Adrianne Palicki, Your Newest Disney Princess in Quasi

"Every child's dream." Adrianne Palicki gets to play Disney princess (sort of) in Quasi, the new comedy from the Broken Lizard troupe. (Image Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Well, somebody paid attention. Austin's own Adrianne Palicki is finally a Disney princess. "Every child's dream," the Friday Night Lights star sighed. OK, so she's a Disney princess in the most roundabout, disgusting stonertastic way possible, courtesy of the guys behind Super Troopers. But that still counts.

It's because she plays Queen Catherine in Quasi, the new historical comedy from the troupe behind Super Troopers, which is released today on Hulu by the Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures.

Disney princess? That's just the beginning. Co-star and troupe member Paul Soter has bigger plans. "The idea of having a ride at Disneyland and Disneyworld: a Quasi waterflume. That's every child's dream."

Although it's not super-likely that there there will be Quasi ears in the most Magical Place on Earth any time soon. Quasi is a foul-mouthed and kinky comedy about a hunchback (Steve Lemme) who finds himself caught up in the murderous machinations between King Guy of France (Jay Chandrasekhar) and Pope Cornelius (Soter). All the while, he finds himself drawn to Queen Catherine, and she to him.

If Palicki were to be compared to a Disney princess, with this movie it would probably by Snow White. But whereas the original Disney princess suddenly found herself in the forest with seven dwarves, Palicki found herself with the five members of Broken Lizard - Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Lemme, Soter, and Erik Stolhanske - whose history goes all the way back to performing as Charred Goosebeak at Colgate University in the late '80s. Suddenly the star of The Orville was part of the act.

Even though The Orville had proved Palicki is no comedy slouch, "it was terrifying," she said. "But they make you feel so comfortable, and I was able to improv with you guys, and it was really, really fun. Honestly, probably the most fun I've had on a set."

"We were blown away by how easily she fit in with our group," added Stolhanske.

Jay Chandrasekhar, Adrianne Palicki, and Paul Soter in Quasi (Image Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

And period aside, Quasi is exactly what you'd expect from an older but no less madcap Broken Lizard. Murder, oysters, torture, sex, and more, especially a lot of jokes about how Quasi looks. It's a script littered with reasons for some producer to not greenlight it, and that's something director and star Heffernan said they realized. "We went through a lot of that, especially at Disney, because they didn't want us to step on their hunchback."

However, the team had a long relationship with the studio. Again, kinda. They actually had a long relationship with 20th Century Fox, who released their first film, 1996's Puddle Cruiser, and then subsidiary Fox Searchlight handled their breakout 2001 smash, Super Troopers, their 2004 follow-up Club Dread, and then their Kickstarter-funded sequel, Super Troopers 2 in 2018. Surprisingly to some (not least, it seemed, to the Broken Lizard crew) that relationship continued after 2019, when the House of Mouse bought Fox, and Fox Searchlight became simply Searchlight.

Super Troopers 2 had been another success for the studio, Heffernan said, "And they're like, 'What else have you got?' Well, we've got this script that's been sitting around for a little while.' They read it and they loved it, and we didn't think they would do it at all."

The team wrote the first draft for Quasi in the mid-2000s, "before having a hunchback in your movie was a bad idea," explained Jay Chandrasekhar. "Had we written it now we would have gone, 'Well, we can't put a hunchback in it.' But the old us decided it was a good idea."

For Soter, it's a sign of how quickly sensibilities and sensitivities can change. He noted that it wasn't until the film was shot and being edited "that we got, 'Ah, maybe you don't say mean things to the hunchback.' Well, OK, you've had the script for three years ..."

"But he's the hero," said Heffernan.

"And he gets the girl!" chimed in Stolhanske.

Soter grinned. "Everybody's going to what to be a hunchback after this."

What the script also allowed them to do was their first ever period piece. For Heffernan, it was an opportunity to play in the same territory as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1, a movie that he explained "holds a special place in my heart. ... I was probably about 14 years old and it was like 'Waaaah!' There were things in there I'd never seen before."

But a period comedy comes with period humor. Heffernan explained that, rather than combing the script for modern jokes that would break the spell, "we just did what made us laugh, and when we got in the edit room you watch it and go, 'Oh, there's too many modern references.'" Worst of all were the modern references from the original 2000s script, which were both anachronistic and dated. "We had a Chris DeBurgh "Don't Pay the Ferryman" joke. We thought it was kitschy and funny, and we put a joke in there and it lived for a while, and then we got into the test process and nobody knew who it was."

"I remember liking the joke when we wrote it," added Chandrasekhar, "and then when I read it again recently I was like, 'I don't really remember what the joke was.'"

But some comedy is timeless, especially the absurd varieties. As Heffernan noted, "We're in ridiculous wigs and outfits, doing ridiculous voices, so it's a little loosie-goosey, historically." That said, not everyone on set was so carefree about historical accuracy. "Our wardrobe person was layering us in all these outfits and we're going, 'It's so fucking hot, it's too hot,' and he's going, 'Well, at this time, it was an ice age.' He knew the temperature in the 13th century."

"Our costumers were unbelievable," said Palicki. "I pretty much had one fitting. She already had it made."

And getting to really play dress-up was part of the fun for Soter. "For us, costumes would be as elaborate as a highwayman patrol uniform as a gun belt. Here I'm the pope, and it takes a team to dress me." That added a whole new level of fun to the shoot, and a whole set of new challenges. "I've never tried to walk in something that was floor length, and I went, 'How do women do that and not trip going upstairs or downstairs?' And the big, Easter egg hat that crushed my neck. But for us, because we started as a stage group of sketch comedians who wore dumb, cheap outfits, this is very much the way we started."

Quasi is streaming now on Hulu.