An Interview with Craig Schulz, Robb Armstrong, & Raymond S. Persi from ‘Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin’

Franklin Armstrong and Charlie Brown in "Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin," premiering February 16, 2024 on Apple TV+.

Caution: This interview does contain spoilers for the Peanuts Special, ‘Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin’.
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Robb Armstrong, Raymond S. Persi, and Craig Schulz are a noted writer, director, and comic legend, respectively. Since Robb’s comic, JumpStart brought him rightful acclaim, and Raymond has shepherded some powerful stories as a director, and of course… Craig Schulz has been associated with the Peanuts franchise for decades on end. Currently, this trio have come together to create the poignant and powerful new Peanuts special, Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, on Apple TV+, and we here at NTG had the distinct honor of sitting down with this trio of creatives to discuss this important special. 

John Betancourt: Robb and Craig, I am curious what inspired this particular specia?
 
Robb Armstrong: I think the character needed to be explored. To be honest with you, it’s real simple. Franklin has been around for more than 50 years. But for whatever reason – well, I know the reason, I won't speak like, I don't know the reason he was never delved into. Sparky (Charles Schulz) even confessed to me, he was my friend, he would, he would confess to me lots of things. One of them was that he felt that by exploring the character, he might stumble into being condescending to black people if he did something wrong, or made a misstep, or fumbled the ball. So, he kind of left Franklin to be almost bland, and figured… it’s less risky if he's kind of like, bland. Well, that may have worked for a time. But we're in a time now where things are… different. And opportunities have changed. And it was time to explore, Franklin, and to and to do a great job, and I’ll let Craig take it from there.
 
Craig Schulz: Well, I would just say, since I'm in the Peanuts world every day, and we get people responding and asking questions continuously, that Franklin is the one that people continually embrace, continually want to know more about, and you can, again, you can only get so much information out of the comic strip. So, when it came to, you know, what show do we want to do, and telling the characters and expanding their world? Truly, for the fans, we write these really for the fans. I do, at least, for the fans, the fans want to know more about Franklin. So, we as a group had decided that's the one special, we really wanted to do that, and just take a lot of time doing it, we want to do it right. And that's why we brought Robb on board, because the three of us are white kids that really don't know the black experience, obviously, like Robb does. And that's why we've tried to keep it true to it. And yet still stay true to the comic strip.
 
John Betancourt: For Raymond, what was it that motivated you to sign onto this project as its director?
 
Raymond S. Persi: So, what was exciting for me when I read the script was, you got to see a friendship form in real time, you know, and you got to see it formed the way friendships actually do form. And like, you're busy doing something else, like in their case, building the cart, and you're just asking casual questions, because sometimes when you're working, your guard is down, and you'll go a little deeper without even realizing it. And so, you get to see them kind of form a friendship over that. And then you get to see Franklin, who, you know, he's never had an authentic friendship before. Because he wasn't -- he never allowed himself to be authentic. You see later, like, he gets mad at Charlie Brown, they get into a fight. He thinks this friendship’s over because you don't do that with friends. And Charlie Brown shows him… of course you do that with friends. That's what friends are for. You can get mad sometimes. I just love that. Because I think that's really showing people that it's good to be who you really are. You'll, you'll attract the right sort of people to yourself.
 
John Betancourt: What does it mean to each of you personally, to have given life to such an important story? 
 
Raymond S. Persi: I'm a biracial person, I'm half Thai, I'm half Italian. And so, growing up, I grew up, you know, in Los Angeles, I never felt like I belonged with the Asian kids or with the white kids. So, I always felt a little bit other than, and so this is a story where this kid, he doesn't feel that he can connect. And it's only when you start looking past maybe the, you know, the groupings, that you start to just connect with people because of who you are on the inside. And then that's how I started to find the friends I'm connected with just because of our, you know, our interests that come from the deeper questions we have about the world that we'd like to talk about. So that's, that's why it's special to me.
 
Robb Armstrong: Franklin and Charlie Brown discover that they have a lot more in common than they thought. Even as we worked on this together, the team, me and the show’s family Bryan, his dad, Craig, and Cornelius Uliano, we discovered “Wow, look how similar. Charlie Brown is. Franklin is coming from the outside into this existing world trying to fit in trying to make friends.” And we discover Charlie Brown has been in that world and is still struggling to make friends. These two outliers, find each other. And this is almost like a love story. It's a friendship movie, a friendship special, but it's almost like a love story in that these characters don't have anyone else. And they end up partnering up and they discover, what does an outsider have to do? To gain friendship? At first, Franklin thinks, well, it's winning. “If we don't win,” they’re in this box car derby race. “If we don't win, we're done.” And he even takes it out on Charlie Brown. At a certain point, he starts thinking, “you're going to make us lose.” And he had heard from Lucy, of course, “If you team up with Charlie Brown, you're gonna lose because he's a loser.” Like it starts to start to haunt Franklin. 
 
So, when things go wrong, he starts thinking that “Lemonade Girl,” as Craig named her, “that Lemonade Girl was right about you.” That scene where things don't work out, and there's a big… it was so harsh. When Franklin turns on Charlie Brown that way, but they were they were in a struggle together, man. And it was so hard. I actually, really, I bristled, I thought that, and that was more of a Bryan Schultz, Cornelius Uliano thing, that moment, they were like, “look, here's what's got to happen for us to get to where we have to go. We got to do this thing.” And I was like, “That's combustible. I mean, that's a very unusual scene for Peanuts.” And they beat me up. All these guys did. They said, “look, trust us. They have to have a blow up. A bad one. Not a little one.” And yes, yes, that scene? That's one I think they'll be talking about that scene. I think kids will be talking about that. And the adults. Right, Craig?
 
Craig Schulz: Yeah. It’s a great scene.
 
Robb Armstrong: You don't… you don't see it. You don't see, you don't see animation deal with human content on this level. Ever. Not in my experience. It's wonderful man.
 
Craig Schulz: I just like to reflect back on I think, the responsibility we take in doing the specials, myself and my son, Bryan, you know, we did The Peanuts Movie in 2015. And I'll never forget, the trailer came out. And we're watching people on the internet. And this one guy that critiques all the trailers and stuff was sitting on there in his bedroom, and he's got his computer and his bag of potato chips, and he's watching the thing. It's in slow motion and a scene ends and he stands up. And he walks outside, opens the door, and he yells into the street as loud as he can, “they're not gonna,” I'll say screw, “they're not gonna screw it up!” I mean, it was amazing. I mean, after all the work we put in, which is five years to get to that point. And for somebody that was a diehard fan, and people don't realize how diehard Peanuts fans are. If you take something and move Lucy's hair a little bit, or Charlie Brown zigzags aren’t right, you're gonna hear about it. And we take that very seriously. 
 
So, this for us, this is a really risky project to do, a Franklin special, and to treat it right and give it the respect that it deserves. Give it the respect that my dad had given it within strip, and within the strip, you contain that respect, by not going too far out with Franklin. But he kept like Robb said, he kept Franklin sort of neutral. Franklin was very well grounded, and everybody likes Franklin. So, what are you going to do in a movie? Are you going to take him out there and also now he's going to start becoming a rapper, and breakdancing, and he's got a cell phone and all that sort of stuff, like somebody else would have done? No. And what I'm glad about having Bryan and Cornelius on board is that they can take this thing to the next generation. I don't necessarily have that many years left. And I worry about the third generation, having possession of Peanuts, or having somebody buy it out and not know how to run the business. To me, that's the scariest thing. And you know, in my lifetime, I would contain it like, I've been able to do for the last 23 years.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

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