Creative Keynote: Not Quite Narwhal’s Brian K. Roberts

Brian K. Roberts took TV Kids Summer Festival viewers behind the scenes of the new DreamWorks Animation series Not Quite Narwhal during the TV Kids Summer Festival.

Roberts, co-executive producer of the new book-based Netflix series, was interviewed by TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski for the session, which you can view here.

The Jessie Sima picture book served as the team’s “north star” throughout development, Roberts said. “Whenever we were doing anything, thinking about stories, about characters, we were always pointing back it as our inspiration, and also something to live up to. We all wanted to do Jessie’s story justice and really honor it with the series itself, even though the series is a different thing. One of the main big ways that it’s different is that there are no other named characters in the story at all. If you’re telling 26 half-hours, actually 52×11-minute episodes, you need other characters. So we had to build out that world and sort of look at what made Kelp special, but then also fill the world with other special and unique characters, both underwater and in unicorn land above water.”

The “big storytelling hook,” Roberts noted, “is that because Kelp is narwhal and unicorn and has lived underwater and now is learning about unicorn land, they have a unique perspective on anything. Kelp is the only one who has been in both worlds and being in both worlds and having those experiences in both worlds leads Kelp to have a unique way of solving problems. That helped inform our storytelling. A lot of series have a didactic, binary, if you do this, you can’t do that. How could Kelp, with their unique perspective, figure out how to put the two things together to make something new? That really gave us a unique way of telling stories. And that was all driven by Kelp and what made him unique.”

Roberts then talked about how DNI is baked into the series. “Representation and diversity was something we talked a lot about. Whenever you are talking about these things, it really requires an atmosphere of openness and generosity. We all come at these conversations with our own backgrounds, our own biases, and our own expectations of the right way and wrong way to say things and do things. It leads to a lot of interesting, sometimes even awkward conversations because you’re talking about things like ethnic and racial coding in fantasy characters. You’re talking about how does a Black unicorn need to look when you’ve got this multicolored rainbow of unicorns that could be any color? What makes them Black? Is it the voice? Is it the hair? Is it the eye color? We also have a unicorn who has a prosthetic limb. And I’m pretty sure that’s the first unicorn character in mainstream media that’s ever had a prosthetic appendage. That creates a whole lot of interesting conversations as well. One really important thing throughout that process has been using consultants who we bring in to help hash out some of those ideas.”

Roberts continued, “One of the big keys to the type of representation and inclusion that we did in this show is that we wanted to have as much of it as possible while talking about it as little as possible. My hope is someday we’ll get to the point where all of us as creators are doing such a good job with this that it’s not the story anymore because it’s just expected; it’s the default.”

The show made sure it had an inclusive writers’ room as well as a diverse range of characters, Roberts said. “If you don’t have a culture of openness and generosity, then people are never going to open up and bring those experiences into their storytelling.”

Roberts also talked about the benefits of using music in the show, which features a raft of original songs. “Most of our music is very story-driven and not lesson-driven,” said Roberts, who previously worked on VeggieTales. “The song inclusion in this show is much more natural.”