Entergalactic is a new 90-minute adult animated special event coming to Netflix this Friday September 30th. Popular music artist Kid Cudi and Black-ish creator Kenya Barris team-up with director Fletcher Moules to present a classic love story in contemporary ways, set in modern day — and to Cudi’s music. The result is one of the coolest animated presentations I’ve seen in a long time. Moules and I discuss all aspects of Entergalactic in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: I love this. It’s so cool. When did YOU know this was so unique?

Fletcher Moules: The concept was always unique: Cudi and Kenya had this idea and it was wild from the start. When I came on board, there were writers and I heard three of the songs, and I was like, “Okay, we’re gonna do this animated?” And instantly it was something [I knew] had never been made before. That feeling was what really propelled everyone throughout. For all of our crew… we all had that same feeling you had when you said that.

JM: What I love, from a story standpoint, is that it takes classic love story elements and blends them with modern perspectives. How did you really want to showcase that blend?

FM: One of the most important things was to tell a modern love story — in our day and age. And really tell an analog love story: very real and tangible. We looked at classic films like When Harry Met Sally. It’s in New York, and it was about the tension of if they were gonna get together. For us it was really finding that very classic relatable love story but putting it in a very modern setting.

JM: Jabari and Meadow’s conversations feel so natural. Did they always have to be neighbors in order for this story to 100% work?

FM: The point of them being neighbors is that… at the start of this, both characters are not really ready to fall in love. Both of them have the same sort of struggles. Both of them go through very parallel paths with their art: Meadow with her photos and Jabari with the Mr. Rager comic. Emotionally they’re in a very similar place. They don’t feel they’re ready to be there. So to put them together forces this situation that also is romantic. The neighbor set-up is a romantic story, and it lets us set that stage for the whole story to unfold.

JM: Let’s get into Kid Cudi’s music. As you listen to the songs, they match-up so perfectly to what’s going on on screen. The songs came first and then the sequences, but still the blending of it is perfection.

FM: Thank you. As the outline was written, Cudi knew he wanted to do this love story. And when the writers came on board, I knew Cudi had a handful of songs that were the tentpole moments. The tracks were very tangible points in the story. As the writers’ room was happening and we knew those moments, he was able to drop in other songs. And then a handful of them actually came later. We edited most of this in storyboards and there were some moments where we had score only, and I was like, “We need Cudi’s voice because he’s so f***ing good.” I would pitch him and say, “Hey, we need a song that kind feels like this” and he would come back to me with something that worked perfectly and we dropped that song in.

JM: And a lot of the songs are featured in sequences with Jabari on bicycles. They are some unbelievable visual sequences.

FM: If we’re doing a grounded, relatable love story in New York, we had to use animation in a way to actually enhance it — that something in live-action would never do. “How do we visualize the emotion that Jabari has?” With the term Entergalactic” we made this world inside his head where his point of view is outer space and he’s spacing out, essentially. But that’s where he’s happy and comfortable. All of that enabled us to take the viewer, and Meadow, into his world in the songs, visually. And when you come back out of it, you don’t feel like the contrast is too much. That’s what animation enables you to do.

JM: I see movies and shows (especially romance ones) set in New York City all the time. What you’re able to do here is open our eyes to a fresh perspective of New York City. And that is hard to do!

FM: Cudi really wanted to set it in Tribeca and Lower Manhattan, from his time when he was living there. And one of the writers, Maurice Williams, is a New Yorker through and through. He was a stickler on all the New York aspects. We had to be true. We had to ensure that every location we went to was real. So all the bars are all real. They’re all real locations. The street corners are all real. We looked at thousands of photos because we were all at home on Zoom (because of COVID). From there we were able to blend it into our art style — to work with our production designer Robh Ruppel and art director Michal Sawtyruk. It has that reality of the New York we all know… but it’s in a way you’ve never seen it before.

JM: Yes it is. Cudi (Scott) voices the main character Jabari. So how was he in the booth recording dialogue as opposed to recording songs?

FM: I was definitely so stoked to have him as the voice of Jabari… and blown away by how awesome he was and how natural he was. It was the toughest part: recording actors. We planned to do them all in a room together, but then with COVID, we recorded them late, in early 2021. We already boarded the whole film. We had to record everybody individually. A lot of Scott records: one in New Zealand… and others in other parts of the world. And then we’d have to stitch all these separate records together and make it sound like they’re actually having an emotional conversation. And that’s a testament to all the fine acting by Scott and all the main cast. It worked out in the end, luckily.

JM: Even more of an achievement knowing that. These conversations are so natural, believable and at-ease. The fact that everybody was recorded separately: WOW.

FM: And that’s also a big hat’s off to our editing team, Carole [Kravetz Aykanian] and Andrew [Gust]. Fantastic editors. They come from live-action. I was really adamant to get live-action editors on this. They could really bring a thinking into it. That’s how we were able to stitch all that stuff together, and it actually works out!

JM: Vanessa Hudgens and Timothee Chalamet are also in the voice cast, along with Scott’s sister Maisha to voice Jabari’s sister Ellie. That’s really cool.

FM: She was awesome. And she has probably the most important line in the entire show, which is pretty cool.

JM: Yes. She comes in in the third act and allows him to go down a good path.

FM: She gives him a little bit of a lesson and a wake-up call. A talking to that sends him on the right path.

JM: I also love the clothing. What were some of the keys to the clothing?

FM: It was a huge deal for Cudi to get the Hypebeast fashion in there. It’s a huge part of his brand and life. The collaboration with Virgil Abloh was super important. Cudi loved working with him. Sadly [Virgil] passed away halfway through our production but we were so fortunate to work with Virgil. It was a huge thing to make sure we were doing something you’d never seen in animation: the characters are changing outfits in a way real people do. And if you’re going out for the night you’re going to change your clothes. You often don’t see that in animation. It was a big thing for us to do and one of the most exciting parts.

JM: And honestly, how did working on Entergalactic allow you to see art and animation in ways that can take you to these out of this world places?

FM: Our journey was always, first and foremost, to make a piece of art. When you listen to a new album, it’s a piece of art. The artist is expressing themselves musically. How you react to it is up to you and everyone reacts differently. Same with this. This is a piece of art that we wanted to make look like it was handmade. The animation feels handmade. It looks like it’s hand-painted, which it is. We’re super proud that we made a piece of art that is really true to ourselves, and I hope that people can really take that away and react to that as well.