Jul 26, 2024

First-time showrunner Natasha Klein discusses her work on Disney's newest series “Primos”

Natasha Klein has created a summer show perfect for children and families. Debuting this week on the Disney Channel, “Primos” is Klein's first original animated children's series. It captures the whimsical and crazy fun of a large family trying to coexist all summer long under the same roof.

Disney Television Animation's “Primos” is told from the point of view of 9-year-old (soon-to-be 10-year-old) Tater Ramirez Humphrey (Myrna Velasco). But during the summer of Tater's “me party,” a dozen cousins arrive for a family reunion, and her bedroom becomes the focal point for the cousins.

For the past decade, Klein has worked professionally in a variety of fields as a director, storyboard artist, character designer, and writer for animated series such as South Park, Home: Adventures of Tip & Oh, Big City Greens, and other animated series, and has worked variously as a storyboard artist, character designer, and screenwriter. In Primos, she portrays her own Mexican-American heritage and family chaos.

Cartoon Brew recently spoke with Klein to learn how she was able to bring this series to life. New episodes will air tomorrow and every Saturday at 9:00 am.

Cartoon Brew: How much of Primos is taken from your own childhood -

Natasha Klein: Tater is myself, to be honest. I was always surrounded by children. I was in the middle of all the primos, so I was lucky to have older primos.

How did the idea for the original series evolve during development? Honestly, during development, my first pitch packet was pretty close to what the series eventually became. I was very fortunate. I feel like Disney trusted my vision from the beginning. I didn't have to change too much, especially since it was based on my personal childhood. Tater was always Tater. From the beginning, she was always the big dreamer, the introvert, the one who wanted time to herself. In the beginning she had 11 cousins, so we added one more, because we felt that 12 was a better number than 11. That's a dozen donuts.

Once we got into production, I really enjoyed fleshing out the characters and adding more layers than I had imagined. There are two episodes each, for a total of 58 episodes. There is a lot of storytelling. I tried to break it up so that every cousin gets a spotlight. It was exciting to be able to layer characters that initially fell flat.

How much has the 2D aesthetic of the show evolved-

Klein: The look has really changed a lot. My original style as a storyboard artist is much rougher. The first drawings of the character were not very polished. I always feel like the nose sticks out so much. I remember getting an interesting note from you. Can we make Tater's nose a little prettier? And I thought, “Okay, Disney.”

It was really fun to explore different visions. It was even more [fun] to be able to invite real artists to help me develop the style of the background. Everything built on top of the initial mass of ideas.

“Primos” uses original songs for multiple musical sequences; was it a challenge for a first-time showrunner in a first-year series to achieve that aspect? I love music. As a storyboard, I wrote “Home: That was really fun. I got to actually write the lyrics for that show. And when “Big City Greens” started incorporating music, it was always fun to be able to direct certain musical sequences. And to be honest, it was the music videos that inspired me to become an animator. I saw Tom Petty's “Running Down a Dream” and that was a really great video. It captured my imagination when I was very young. So it was always in my mind that I wanted it to be a musical show.

And it's woven into my family. Everyone in the family plays an instrument. At big family parties, one of the tios would play the bongos and the other tio would play the trumpet. We used to play music together and I always wanted to weave that into the show naturally.

How did you analyze the songs so that they could be realized in the TV pipeline? From a production standpoint, songs are really difficult. It is also difficult to storyboard. There is a lot of action, a lot of movement. You have to do something to the beat of the music. It's a lot of work for the animators. The timers are also under a lot of strain. If you want to make a song, there is a huge burden all the way to the pipeline. So I tried to work them out. I wanted to give the production a little break, so I didn't want every episode to be 11 minutes [an episode], I aimed for one every 30 minutes. There are a few half-hour episodes where there's no songs, but that's literally when people start to get a little tired. So we thought, “Okay, let's not do a single song for this half hour, let's give everybody a break.” We have a clip show where we reuse songs from Season 1, so that's what we're going to do to give everybody a break.

I always tried to create these songs with the goal of not completely exhausting the crew. As a storyboard artist, I understand what kind of tension that creates. There's so much that needs to be produced. But at the same time, our songwriter, Alana da Fonseca, wrote a killer song. And I think everybody understood that. They understood the value of producing it.

Did you decide where you wanted the song to fit in the individual episodes? I am quite involved with the screenwriters. I'm pretty involved in the writers' room. From the very beginning, I would say, “Okay, this is the song scene,” or “This is the emotional high point,” or “This is the montage scene.” Toward the end of the season, the scriptwriters got to choose for themselves. But at first I guided them.

In the writers' room, was it storyboard-driven or script-driven -

Klein: I did some script-driven work and some board-driven work. It was interesting because I liked working both ways. Working both ways allowed me to see what was “missing”. When I stick to the script, I feel like I am bound by it. However, in a board-driven production, as a board artist, you have to come up with all the dialogue yourself. Often, I have to correct plot problems that I should have seen in the script stage. I thought that was too much work for a board artist. But I get sparkling comedy and things that just happen randomly from board-driven shows.

With my own production, I was interested in combining both parts of the process. When I interviewed the writers, I told them that it was a script-driven show. And if they felt something needed to be changed, they could adjust certain plot points. Or they could write new micro-scenes to fill in the gaps between things. I told everyone that was the vibe of the show, and they all agreed. It takes some of the pressure off because they don't have to write something perfect. It also gave the board artists a great opportunity to let their own humor shine through. We gave writing credit to many board artists because they added so much to an episode.

The idea was always to create this huge collaboration, and every part of that process was to add new elements of humor, new ideas of sorts. Right up until the last minute we are working on the final delivery of Season 1. Even in post animation, the supervisor-director says, “OK, but what if we did this ...... or “What if my fist shook like this: ...... We have a great collaboration. And then we can animate it and add humor. So it's really fun.

What have you learned as a showrunner? Now that season one is over, it's interesting to look back at when I started the show and think about how much I learned from it. There are a lot of difficulties in the process of making a show that no one tells you about. No one can properly warn you about the unique challenges that each person has in making any kind of program. But in my case, the biggest challenge was being an introvert and opening up and talking about myself. I talk a lot now