Conversations with Drew Hanson and Nnamdi Anyanike

Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Hanson and Nnamdi Anyanike

Drew and Nnamdi, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Junior year, we started throwing house parties. Partly for fun, partly to make some extra cash. Nnamdi would cut together these party mixtape videos, throw ‘em up on our house Instagram page, and just like that—people showed up. That was the first spark.
Next came Ball Knowers—a little segment we ran on KU’s Playmakers, where we’d impersonate sports personalities and stereotypes. Senior year, we put the pieces together and Wayward Sons was born—a comedy miniseries about college life in Lawrence, KS. We wanted it to have that longform charm of Sex and the City and How I Met Your Mother, but with the quick-hit humor of early CollegeHumor and modern social media.
Along the way, we joined up with Max & Joe Biundo, twin brothers and self taught cinematographers, and formed Working Title Videos, our creative label. While we make all kinds of sketches, Wayward Sons is our flagship project. We scraped together two self-produced, zero-budget episodes, then went to New York City to seek funding. Now we’re set to make three more episodes and have plans for at least one other show.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road can be a little bumpy, but that’s just part of the deal when you’re a creative. If it’s not your full-time job, life itself is the biggest obstacle—and honestly, I imagine it still would be even if it were our full-time job. The hardest part isn’t just making something; it’s reaching the standard we’ve set for quality. And quality takes time—something we don’t have much of.

Nnamdi works two jobs, and I work one. We’re both full-time students at KU. Then there’s scheduling and the producing side of things. Everyone has their packed schedule, but we make it work. It can be tough pouring so much time and effort into creating something of high quality, knowing that quality alone doesn’t necessarily build an audience. That part takes patience.

But things have been pretty smooth. We’re progressing at an awesome rate, and we’re excited about where we’re at. When you love what you’re doing, it’s easy to put in the work.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We’re young and just starting out, so it’s hard to put a definitive label on our work. But in a broad sense, we want to tell stories. With Wayward Sons, our goal isn’t just to tell our story—it’s to capture what it means to be a college student at this exact moment in time. We’re big on specificity, on details. We want someone to watch the show 20 years from now, catch some niche reference they’d completely forgotten about, and say, “Oh man, I remember that!”
What sets our approach apart is the way we integrate both short and long-form content. Our episodes run anywhere from 13 to 25 minutes, but they’re structured in segments that can stand on their own. We do scene recreations, parodies, interview segments, stylized B-roll, just to name a few. It’s our way of bridging the gap—using bite-sized moments to draw in audiences with shorter attention spans and guide them into a longer, more immersive story.
What we’re most proud of, though, is the sincerity of the show. Every character is an exaggerated version of ourselves or someone we know. Every episode features an almost entirely new cast. A lot of scenes are recreations of things that actually happened in our lives. It makes the whole thing feel real, even in its most absurd moments. And at the end of the day, it’s just such a fun thing to make.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
With Wayward Sons, it’s a four-person effort. The twin brothers, Max and Joe Biundo, are the reason the show looks and sounds as good as it does. As directors of photography, they handle cinematography, audio, editing, you name it. They’re also our gear guys, problem solvers, and now, great friends. Their artistic style adds such a cool element to the show, and pushes us to be better. If it’s going to look that good, the writing better hold up too.

What’s really impressive is their dedication. All four of us are doing this purely for the love of the game, but those guys aren’t even on camera. They put in just as much time, effort, and passion as we do, without being in the immediate spotlight. They’re a year younger than us, but it’s hard to imagine a future where we aren’t still collaborating in some way.

We also are surrounded by some great friends and creative minds at the University of Kansas. Our good friend Chad Cushing put together some stellar promotional graphics. We’re impressed by so many of the people who volunteer to act. Tim Huffman and Brody Sullivan film behind-the-scenes stuff for us. There are lots of people like that, it just speaks to the importance of community.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingtitlevideos/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/workingtitlevideos/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/working-title-videos-5a7210342/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkingTitleVideos
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/drew.hanso/ and https://www.instagram.com/nnamdi_anyanike/