Businesswoman and longtime entertainment personality Paris Hilton is venturing into the world of family animation — executive producing a new series inspired by her own life. Paris & Pups is about Paris Star, a girl who lives at a fun and fancy hotel with her lovable dogs. Sadaf Muncy, HappyNest Entertainment’s SVP, Development and Production, discusses the show, which premieres today on YouTube. (This Animation Scoop interview was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity. Images Credit: HappyNest Entertainment.)

Jackson Murphy: How did you become involved with Paris Hilton in bringing this series to life?

Sadaf Muncy:I am a huge fan of Paris Hilton. I have loved watching her through the years and was especially a big fan of her and her pups. I followed her and her dogs on social media and just fell in love with their interactions. We were concepting and ideating new IP when I first came to HappyNest and I was looking through the client list at UTA, which was one of the stakeholders in HappyNest, and Paris Hilton stood out. And so I pitched her team on the idea of an animated series based on a young girl and her pups inspired by Paris and they were very receptive. From there we worked very closely with her team to develop the series.

JM: How was it creating the different personalities of Star’s dogs?

SM: It was so much fun. We did a lot of research on her pets throughout her life. She’s always been an animal lover and we focused on her pups who were a part of her everyday life. We created personalities that reflected her real life pups and also which reflected Paris and her own traits. We captured her love of being a DJ, her adventurous nature, her love of blingifying and creativity, and other traits we knew kids can relate to. Paris is also an avid advocate for ADHD and we created a character that reflects many of the traits of ADHD. We worked very closely with Understood.org to make sure that the character presents those traits in a positive and authentic way. 

JM: What is significant about the charms the pups receive?

SM:The Puppy Charms are a way that our main character, Paris Star, shares her pride and joy when her pups overcome a challenge, achieve a goal or perform an act of kindness. At the end of every episode, she takes a bespoke charm off her bracelet and gives to one (or more) of the pups to hang on their collar. We wanted to model appreciation and gratitude for our audience, and allow them to share their own Puppy Charms with their pets, their stuffies, their parents and their friends.  

JM: What were your goals in creating the hotel’s positive, upbeat environment?

SM:A hotel is a place that embodies many opportunities for fun storytelling – from Paris Star’s “Starkle Space” (Star+Sparkle = Starkle) where she does her crafting, baking and creating music, to the “Paw Spa” where she can spend time relaxing and pampering her pups, to the “Rufftop Terrace” where she can ride her scooter, do yoga with her pups or host a tea party, to the lobby where we have big DJ parties and have a pop-up cafe – a hotel is an aspirational location that allows us to have lots of interesting characters and scenarios. I love that a hotel welcomes people from all over the world, and in fact we meet Amisha, who has parents from Indonesia and becomes Star’s best friend, at the Fabuluxe Hotel. We loved designing an inviting, fun, worldly and warm environment for our characters. 

JM: How is music also important to the show?

SM:It’s very important. Paris Star is a DJ and she loves to make her own music. She has a DJ deck and one of her pups, Bijou, also loves to DJ. This allows us to allow them to create music in the show. We also have an amazing theme song which Paris Hilton even sings! 

JM: What went into the decision of having each episode be about five to six minutes long?

SM:I’ve been creating short form content for the last 10 years. I’ve been able to see how kids react to engaging characters and stories, presented in a shorter format. We wanted to make the show accessible and available for our audience and knew we wanted to go to YouTube first. We loved the idea of telling short, compelling stories that could take place in about 5 minutes. This allows us to have varied storytelling about all of the characters. We have 36 five-minute episodes in this first season and we also produced two 10-minute holiday specials. We wanted our audience to get to know our characters and we loved the short format so we can focus on our stories in a concise manner. It also allows us to stitch together the episodes as well for other platforms moving forward.

JM: Who are some of your other favorite pups in animated TV/movie history?

SM:I love Dug from the movie “Up”. His heart, loyalty and distractibility are so endearing. I’ve always been a huge fan of Goofy and I love Bandit, the dad in “Bluey”.

JM: In one episode I screened, Star looks for inspiration from all that’s around her. What inspired you the most while making “Paris & Pups”?

SM:I love the bond that Star has with her pups, and I adore the heart, perseverance, and kindness that they share. I have two furbabies of my own and I’m so inspired by the joy and love that my pups bring to me and my family. I’ve also been continually inspired by Paris Hilton herself, the more I’ve learned about her advocacy – working to pass laws to stop institutional child abuse, to her advocacy and promoting awareness for ADHD to her business acumen role as a new mom – she inspired me to create a world to model benevolence, kindness and integrity for our audience.