#INTERVIEW: MATT JOHNSON & JAY MCCAROL ON “NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE”

By Mr. Will Wong

Cult favourite Mockumentary Sitcom Television Series NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW amassed a huge following when its two seasons aired on Viceland between 2017 and 2018. While fans never got its third season, the answer to the void is NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE. Right out the gate, it won huge raves premiering at SXSW ’25 and eventually it took prestigious the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at tiff50 this past September.

The Comedy-Adventure sees buddies Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, reprising fictional versions of themselves, trying to get a gig at Queen Street’s Rivoli, but things go to the wayside when they accidentally get transported back in time to 2008 Toronto, their friendships tested to the limits in the most crazy death-defying situations, and fates possibly altered forever as they try to get back to today.

This Film is a cinematic feat and unapologetically Torontonian. The Buddy Comedy we all need to take us out of this depressing winter!

We had the joy of chatting with Johnson and McCarrol, who not only star in the Film, but co-wrote together, with the former directing. They ask us for some food recos for lunch, and we direct them to New Zealand’s The Carvery at The Well, although we felt a bit hesitant directing them to a food court. Alas, we learned that Johnson actually really loves their food court and is going to hit them up soon!

We ask them about the unique editing here which makes the most unbelievable situations believable here.

Johnson: The real struggle is not what you think. And this is what’s so fun about making movies in this format. The struggle is when the Editors get a better idea for what our scene should have been than what we had.

A great example would be (spoiler alert) when we try to sneak through security at the CN Tower, and we, and the production team were expecting to be stopped. We thought they were gonna say, “Hey! You can’t bring parachutes in here. You can’t bring wire cutters in here!”, and stop us. So they let us through and all of the sudden, we’re like “Now what do we do?”. We send that footage back to the Editors and we ask, “Can we use this? What can we do?”, and they confront us with the idea that they love this footage, so let’s see where this goes.

You actually go in and shoot what you said you were gonna shoot. Every day we were hearing alternate versions of what we had shot from the Editors as they said, “Don’t do that, do this instead”. Now that said, it means that we’re really working for them. We’re trying to shoot as much content as we can, trying to shoot as much crazy shit as we can, so that they have enough clay to really mold this into something interesting. But we trust them completely. Curt Lobb and Bobby Upchurch are more or less in-charge of the Movie.

McCarrol: It’s fun to be presented by them. We get to perform before each other. So Matt and I improvise a lot of stuff, there’s no script, and they play with those ingredients and concoct something, and they show it back to us. But often, they’re not just doing that to make it funny, they’re trying to find some better writing as well. And often what happens is, we go back to shoot again, as the Editors have discovered a way to punch-up the writing, to help it make more sense, to help the storyline.

It’s this process of going back and forth between the people on the field and the people in Editing. We’re making it all together.

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NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE must be seen to be believed! Incredible!

Elevation Pictures release in theatres February 13, 2026.

(Photo/video credit: Elevation Pictures/Mr. Will Wong)