Doug Unplugs is a new DreamWorks Animation series premiering tomorrow, November 13th, on AppleTV+. It’s based on author Dan Yaccarino’s book, Doug Unplugged, and centers on a sweet, fun friendship between a robot boy and a human girl. Executive Producers Jim Nolan and Aliki Theofilopoulos have wholeheartedly invested themselves in this show and hope it charges-up families to have fun learning about the world.

Jackson Murphy: Doug’s gold color is so striking. What do you think this choice of gold says about Doug and the show overall?

Jim Nolan: I don’t know if the color choice of Doug was necessarily meant to make a statement. Doug was gold in [Yaccarino’s] book. What’s charming about it to me is that it helps make him stand out in whatever environment he goes in. You get the idea that he’s new here: he journeys to the textile world of humanity… more nuanced. He’s a metal guy. It suggests that everything’s new for him – that this is a new space for him to explore.

Aliki Theofilopoulos: I agree. There isn’t a statement of ‘The Golden Child’. It’s more in looking at a robot… trying to find this combo of honoring the yellow on the cover of Dan’s book [and] taking that idea but then playing with the metallic feeling of him being a robot. Just pushing him to bright and happy and feeling good against the backdrop of his two worlds. That isn’t a dull metallic silver color that you might initially think of when you think ‘robot’.

JM: Right. I like the choice. And in the first episode, a lot of the focus is on table tennis. I’ve played a lot of it throughout my life. Why did you feel it was important to incorporate that in this first episode?

AT: There was something really wonderful about how we all know table tennis. We’ve all played. We’re all so familiar with the game – the imagery, how it’s played, the rules. So it’s a great way to show just exactly how unfamiliar Doug is with things of our world. Just playing a game in general – he’s never experienced anything like that. It’s an opportunity for our human character, Emma, to show her new friend this everyday, regular human world thing. And that’s kind of the fun of our show. We get to take things that we see everyday and see them through new eyes because they’re new for Doug.

JN: And table tennis is fun. I don’t think anything can be more ‘kid’ than having fun. In our first episode, Doug doesn’t know what fun is, so Emma’s convinced she’s gotta play table tennis with him to teach him what fun’s all about.

JM: It’s great. And I love that Emma and Doug are so enthusiastic about each other and what they learn about. This relationship is so sincere and honest.

JN: The heart of the series is Doug and Emma’s friendship and the perspectives they each bring. Emma represents that fun, artistic, creative, wildly imaginative side of humanity. And Doug, a little bit, represents a more thoughtful side. When you put them together, they both take away something completely different from every situation and teach each other things. And that’s what’s special about our show.

AT: And it’s great to give Emma maybe some of the reactions our audience might be having.

JM: I also think audiences will like the songs by the Loftys. Once Doug plugs in, he gets to learn so much.

AT: I absolutely love working with the Loftys. They’re so, so talented. I was lucky to work with Ryan Lofty on Harvey Girls Forever, and now he’s branched out with another team of songwriters and composers. We had so much fun on our show. He really has a strong sensibility for current and pop-sounding music. When Jim and I talked about what the sound would be for the show, we really felt like we wanted to make sure and honor this idea that DreamWorks makes shows that have good music. It’s not music for kids, per se. It’s just great music and it happens to be great for kids too. Ryan really understands what makes a great pop song, so he was able to bring that sensibility into our songs for the show. And on top of it, we had a really important task with our songs, and that was to make sure and relay this bit of information Doug would get when he plugged in. And we did that through our songs. It was about doing that in a fun and catchy way with melody that would stick in your head.

JM: They work. I miss going to libraries. In the ‘Volunteer Bot’ episode, Doug and Emma go to a library, and that miniature version is so cool.

JN: Our show is about a curious character who wants to learn. The beauty of a library is that it allows you to learn in so many ways. If there’s a place for our robot to go, it’s the library to sort of see how humans learn and discover. I have nothing but affection for libraries and the libraries I grew up with. The heart of that episode is about a community coming together and everybody working for their own good, and what they wind-up doing is fixing up that library. I think that’s a perfect space for them all to do that.

AT: And they get to see how they help in their own special way, which is really neat for kids to get to have that experience. They might have this idea of how they can help that seems like it needs to be in a big way, but in their small, little ways, they were able to bring people together and help restore this library. The library is such a great setting. We get to show another way we get information, basically.

JM: The message of asking for help comes through so clearly in that episode. What were some of the key times while working on this show that you needed to ask for help and took it all in?

AT: Truly, a show is as good as its team. We had an incredible team on this show. It really showed when we moved from being on-campus all together to a stay at home atmosphere due to the pandemic. Everybody came together and worked so hard to continue to carry the show along and make it wonderful. For me, it’s really about knowing who’s best at certain things – knowing who to go to for action, character… who can take on revisions well… for advice on things. Our team was so strong and so skilled that there were a slew of people to turn to. It’s one of the things I really had to learn as a showrunner. It’s not possible to take on all the work yourself. It’s just not gonna happen. You really do have to make sure you hire a team of people that you can trust that are great at what they do. It makes your job easy… and you truly can allow yourself to rely on those awesome people.

JM: Doug’s parents try to show emotion in the first episode, but they’re also robots. What can we expect from that dynamic this season on Doug Unplugs?

JN: Doug’s family [members] are robots but they still love each other. What’s different is that because they come from this mechanical world, the way they express it in the Pilot episode is that they make Doug an app that shows heart. That’s, in their mind, connecting. A big piece of our show is that Doug goes out in the human world and experiences how we humans do things. In the first episode, he and Emma hug goodbye, and that’s the first time Doug has that sort of physical connection. He brings that home to his parents and shows that that’s another way to show affection. Our robots have feelings, but it’s expressed in robotic ways. And what Doug does is go out and discover how we humans express those things and often he brings them back – like in our second episode at the beach. Doug… ultimately discovers that it’s a great place to relax. And he takes that concept back to the robots and teaches them to relax.

JM: Aliki, you also voice Emma’s Doug, Princess Woofingham.

AT: Yes! Jim and I have been so lucky to have an amazing partnership on this show. A lot of times we can kind of get a sense of what the other one is thinking or looking or hoping for. With Princess Woofingham, we were trying different actors giving us their take on her, and it was never exactly what [Jim] had in mind. He created Princess Woofingham, and I was like, ‘I think I know what he wants.’ I have done a little bit of voiceover in my past and teach classes, so I thought, ‘Why don’t I just go ahead and show him what I’m thinking?’ So luckily, he liked it, and I literally put myself through the audition process on the show, and Jim and casting agreed that I was the one.

JN: It was a grueling audition process that we put her through. (laughs) There were many hoops we made her jump through.

JM: It was the top dog voice performance.

AT: There you go!

JM: Right now DreamWorks has a lot of different shows on several different places and platforms. Did AppleTV+ come on board for this because of the whole ‘tech / database / searching and finding info’ aspect?

JN: The message of the series is… and what drew me to it as well… is that we’re not implying that tech is a negative thing. Being able to look up facts and figures – being able to access data in an instant – is a wonderful thing. And it certainly isn’t going anywhere. I have a two-year-old son that will find pictures of himself on my phone. It’s a part of our lives. What’s really wonderful about our show is that it’s encouraging kids to take that tech and ask them to have it fuel their curiosity. It’s a balance between the facts and figures you can learn through tech and looking stuff up and real world experience. That’s of course the message that our friends at AppleTV+ were immediately interested in because it just feels right.

JM: This show is probably the most sincere version of ‘robots and humans interacting in society’ that I’ve ever seen. Is this how you would want to picture it all being if suddenly robots took over the world?

JN: (laughs) Yeah. They’re fun robots.

AT: (laughs) I would have to say Yes. In our world, these are robots who care. They’re helping the human world by taking items that are being tossed away and recycling them into something new and cool for their world. Emma’s family really embraces Doug’s family and vice versa. In our show, we bring these worlds together, and I would hope and imagine in the best version of a ‘robot meets human’ world that we would be able to have the same kind of thing.