What happens when Pied Piper comes to Google? Thomas Middleditch, Kumail Nanjiani, Amanda Crew, Zach Woods, and Martin Starr Talk Season 4 of HBO's Silicon Valley, and the lines between reality and fiction blur.

More about the show: In the high-tech gold rush of modern Silicon Valley, the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success. Showrunners Mike Judge (Office Space, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill) and Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) have teamed up to satirize Silicon Valley in this award-winning comedy now airing its fourth season.

Silicon Valley is on Sundays on HBO at 10pm.
Moderated by Dana Han-Klein

Google would have a better room than this.

I thought there would be an awesome movie theater, and most people are on the floor.

Camille just read the game and started off with a hard nag up top.

This would be the shortest talk in the history of the ad here.

Yeah, I went on Bing by mistake once, and it said, just go to Google.

My question cannot support this level of attention.

I just was curious if you used the phrase, got on fire.

Everyone would be like, that's got on fire.

It would be like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We just saw the first episode of season 4.

What do you think the biggest shift in reaction has been to the show?

We haven't heard any of the reaction yet, so we don't know.

I would say, just based on that, the reaction is much more coerced this time around.

Does this feel threatening to you, white man?

Hey man, I was an H1 until I found tricks that went into falling in love with me.

And then made a movie about it too, right?

It's for artists of extraordinary ability.

Yeah, it was made for people like Einstein and then, you know, these people.

Not O-1, it was made for talentless hacks like myself.

Let's get into a strong Visa debate right now.

This ends in me being fired, I feel like.

No, how much did you know about the goings-on of Silicon Valley, this area, before you started the show?

I remember, I feel like the world outside Silicon Valley has become much more aware of the goings on of Silicon Valley in the last 4 years.

Not because of our show, but I remember when the show, when we did the pilot, I would tell people, I'm gonna do a pilot.

Pilot is just, it's the first episode called Silicon Valley.

And they were like, oh, is it set in the 90s?

And I was like, no, there's crazy shit happening there right now.

And people, it wasn't as much in the mainstream consciousness as it is right now.

I had approached tech in general just as a consumer, as primarily a gamer.

So however it was going to improve my gaming experience, that's usually where I checked in.

And I would say my horizons have broadened a little bit.

And it's been interesting to know, well, to find out just the business elements of it all, just how much money is flying around.

It really does sort of feel like this tech, nerdy, Wild West, everybody shooting each other with infrared laser beams instead of pistols.

I hadn't even really engaged with tech as a consumer.

I was so frightened of tech just in my daily life.

I used my father's email address in high school.

We have ego boundary issues between the 2 of us, yeah.

But it felt too daunting to set up a Gmail account, so that was my relationship to tech.

I like went to the login and they asked me my name and I was like, fuck this.

set up my first email account, I didn't understand what it was.

So when I shared my email address with my friend, I was like, yeah, it's www.cucumber-cutie

That feels both suggestive and infantile at the same time.

Yeah, it's like a child trying to be sexual.

Cucumbercutieathotmail.com was my email address.

It was because I was in the ninth grade, and I was in the computer class when I was making it, and there was a poster that said, cool as a cucumber, and I was like, yeah, cucumbers are cool.

Although, it shouldn't give you, Kumail shouldn't give you shit because his first email was dildo teddy bear.

original Dildo Teddy Bear and I was Dildo Teddy Bear Junior.

count as sexual harassment since we don't work?

my question more than I ever wanted, I think.

We're learning a lot about each other, apparently.

Has working on the show made you at all more inclined to learn about this?

At least for me, I'm not going on any giant research expeditions.

But if I'm listening to the radio and a show about tech comes on, I'm more likely to understand some of the basic vocabulary of it.

Or like, if articles all read that I wouldn't otherwise read.

But yeah, I feel like it's made me a little bit more familiar with tech.

I've definitely pursued it, just because the show's gotten some sort of direct lines, not only to investors, but developers as well.

And I always, like talking again about games, like my favorite booth at E3 is always the new rendered grass that NVIDIA has as opposed to the latest Modern Warfare game.

So I kind of like the elements and the pieces of Lego that go into building the bigger picture.

And just with the show and kind of like, I mean, as crass as this is, like the little bit of extra spending money that you get by being on TV, there's just some opportunities to kind of, to explore just based on if you have an interest in a certain thing these games and the environment I think there's opportunities to to explore here in the valley it's been interesting.

Tommy's been heavily investing in bringing back tomaguchis

yeah tomaguchis but I'm calling them Tommy Gucci's.

Yeah, they're like little versions of you.

gotta feed these guys It's gonna be compliments you feed it compliments Yeah,

they have they always have just super low self-esteem, and you have to pick them up.

But weirdly, the more you praise them, the hungrier they get.

Yeah, it's a real sad relationship you have to develop with these Tommy Gucci's.

So when you were saying that you guys get big movies here, this is where you fucking show up this to a 2 tiny you yeah you you bring in a bunch of chairs from somewhere

why don't you just have 1 person hold their iPhone well yeah hundred people

this is what you 1 big screen at least on this wall instead of 2 tinier ones?

And they just, like, smile and cry and all the emotions and at some point the credits roll and we come in and they're not on both

Is there usually a partition down the middle and you watch 2 different things?

like a passive-aggressive attack against epileptic employees if it's like both simultaneously.

It's also, is it, do you guys forget where you work?

Why do you have to constantly be reminded?

As soon as I walk in, I'm in the wrong place, damn it.

That's 1 of the things like your show gets so right, it's just all the weird quirks, like obviously somebody was paying attention to it because, you know, all the hoolie stuff, like the Pied Piper, like, swag, swag, swag is such a thing.

It's just fascinating, I think, for us to watch, because it's like looking in a mirror, like a very scary mirror sometimes.

So it's interesting to see how you guys approach it, because you're not in tech.

We would read the scripts, and we would think that this is so exaggerated.

And then we come here and we're like, oh, we underplayed it.

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