WondLa returns with season 2 to AppleTV+ and I sat down with the Author, showrunner, and lead voice actor about the new season.
Interview Transcript
Meghan Cooper
Your illustrations are legendary, so I’m dying to know if you are creating storyboards for the animators or if you have taken a crack at animation yourself.
Tony DiTerlizzi
Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a great question. I drooled and definitely would have loved to have been involved with the story team, but I had, I suspect their schedule was so breakneck that I probably would have slowed them down if I was involved because I’d be like, ‘the hand isn’t quite right.’ And, you know, I love animation. The team at Sky Dance is a supergroup comprised of folks like Bobs, who came from Disney, people from Pixar, people from Dreamworks, Blue Sky, and responsible for making some of my favorite and most beloved and cherished television series and films. So there was a mutual admiration on from from both sides. I really respected and loved them as artists, and I really felt that respect from Bobs and the team as well. And it’s that I can’t if I can convey anything that is just so rare in the adaptation process, and that led to me being involved with the team from, you know, 2018 to now, you know, working with them. I loved animation. It’s very collaborative. Which writing books is not, it’s very, you know, it’s just me in the studio with the voices in my head. But it’s very iterative, which writing a book for me is. So I’ll write a draft, I’ll have a couple BETA readers read it and tell me what they think. Bobs and the team will do a rough kind of animation of the show. They’ll put it on the screen. Everyone will watch it, tell them what they think, and then rinse and repeat. So it was just absolutely fascinating, and I loved every minute of being involved and having a front-row seat to seeing how the show was made. Awesome.
Meghan
Bobs, you’ve produced tons, like you mentioned, from Disney shows and movies. So tell me about your process in adapting Tony’s WondLa trilogy for the screen.
Bobs Gannaway
Well, Tony touched on it, and you know, one of the first things was to try to aim for a feature-quality show. And what does that mean? Exactly? You know, that’s easy to say, but both visually and from a storytelling standpoint, and something you don’t usually do in television, as Tony mentioned, is iterate, in a sense of like you write a script. Often in TV, you write a script, and then you board it, and then off it goes and you and then you, you know, edit it and, you know, beam it into a satellite, right? But here we were able to, as Tony said, you know, take the script, you know, put an animatic together with Scratch dialog, scratch effects, music, etc, and then watch it the way you would do on a feature. We do that multiple times. So when you actually are seeing the show, you’re seeing the sixth or seventh version of the show, which allows us to sort of pressure test it for both look a picture, but also for the depth of the quality of the storytelling, and which is the main thing, right? Because none of it matters if the story doesn’t if it’s not connecting with you emotionally. So that was one of the big things, was not only aiming for a look, a picture that looked like a feature quality that would stand up even on the big screen, to adapting more of a feature style of production, wherein we iterate on story more than you would on a typical TV show.
Meghan
I think Sky Dance does a great job with that. I feel like the quality of the animation is just so great. It really, it comes across so beautifully. I mean, look at my background. It’s just wonderful.
Bobs Gannaway
Well, Meghan, just to touch on that. I mean, one of the great things about working at a place like Sky Dance, as Tony’s touched on with all of the talented people here, we bring all of them in. We all share our, you know, our shows or movies with each other, and we all try to help everybody wants everybody’s show to be great. So we have a lot of awesomely talented people who can come in and give us great ideas, and that’s fresh eyes for us. So it’s a terrific creative environment.
Meghan
Eva experiences a lot of transformation during season two, learning more, leaning more into kind of Book Two, “A Hero for WondLa.” What are you hoping young audiences take away from this season?
Tony DiTerlizzi
Oh. Good question. I’m think you know, if season one and Book One dealt with the theme of family and what constitutes family, so in this case, Eva kind of has a found family in season one and starts to realize just because you don’t look like me or we’re flesh and blood, doesn’t mean I can’t care for you in the same way that I would someone I’m related to or sibling. And then I think in season two, as it is in Book Two, she does find flesh and blood, but they don’t see eye to eye. And in fact, they they have a strong difference of opinion about a great many things and and I think that, you know, was was important to me back when I wrote the book. I think it’s pretty important now that that concept today, where we are, I think also what Bob’s and the team were so incredible doing is, you know, the when I constructed the overall arc of the books, you know, Book One was meant to be very black and white. This character is good, this character is bad, as far as how Eva saw the world. And because it’s a coming of age story, it becomes more morally ambiguous as the books continue on. And by the you know, by the third book, you know, she’s making decisions where it’s there. There isn’t necessarily a clear right or wrong, but it’s just a decision she has to live with. And and we get to see some of that in the second season. And, and I think Bobs and the team did a really good job of figuring out how to express that in animation, because it’s alchemy. You’re taking pictures and words and you’re transmuting it to, you know, characters and voice acting and music and camera and lighting, and it’s, it’s a magic trick, if you can pull it off.
Meghan
Bobs, do you have anything to add to that in terms of what you hope audiences take away?
Bobs Gannaway
Well, I mean, Tony, Tony landed it where it’s like, we, we, we take these characters and we explore them deeper and ever, ever, ever grows up or start, you know, begins to grow up and become, ultimately, an adult, right? So, yeah, Tony hit on it. I think that the takeaway is going to be, and we did talk about, like, you know, in general, like family was a big driving story theme in first season, and home is sort of like a guiding word for us in second season. This year, rise in new Attica, the human home, you know, the home of the humans. But is that? Does that makes it a home? You know, is it this place or the familiarity of it or, or is there other ways to define home? So, so, yeah, I think there’s a lot of great depth of character, and, you know, an expansion of the world in season two.
Meghan
When you wrote Eva Nine, was she influenced by someone in your life?
Tony DiTerlizzi
She was, she was inspired by my daughter, Sophia. When I first really sat down to write the I’ve been toying with the concept of one since the late 90s, right around the time I was working and coming up with the ideas for The Spiderwick Chronicles and I kept shelving it because I felt like I wasn’t ready to tackle it. And my daughter was born, and I turned 40, and I was thinking of what the world would be like when Sophia was 40 years old, and would she find love? Would I still be there for her to care and help her? Would the mankind’s reliance on technology increase? Surprise it did.
Would mankind’s disassociation with the natural world continue? Kind of is with mankind’s dissociation with one another continue. These were all just ideas that were swirling around in my head as I kind of sat down to write the book. And like all my favorite books, there’s no message in it. It just explores these concepts and these ideas. And you know now my now my daughter’s getting ready to go to college, which is great. So there you go. But it was, it was, it was my dream of what I’d hope Sophia could become, and I feel very fortunate that she is just as vivacious and empathic as ever nine
Meghan
I love that. Awesome. So you’ve worked with many authors and illustrators, including Holly Black. Is there someone that you would love to collaborate with on a project in the future?
Tony DiTerlizzi
Oh, Wow, geez, that’s a tricky you know, I’ve thought I’m working on a middle grade novel right now, middle grade is important to me because it’s the period in my life where I started to read books, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. And one of the really prominent writers that really I loved at in middle school was Stephen King. That’s when I. Mean, Stephen King was early in his career in the in the early 80s, when I was in middle school, and so those books, they were scary and terrifying, but I love them. So I’ve always been a Stephen King fan, and I’ve returned to a lot of his classic books and reread them now as an adult and as a writer to kind of kind of figure out how they’re constructed and how he he writes, what he writes. So I’ve, I’ve been a tremendous fan of Stephen King’s.
Additional Questions with voice talent, Jeanine Mason, voice of Eva Nine.
Eva Nine undergoes a great deal of transformation in this season, which contrasts with the previous season, when she was a young girl thrust into a world of chaos. Can you talk about a time when everything was changing for you and how it impacted you? As much as it’s a huge transformation, even physically for Eva, I don’t think it’s far off from the kinds of transformations young people experience in their own lives. I love that about this show. It might be a whole other world and lots of alien species…but she’s still a typical 16-year-old. I want to empower young people to know they can handle whatever chaos their world presents to them.
You’ve recently stepped into the world of voice acting. How has that experience been, and do you enjoy it? I love it. I hope to do it for the rest of my career. It’s a special kind of magic in that booth.
What are you hoping young audiences take away from Season 2 of WondLa? I hope they are reminded it’s worth it to be optimistic. And it’s worth it to fiercely defend the things in your life you feel are worth protecting. Especially when it comes to more vulnerable communities.
