Hypable sat down with Orlando Jones earlier this weekend and he had plenty to say about fandom and culture.

Orlando Jones is a connoisseur of all things arts – he’s written, acted, and produced a multitude of projects in his career and loves telling the stories he gets to be a part of. In our interview we discussed his newest project, Tainted Love – a graphic novel styled action comedy- as well as his culturally diverse emoji project IROC Emoticons which provides a wider range of emoticons for iPhone users, and of course Sleepy Hollow!

Hypable: How did you come up with ‘Tainted Love’?

Orlando Jones: I think the first process was just wanting to make a graphic novel, really, and being a fan of all kinds of graphic novels. It didn’t really make sense to me to draw it on paper; I know that’s still a business and successful and all that but I thought it would be much cooler to do it in digital.

We wrote it and we shot it and while we were in the process of tweaking the script we thought about what it would look like if we just had actual graphic novel panels, and really did the hand drawn panels but drew them like covers. You know how often the covers are really cool but the inside are more sketches, that’s sort of how the idea [took off].

The IROC Emoticons are awesome! How did you get started?

Thanks! I want it to be an app that represents all cultures. Because of that, the best voices for a culture I’m not a part of is someone who is a part of it. The best part about that app is that we’re inviting people all the time [to add onto the emojis]. Like, hey, if you have an idea for an emoji you’d like to see then contact us. Like, [tell us] what’s funny in that culture that would just be amongst people in that culture. I kind of want the app to house that for all cultures, that’s the fun of [it] – where everyone’s voice is represented.”

Was it fun taking it from a concept idea to execution?

Super fun, man! My wife is Italian and Jewish, and my daughter is obviously mixed, and when I look at the yellow emojis I think ‘This doesn’t mean anything to me.’ It’s not in my world, I need [different emoticons]. That’s what was fun in making it, because even in my own house we’re multi-cultural.

What’s your favorite emoji so far?

There are a few I really like, and we just did one of Ichabod Crane just side-eying people. There are a bunch of really crazy ones, there’s almost 400 of them now. We add to it every day, and every thirty days we update it and put in a bunch of new ones.

You interact with fans a lot. You’re so involved in fandom and that’s rare to see, so how did that start off? Have you always been a fandom nerd?

I’ve been a fandom nerd for a long time. I’m a fan, I started off just like everyone else being a kid and going to the movies. I’m a fan first, and when I found myself involved in the arts, to me that didn’t change the fact I’m a fan, it just meant now I gotta go to work.

For other people, I understand how people feel “Oh he’s famous, and that changes everything.” I don’t get what the big deal is – AO3 is AO3. Reading fan fiction and sharing fan art, we’ve always been doing that. For me, it’s sort of like no matter who you are, no matter how successful, you are a fan first. That’s what made you want to do this, that’s how we wound up here. I like to interact that way first and foremost, and I like to make fun of it.

During Evolution and films like that, this world didn’t exist the same way. It’s so different now – when I started coming to Comic-Con for MadTV the studio didn’t pay to send me here, I drove down on my own time. There was no world online to speak of, so when Sleepy Hollow happened I decided this is going to be fun, because I get to merge a lot of things in fandom.

I’ve been in the fandom but I wasn’t comfortable communicating in it simply because it would feel like a celebrity [communicating, and not a fan], but part of my attraction to Sleepy Hollow was that it was a mix of a lot of fandoms that I was a fan of. It was mythological, it’s got this historical thing going on, but it’s got creatures and beasts and shit. They’re killing people like it’s a Tarantino movie but then it’s kind of funny like the way a summer blockbuster is, and I was really a fan of the way the show felt like a mashup of genres.

And also, I was very proud of being part of a show that had the most multicultural diverse cast on network television ever. I’m inspired by that, I’m a multi-cultural person and I like seeing people of color and I don’t think that just means black people. We’re actually very well represented – latinos, asians, middle easterns are totally not represented as much as african americans are. So for me, being a part of the show with this particular cast, I was like “Yes, this is so cool to have a show on network television do this.”

A lot of people forget that celebrities can be fans.

Yeah…I think they give it too much importance. Surgeons save lives, that’s not what we do. Don’t get me wrong, I get that the arts is a different type of job, but I don’t think the arts is about separation from one’s audience; the theatre from whence it came is a direct, immediate connection to one’s audience and honestly sometimes brutal because if they don’t like it they’ll walk out of the theater, they don’t care.

I believe when you look at the Rolling Stones and The Eagles and all those bands of yesteryear that are still out there touring but they’re like senior citizens, I think that’s because they, as artists, value the connection with their fans. And it’s not like Hollywood putting people on pedestals or putting them behind walled gardens. The quickest way to lose sight of who you are and what is happening in the world is to wall yourself in the garden of Hollywood, and I’m not that type of person. And I make no judgement about people who make that choice, because some people don’t want to deal with it because they’re super shy.

Out of all the things you’ve dipped your toes in now (acting, writing, producing), what’s been your favorite?

For me it’s still about telling the story, it’s the thing I’m still the most excited about. All of those things are mediums, like this is an app and this is a show, or a graphic novel, but you’re still telling a story. [A story] that hopefully people will see your point of view and get it, or if they don’t get it they share their opinion at which point communication will open up. I think that’s the basis of art, is to communicate. That’s why cave men drew on walls, it wasn’t decorating, it was like, “This is how you make a fire, this is how you kill a buffalo.” They were communicating with pictures, and to me that’s whence it came. I enjoy doing [it all].

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview where he talks about Sleepy Hollow, and keep an eye on the Comic-Con category for more coverage of San Diego Comic-Con 2014!