially considered George Segal and John Belushi for the title role before casting Dudley Moore off the success of 10, in which the actor starred opposite Bo Derek.

Arthur centers on alcoholic playboy Arthur Bach, who will be cut off from his family fortune unless he marries a woman he doesn’t love, which becomes complicated when he falls for working-class Linda, played by Liza Minnelli. At the time, Moore praised the script for its barrage of jokes: “Ten laughs a page, instead of one laugh every 10 pages.” Actress Anne DeSalvo, who played sex worker Gloria, tells THR that Moore, a classically trained pianist, would warmly greet her on set. “Dudley would be playing the piano, and he’d say, ‘Good morning, Anne,’ ” she recalls. “He was such a gentleman.”

The lead character was written as American, but Moore convinced Gordon to let him keep his British accent: “Steve kept phoning me up and saying, ‘Are you sure you can’t do an American accent?’ I told him if I tried, it would be the most distorted performance.”

Arthur hit theaters on July 17, 1981, with THR‘s review extolling the “hilarious comedy” and Moore’s “impeccable timing.” The film got off to a slow box office start amid marketing challenges, but word of mouth drew crowds for weeks to come, as Arthur became the year’s fourth-highest-grossing title. The film earned four Oscar nominations, winning for best supporting actor for John Gielgud as butler Hobson, plus Christopher Cross’ main theme song, “Best That You Can Do,” co-written by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager.

Gordon died suddenly of a heart attack a year later at age 44, making Arthur his only feature. Moore and Minnelli returned for a 1988 sequel, while a 2011 remake starred Russell Brand, Jennifer Garner, Greta Gerwig and Helen Mirren, but neither matched the success of the original, which was named one of AFI’s top 100 comedies.

Moore, who died in 2002 at age 66 after battling progressive supranuclear palsy, once called Arthur his favorite role: “I love the character.”

This story appeared in the Aug. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.