An Interview with the Executive Producers of ‘Interrupting Chicken’

Duckston (voiced by Luke Lowe), Piper (voiced by Juliet Donenfeld), Papa (voiced by Sterling K. Brown), CJ (voiced by Sarah Elizabeth Thompson) and Theodore (voiced by Jakari Fraser) in "Interrupting Chicken," now streaming on Apple TV+.

Ron Holsey and Loris Kramer are a pair of accomplished producers, that have worked together on projects such as Johnny Test. Currently they’ve teamed up to bring Interrupting Chicken to life on Apple TV+, which Ron also writes scripts for, and we here at NTG had the wonderful honor of sitting down with both of them to discuss all things Interrupting Chicken.
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John Betancourt: What were each of your roles in bringing Interrupting Chicken to life?

Ron Holsey: Yeah, well, it was a… Loris actually, and I had worked together years ago on a show called Johnny Test. And Loris was the one who found the book and thought it would make a great show. And actually, I'll let Loris you know, I'll let Loris kind of talk about it, because she's the one who had the idea for the show.

Loris Kramer: Yeah, so, Ron’s right, I had found the book, I fell in love with it. This was when it was just the first book out in the series. Now there's three of them. But I fell in love with it. It just It took a while to find, like the sort of… what I thought was the best way to approach it. And then I went to Ron who, as he said, we knew each other back from the early Johnny Test days. And I shared it with him, and he loved it. He, you know, he kind of really responded to, you know, him being a writer, himself. And it reminded him of, you know, some of what he had learned when he was younger. And how we can make that accessible to kids to tell stories. And so, that's how it happened. So, I went to him. We developed it, and then took it out and pitched it. And Apple very happily said, “yes, we want it.”

John Betancourt: What was it about this project that called to each of you?

Ron Holsey: Well, there's a few things I mean, when Loris, at first, was thinking about the show, she had the idea that the show could be used to teach sort of literary concepts. And when it was me being in elementary school in my language arts class, where we were reading The Phantom Tollbooth that I sort of got sparked to creative writing. And so, the idea that there's this sort of fun book with a bit of anarchy happening kind of appealed to my comedic sensibility. And the fact that we could use that to expose an even younger set of kids to like creative writing concepts to kind of maybe inspire them to get into creative writing, was huge for me. I'm like, “Oh, I can, you know, help influence the next generation the way that I was influenced by The Phantom Tollbooth in the past.”

Loris Kramer: Well, it was really funny, and I think that's why when I took it Ron, and he responded to it, because in the book, I mean, obviously we expanded greatly on the book, but the concept in the book, like I just remembered the… specifically the one about the father's telling her the story about Chicken Little, and she breaks into the story and says, “No, this guy's not really falling. You're fine.” Like, you know, and, and it's just funny to me. And I loved the idea that kids can insert themselves into the stories and feel part of it. And like Ron said, make them realize that they can create the stories themselves. There's no limit to what you can do. And I don't even like to use the word teach. Because it makes it sound, you know, boring. But we are enlightening kids that like, storytelling or anything is open to them. We're exposing them to storytelling and telling them they can use their imagination. And I love that.

Ron Holsey: And then just one thing I'll quickly add is that, you know, I've done a lot of stuff in educational television for kids. And usually there's, you know, concepts we're getting across that are based in science or real-world stuff. The fact that this is all about creativity means that we can be really fun and silly with the animation like, you know, squash and stretch animation and, you know, silly Looney Tune style jokes, which I love. So that kind of made it a unique, interesting show for me to do for this age group too.

John Betancourt:  Now this goes into great detail on the writing process, what went into the decision to craft a show that explored so much about storytelling?

Ron Holsey: Yeah, um, so yeah, when we initially pitched it, Loris and I, we kind of had a sort of idea that it would teach loose concepts of storytelling and framework. And when we took it to Apple, you know, Apple has Dr. Alice who is their sort of curriculum advisor, thought, you know, it would really fit in with their mission of anyone can create. And we could specifically drill down on the writing side of it, there's, you know, literacy and writing, have, you know, sort of been given short shrift, in a lot of education, and we thought we could, you know, it was our chance to sort of make a difference. And I was able to sort of think about the stuff that I've learned along the way and be able to sort of impart that to kids. And, and every episode was really interesting, because there's sort of like three story arcs happening. There's the sort of internal story and story world that's happening, there is Piper's journey, as a writer throughout that, and learning how to deal with the concept. And then of course, there's a little book end, stories that sort of mirror, the concept that's being exposed in the story. So, it was actually a very, like, complicated puzzle piece to put all the episodes together. And I know all the writers on the show, were really excited by that. And it got us to sort of play with these concepts. Where it's almost like a every story is like a laboratory where Piper can play with a different concept and see how things unfold based on changing those parameters.

Loris Kramer: No, I mean, I think he really covered that. I think, you know, like he said, we pitched it originally, as more just general storytelling. And Apple encouraged us to drill down on the writing concept. And, you know, Piper as a writer, and I don't think that's ever really been done before. I mean, there's certainly shows about reading, there’s shows about doing math, but there really hasn't been anything about writing. And, but it didn't, the interesting thing is, it didn't deviate that far from what we pitched because we were pitching a show about storytelling. So, we just, like, drill down more onto the concept of writing, but it was still all the literary devices, we pitched the show with these literary devices in it. And it just sort of, you know, expanded into this concept of Piper as a writer, which is really cool.

John Betancourt: What are you hoping audiences take away from this story, beyond learning the joy of story structure?

Loris Kramer: I want kids and their parents to just have fun. Like, I don't want them to feel like they're being taught anything. I want them to just… it should be pure entertainment. And hopefully we did that. Well, I hope that they're just enjoying the funny, silly stories that we're telling. But also, relatable. You know, like, like Ron mentioned, you know, the book ends in the real world. That's more than book ends, because we do come back and forth throughout, mirror what's going on in the story world, stories, and they're also all things relatable to kids, what they're going through in their own lives. Now we are taking it to, you know, we don't have kids on climbing beanstalks and meeting giants, but they are having to deal with these kinds of issues. And I felt like all of the real-world stuff in our show is very relatable to kids in an in a way that makes them realize that you can get through any of this stuff. And so that's totally separate from the writing part. That's more of the social, emotional aspect. And I think, you know, that comes across pretty clearly in the show as well. And that's I just want kids to enjoy it. And if they don't even realize it's about writing totally fine.
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Ron Holsey: I always want, you know, the stuff that I do. I'm a big fan of like a lot of comedy and a lot of like heart and emotional core. So, I think that, you know, our stories are not only fun and silly, but they have a little bit of like a sort of character moments and stuff that people can sort of latch on to. So, I think if I'm hitting on those two levels. I'm super happy.

John Betancourt: What does it mean to each of you to have two seasons of this out into the world?

Ron Holsey: Um, I'm just, you know, for me, I always think about the audience. And if there's kids out there who love it, and it's inspiring them, and they're laughing and they're maybe being inspired to become creative writers themselves. I'm just, I couldn't be more pleased. So, the fact that you know, the show is out there, it's got beautiful animations got a beautiful score music voice cast. We've made something I think that's, you know, really high quality for kids to enjoy. And so that's just really gratifying.

Loris Kramer: Ah, I mean, I totally agree with all of that. And we're just really thankful to, to Apple for seeing our vision and letting us bring it to life. Because I'm super proud of this show. You know, I won't name anything but like, you know, I'm not, I haven't always been as proud of everything I've done. We've all had those moments. But I am super proud of this. I just I like, I'm happy to tell everybody go watch this, go watch this. Your kids will love it. You'll you won't be annoyed by it. You know, there's, like, I think there was a lot for parents to really enjoy in the stories as well. I think a lot because of the humor.

John Betancourt: Speaking of pride, what are you each most proud of when it comes to this show?

Loris Kramer: Oh, that is a tough question. I mean, I'm just really proud of, first of all, how the show looks. I'm super proud of our casting, like not just from our, our, you know, main characters, but even all of our guest cast, like our entire team on this show was phenomenal. From literally everyone from our writers assistant, to all of the partners, the animation studio, which is Mercury Filmworks, to our casting director to our, our voice director and to the cast, so I'm just really proud creatively, and like, how the show turned out, but also to like what Ron said, like, just really happy about, you know, and proud of the message that we're sending to kids and families.
Ron Holsey: I too, am proud of the fact that we sort of interwoven a lot of… there's so much stuff going on with the show. We've interwoven character stuff, stuff that has heart, especially like our holiday special, a lot of silliness and zaniness and sort of wry humor, and this sort of educational component, and it's all sort of coming together. I feel like it's a big puzzle to put together and the fact that we're able to do that is really, really gratifying.

Loris Kramer: And the one other thing is what I really love too, is that, you know, in our story world, it's a combination of takes on well-known fairy tales, but it's not a show about fairy tales, because we have totally original stories. And we have other types of stories like Hercules, for example, like one of the episodes is, you know, like how you can write a story as artwork. We have an episode this season, which is about writing a song and rap music. And you know, with Wyclef Jean star guest starring in the episode and writing the music for that. I will say that in any calls, we made or any people we reached out to about the show from the beginning, there was no resistance. I mean Sterling K. Brown is the voice of Papa. Like, that's so cool. Um, so we're just really, I think we're just proud of all of it. But I liked that we were able to put in like, like I said, well known stories and totally original stories it didn't matter, the stories played out equally well.

Ron Holsey: I'm missing one more thing that I'm proud of that not everybody will notice. But from an animation geek perspective. So, when we did the visual development obviously have to translate the book into something that moves. But the story world that Piper jumps into, it was kind of inspired by those old Golden books. And Mercury Filmworks, the studio, did a great job of, Piper has to move between both worlds seamlessly. But like the everything in the story was more flattened, the lighting is different, even the like, the water effects are more like a Cut Out Effect, which is in the real world. So, they did such a good job of sort of, of making that distinction. Also, the music, it kind of like, there's a sort of spine that goes into the story world, it's more lush, and then it comes back to the real world. So, everything we did sort of is on this thread. And there's so many little details that everybody put a lot of work into.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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