As FX gears up for the series debut ofWilfred, we had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with series stars Elijah Wood and Jason Gann.

In the show based on the Australian version of the same name, Wood stars as Ryan, an introvert struggling to find social and professional happiness, that is until he meets Wilfred (Gann), the dog. While the world sees Wilfred as a dog, Ryan sees him as a man dressed in a dog suit. Wilfred is intent on pushing Ryan out of his shell and into some situations Ryan never would have gotten himself into.

So clearly this is going to be quite a unique comedy. Knowing this, PCM's Kristyn asked the two stars what they thought was a good formula for comedic TV.

"That's a god question. Jason, you're more well versed in this than I am," Elijah started before handing it off to Jason.

"A good formula-well, people are pretty quick to admit if they can't dance or they can't sing, but not many people think that they have a bad sense of humor," Jason began. "Everyone thinks that their sense of humor is good. So it's a really difficult thing to throw open to a large panel of people's mind, which is what happens in most television."

"So I think to get something right you really have to have like a smaller nucleus of comedic minds and then trust that small group and trust your instincts and what you think is funny regardless of what you think what the masses will think is funny," Jason continued. "Because if you try and cater to an audience that already exists, then you'll just come out with boring old stuff. You really need to, I think, pioneer what you think is funny and then hope that the audience follows you."

Elijah, having formed his own thoughts, chimed in, "I was going to say the same thing. From my experience, what I think is a solid base for any comedy is just honesty and truth and it coming from a real place. As surreal as this show gets and is, ultimately, we're dealing with a character that most can't see the way that I can see it. But outside of that, most of the scenarios, we're playing them for honesty and I think that that is always an important base, and I think something truly funny will always come out of that."

With the formula of Wilfred, it seems we are in store for quite a few laughs. Check out what the two had to say in the rest of the interview below and be sure to watch Wilfred Thursdays at 10 PM on FX.

Can you kind of talk to us about your characters in the show and kind of give us a little bit on them?

Jason: Well "Wilfred" is a dog. The world sees a dog. "Ryan" sees a man in a cheap dog suit who smokes bongs and pretty much terrorizes him. But you know, we sort of think that after a while that maybe "Wilfred" is an angel and a devil on his shoulder, giving him advice and trying to bring him back into the real world. That's "Wilfred's" character. Elijah?

Elijah: Yes, "Ryan" is essentially a guy who had followed a path that was ultimately not of his choosing for far too long. He listened to his family, listened to his father, did kind of what he thought everyone else wanted him to do as opposed to following his own interests. As a result of that in this pilot, we find him in a place where he's hit a wall, essentially, and it's made him suicidal.

He's kind of a broken individual. He's someone that hasn't really busted out of himself to live freely and to live with confidence and to define himself, and ultimately that's where "Wilfred" arrives. He arrives sort of in that moment of crisis to push "Ryan" outside of the self-imposed and sort of family-imposed boundaries that have been created around him.

There's a huge influx of shows from Europe that have been brought overseas throughout the past few years. Some are successful. Some aren't so successful. I'm curious to know how you think your show will be received over in the U.S. in terms of-I know it's darker. It's probably a little more unconventional than what normal audiences are used to.

Jason: Despite the fact that the show is called Wilfred, and there's a dog called "Wilfred" in it, and I'm in the suit playing "Wilfred," it's a really different show. Maybe the reason why some of those reboots don't work is because they're trying to just translate something from one territory into another and the only thing that's different is sort of some accents and stuff, whereas this is a completely new show.

David Zuckerman, the show runner, had a completely new vision for it. When he first told me about it he said he saw a different vehicle for this great character that he loved. So I don't even compare the two shows. This show really stands on its own, and so, look, I'm not worried about any comparisons or failed reboot of the successful show because they're two different creatures.

I, like most of the people on the call today, have never seen the Australian version, and I'm just wondering-now you say this is a totally different animal, Jason. How so?

Jason: Well originally in November of this year will have been ten years since I wrote the seven-minute short film that won festivals around the world and went to Sundance. So that seven-minute short was already very popular, and so we just set up a premise in essentially a seven-minute short. So for the Australian series, we just used the first seven minutes in the pilot as the first seven minutes of the show.

So we didn't go into a lot about what the psychology of the show, of the relationship between the guy and the dog. There was no background story for the guy. We didn't go into his psychology at all. It was really a love triangle between the guy, the dog, and the girl. Whereas this show is, for starters, a buddy comedy more so than-it does have love triangle elements in it, but each episode is about "Ryan." "Wilfred" kind of drives the stories and the audience is constantly left to argue with each other or with themselves as to whether this is all happening inside "Ryan's" mind. Are we going crazy? What's really going on?

In the Australian version, we just sort of said, "The guy can see the dog." We said it in the first minute of the show, and then we just went on with it. The Australian show had more of a British kind of sensibility and the style of The Young Ones or The Mighty Boosh where things are a bit more abstract and absurdist. So this show goes into the psychology more, and I think it's smarter ... about "Ryan" rather than about a love triangle.

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