January 6th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
The Owl House is the new highly-anticipated animated adventure series premiering this Friday Jan. 10th at 8:45pm on Disney Channel. Creator Dana Terrace is excited for animation and fantasy fans to journey into an incredible world for a 19-episode first season.
Dana Terrace: I’m a big fan of old, medieval art. So the general look and concept of the show first came from when I was looking through old art books and old history books, rediscovering the works of Hieronymus Bosch, which was basically Pokemon in the 1500s. I looked at that stuff and I was like, “Man, it’d be killer if there was a cartoon that kind of looks like this.” Of course, a little less gory and a little less Hellish, but with the same kind of imagination that you’d see in surreal works like that.
Jackson Murphy: And I was attracted to the title of the show because my grandmother collected owl figurines. When she was alive, we gave her all kinds of owl things – anything we found. What has always attracted you to the owl?
DT: What I love most about the owl is that there’s this… kind of stereotype that owls are wise… owls are very smart creatures. But what I’ve actually read about them is that they’re quite dumb. (laughs) I love that flop of like, “Oh they look so wise because they have those forward facing eyes and they have these intelligent looking faces.” But in reality, they’re just kind of dumb predators who eat mice and fly around and gawk at each other. I love that duality.
JM: That wasn’t the answer I was expecting you to give, but you know what…
DT: (laughs)
JM: I still admire owls, even though they may be dumb. Wendie Malick (“Hot in Cleveland”) has one of the best voices out there. What makes her great for the role of Eda?
DT: She just is Eda. She’s sassy. She’s cold, but in a cool way. You really wanna be her friend. And that’s how I wanted Eda to come off. You really want to get to know her, but you’re also a little scare of her and intimidated by her. I remember trying to figure out the voice of Eda. We went through so many auditions. And when I heard [Malick] as BoJack’s mother on “BoJack Horseman”, it was an immediate, “Oh my God, we have to get her! Send her an email right away!”
JM: There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happens in the first episode of “The Owl House”, but she seemed game for all of it.
DT: Yeah. She was down for anything.
JM: With a show like this, it’s its own new world. So you have to create the rules of the world and the structure of it. Was that challenging?
DT: It was challenging, yes, but it was also a lot of fun. This is the kind of stuff that I’ve been doing since I was six years old. “What if dragons lived in this world? How would that affect the government and laws?” It’s a lot of nerdy, world-building stuff that me and the writers have a lot of fun doing. The hard part is making the final decision: “Okay, this is what we’re doing and how we’re proceeding.” That’s always the most difficult part for us.
JM: This show has such imagination to it that I can understand how making final decisions would be tough.
DT: There’s so many cool things we had to put on the shelf, but so many other cool things we got to explore and put in the show. So it’s exciting to see it all out there.
JM: One of the main themes that I really like, with Luz and the other characters, is freedom of expression – and that being different is okay.
DT: Thank you very much. As an artist, I believe in the freedom of expression, and the freedom of creativity. And I feel like art and expression can’t and shouldn’t be hindered, and we try to explore that through the magic. We try to explore that through Luz.
JM: And it seems like you’ve had a lot of freedom when it comes to making the show itself.
DT: Disney has allowed me to do more than I thought they would. It’s been a pleasant experience.
JM: I know you worked on a few other shows for Disney in the past. What was that experience like of coming-up with this concept and making it a reality?
DT: It was very straightforward. I worked on Gravity Falls and DuckTales, and those were two very different, though very good, experiences. When I had this idea for a show, I realized, “Oh – it might be a little edgy for Disney. They might not be interested in something like this.” So I basically came into them with the concept: “Girl goes to demon realm, learns to become a witch. Take it or leave it.” And fortunately, they took it and they allowed me to explore a lot of things.
JM: You watch a lot of things on TV and Disney these days, and it’s not 100%, entirely squeaky-clean. The edgy stuff is appealing to both kids and adults these days.
DT: Oh yeah. And I wouldn’t say it’s edgy, I would just say it’s… Oh I guess I did say it’s edgy. (laughs) I think it’s very normal for Disney to want to take – not necessarily a risk like this – but to explore a different avenue of cartoon that can appeal to different kinds of people.
JM: And you even got to do some of the additional voices. Where do we hear you on this show?
DT: I have a very tiny caricature. Her name is Tiny Nose. She’s the little bug-eyed, red head in the jail cell who screams out conspiracy theories. That’s me.
JM: That’s a cool character to have.
DT: It’s completely selfish. I thought, “If I was gonna have a cartoon… if I was gonna put all this work into something… I wanna be in it.”
JM: You’ve been profiled by outlets like Variety as “someone to watch”. But now that “The Owl House” is here, how does it feel to know that you have officially arrived?
DT: I don’t feel like I’ve arrived yet. I won’t feel like I’ve arrived until the entire season is out, and then I might be able to breathe a little bit. But I do feel like I’ve come into my own as an artist and a showrunner. After a year of ups and downs and learning how to do this job and finding my style of leading and storytelling, I do feel like I’ve gotten to a point where, “Okay… I kind of know what I’m doing.” And that feels nice.
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