April 2nd, 2018 
Jackson Murphy 
It was a box office hit and surprise Oscar nominee, with a sequel in the works. But fans of The Boss Baby don’t have to wait three years to see the pint-sized business mogul in action again. DreamWorks Animation TV will debut The Boss Baby: Back in Business this Friday (4/6) on Netflix. Two-time Emmy-winner Brandon Sawyer is the show’s Executive Producer.
Jackson Murphy: It’s been about a year since The Boss Baby was released in theaters. When you saw it for the first time, what was your initial reaction to it?
Brandon Sawyer: I loved it. Because I was working at DreamWorks and had been working with [director] Tom McGrath on the Penguins of Madagascar TV show and then the movie, I saw some rough cuts of it before the theatrical release. And even in its roughest form, the heart of it was always there, and it had this really funny set-up: that first scene when the Boss Baby first reveals himself to Tim. And I was just hooked right from… even from Tom’s pitch, I think, even before I saw the movie, I just thought it was such a great idea. And then, later when they came to me with the possibility of doing the show, I jumped at it. I thought it was great.
JM: How much later after the movie came out did that pitch come to you?
BS: Well, it was before the movie came out. It was… Summer 2016 when I started developing the TV show. So about nine months before the movie came out, we were already working on the TV show.
JM: DreamWorks clearly had confidence enough in the movie nine months before its release to say, “Hey – let’s now do a TV series based on it.”
BS: Yeah. Absolutely. You could tell.
JM: How many times since then have you watched the movie to get all the information you needed in order to make this show?
BS: Since it came out, maybe twice. I had seen it three or four times before that, so… five or six times in total.
JM: And when you’re working on the series, do you consult a lot with Tom McGrath?
BS: We did early on. Like I said, we had a pre-existing relationship. I started on the “Penguins” TV show in 2008. So we’ve known each other for a decade now, so there was… I like to think a pretty high trust level. So he got the show Bible – where I laid-out what I wanted to do with the show. And then the first few scripts and the first few animatics we ran past him. And then, beyond that, he just kind of saluted and said “Hey – you guys are doing great work, and I got a lot of publicity work to do promoting the movie.” He gave us his blessing, and we just ran with it.
JM: Is “Back in Business” basically a direct follow-up to the movie?
BS: It is. It’s pretty much right after. The one thing we kind of skip over, just because we didn’t want to take the time with it, was Boss Baby actually making the decision that, “You know what? I kind of miss the job.” Family’s great. He loves it. But work is where the action is. So we pick-up right after he made that decision – that he’s going to try to do both. He’s going to try to be modern career baby – have the corner office and the family at home. And complications ensue.
JM: Certainly having a job in the animation world is unpredictable and fun and wild. But have you ever been interested in a corner office/business type job?
BS: Oh no. I was a business minor in college. And that convinced me that that was not what I wanted to do for a living. I enjoy what I do too much.
JM: A lot of the DreamWorks Animation movies, in their transition over to television (Netflix), have stayed CGI – others have transitioned over to hand-drawn. Was it a difficult decision to say “Let’s keep this CGI for the series”?
BS: Yes and no. Creatively, it was a no-brainer for me. There’s a moment that I always tell people when they ask about this. The moment that the movie really just grabbed me in the heart, not just the jokes, was a tiny moment where Boss Baby is gonna open up to his brother and finally gonna have a heart-to-heart with him. And it’s this simple action of Boss Baby just trying to climb up onto the bed… and he can’t because he’s got these little baby legs and he’s just kinda kicking and pulling himself up there.
And there was something so magical about that for me that I think a lot of it came out of the CG. As pushed as it is, and as cartoony as it is, there’s a certain reality to it that comes when you have this weight and these kind of real-world physics that CG gives you. So I knew from the beginning that I wanted that. There’s plenty of shows out there… 2D talking baby cartoon shows. That’s a thing that exists, and I know. There’s great versions and there’s bad versions.
But the CG just lended a certain reality. It just made the character… more real to me. And I knew I wanted to do that. And the only reason I say “yes and no” as to whether that was a hard decision was “Could we pull it off on a television schedule and a television budget?” Thankfully, the first footage came back, and our animation director, Andrew Tamandl and the team at Technicolor Studios, they really just made these expressive babies. You could see the acting. We knew we were gonna use a lot of close-ups – really wanted to be able to see performance and read emotions on these faces. And thankfully, a huge relief to me, they pulled it off, and I think it looked great.
JM: You talk about the television schedule. You co-wrote the screenplay for the “Penguins of Madagascar” movie. What are some of the big differences you’ve noticed in crafting a TV series vs. crafting a movie?
BS: It’s time. Time is the biggest difference. I love both for different reasons. The feature was great because there’s more time for collaboration. I loved being able to work directly with the story department and the head of story and all the board artists – and to work on scenes together: to take the time to work them over. We’d take a pass at the script, and then they take it and they’d board it and come-up with new ideas, and then it’d get kicked back to us to refine that. It was a lot more back-and-forth because you’d be working on the same scenes for months.
And TV certainly doesn’t allow that, but that comes with its advantages as well because there’s not time to overthink things. You gotta go with what strikes you as funny or moving or whatever it is – just the churn of it. It keeps moving. And if you feel like “Ah – I wish we would’ve done better on that one”, well that just means we gotta get it right on the next one. There’s this constant motion of it and things are always getting made, and there’s an energy to it that I love in television.
JM: I’ve been noticing these have been used online often: When it comes to the “Penguins” movie, how did you come-up with all those celebrity puns for Dave the Octopus to say?
BS: Oh, that was definitely a team effort. One of the two directors, Simon Smith, had just thrown this really throw-away joke into an early scene where Dave says, “Nicolas: Cage Them!” And everybody kinda chuckled and thought “Oh, it’s kinda funny.” And then, I wanna say it was Mike Colton, one of the other writers, who really saw the potential of “You know what? We could do more with that. We could keep going with that.” And then once the idea was out there, it was just…
There’s probably an email I could dig-up with hundreds of them… of just potential gags. “Kevin: Bake-On!” That was me! I’m proud of that one!
JM: That’s great!
BS: But we all threw in a bunch of them.
JM: If you dug out that email and put it online, I bet a lot of people would be liking and re-tweeting that for sure, because those lines are really funny.
BS: Thank you.
JM: You’re welcome. One of the cast members of “The Boss Baby: Back in Business” is Kevin Michael Richardson. If you’re familiar with the name, he’s been a lot of “Simpsons” episodes over the past couple years. Isn’t he amazing when it comes to voice talent?
BS: I’m trying to think if I’ve ever done a show without Kevin, and I can’t imagine doing one without him because you need Kevin or Jeff Bennett or John DiMaggio or somebody who can give you… 20-30 voices, and they’ll all be different. Kevin’s the only one… who can actually fool me sometimes – where I’ll hear something in a show and not even know that it was Kevin because he’s that good. I knew we needed Kevin because of what he can give you. He can give you 30 characters for the price of one Kevin.
JM: You won two Daytime Emmy Awards for the “Penguins of Madagascar” series. DreamWorks Animation, with their shows this year, is nominated for a total of 19 Daytime Emmys. That’s gotta be an incredible feeling for you, Brandon, to be a part of a team that’s such a creative force right now in animation.
BS: It’s great. I have a lot of friends on other shows here and a lot of friends with nominations. It was really exciting seeing that list come out and saying, “Oh, I’m so happy for him and her and everybody else!”
JM: And because of the success of “The Boss Baby” movie, “The Boss Baby 2” is coming out in theaters in about three years (March 2021). Will we be seeing some connections in this series to the “Boss Baby” sequel?
BS: Well it’s all kinda up in the air right now. I talk to Tom every once in a while and so, I am not at liberty – even if I had the knowledge – to say how it’s all gonna come together in the end. We’re still working on the show. They’re still working on the movie. But yes, we’re aware of each other. I am sure, whatever they do – it will be great.
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