Ben Bocquelet & Erik Fountain Talk Gumball’s Return

The Amazing World of Gumball on Cartoon Network was among the biggest kids’ shows of the 2010s. Emerging out of Cartoon Network’s then-nascent European development studios, Ben Bocquelet’s animated series about 12-year-old cat Gumball Watterson and his adoptive goldfish brother, Darwin, delivered pop-culture-infused comedy, high school antics and family shenanigans for six seasons, ending its run in 2019.

Cartoon Network internationally and Hulu in the U.S. have brought the beloved Watterson clan back with the revival series The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, produced by Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe and with Bocquelet returning to guide the show’s creative vision, this time alongside Matt Layzell and Erik Fountain. The series arrived on Hulu in July and lands on Cartoon Network and HBO Max internationally in October.

“It was a joy to slip back into it,” Bocquelet tells TV Kids. “It was like putting on my old slippers!”

The media world has changed drastically since Gumball’s first appearance, but much of the original DNA of the series is intact, Bocquelet notes. “Gumball’s rhythm was always closer to doom scrolling on TikTok than a traditional, elegant approach to animation storytelling,” he quips. “It’s probably even more frantic. The world has changed, but people are still humans, they still have the same feelings and problems and social stuff going on with their families and friends. It’s just that now we’re getting new stuff to riff on, like AI, social media brainwashing, food scarcity and billionaires!”

“Economic inequality, all the fun stuff!” Fountain adds. “For me, it’s fun and wacky, but it’s also the big issues of the world seen through the lens of children. Children a decade ago are different than children now. You’ve got to talk about the things that kids are affected by now. It’s always been part of the DNA of the show to pay homage to the stuff we like, like pop culture, but now there’s big pop culture and small pop culture and meme culture. That’s become infused. And not just for the sake of referencing it—it’s to make the kids feel like kids.”

The show has also returned with its signature mixed-media look. “I wish we’d been more technologically savvy to come up with an easier way of doing it,” Bocquelet says, “but we’re still doing it the same way as before. We have fun with the designs and animate the old school way.”

“It’s a lot of rolling up our sleeves and working on things one frame at a time,” Fountain adds. “There have been a lot of advancements [in animation technology], but they’re in their fledgling state. A season of animation takes a long time to produce. So, even when we started this season, AI was still at the ‘Will Smith eating spaghetti’ stage. It’s not what it is today. And I like doing things. I like being able to get in deep into something and craft it. With this being seven years out from the previous one, a lot of the animators grew up with Gumball. This is their first job, they’re working on their beloved property, and you can see their investment and their love for the show come out. They’re working so hard and putting so much of their own mannerisms into scenes. It’s got this quality of investment from the animators and the designers. They’re fans and now they get to work on it. It’s the opposite of technology—you get this sense of human investment.”

Gumball fandom is also rooted in the show’s ability to make viewers laugh—whatever their age.

“What kept some of the old fans watching was the fact that it could be funny for an adult to watch,” Bocquelet says. “It’s always been my dream that people would watch it as a family. I have very fond memories of watching old Looney Tunes cartoons with my dad and the two of us laughing out loud. That’s a nice thing to experience as a family. We always try to have an allegorical [message] for the adults, and then more cartoony and emotional kid-based storylines.”

The multiple levels of humor have helped the show endure, Bocquelet and Fountain explain, but the heart of its multigenerational appeal lies in the fact that it has always been a passion project for the team behind it.

“We put a proper little chip of our hearts into everything we do,” Bocquelet says. “It’s always coming from a personal place. That is maybe the secret recipe to doing something relatable; you offer a vulnerable part of your story for others to enjoy. Or just the fact that it’s so stupid that you just can’t help laughing at it.”

“What I always loved about it is it’s a feast for the eyes,” Fountain adds. “It’s got so many different styles, and it all feels integrated and it makes sense. Gumball has the pulse of what’s going on. What are people frustrated about? How do you show that in a way that is entertaining instead of depressing? It keeps itself relevant, but instead of whipping you into a frenzy, you get to have a release. That’s the way to stay relevant, right? Just keep looking at the world around you.”