January 6th, 2025 
Jackson Murphy 
A group of student government middle schoolers are on a one-of-a-kind island for the summer. New animated series StuGo premieres this Saturday Jan. 11 at 8pm on Disney Channel. Creator and EP Ryan Gillis and Co-EP Sunil Hall ring in the New Year with this adventurous show. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Ryan, I think people are always fascinated with other people on deserted islands. You have reality shows. And then you have the student government angle of this. So, what did you love about those two things that you wanted to put into this show?
Ryan Gillis: Yeah, we were just thinking about kids who are high achievers — they already have so much pressure on themselves — and putting them in a space that is probably the most pressure they’ve ever experienced. And also a lot of these skills that they’ve cultivated won’t really play out here. So it was just about “Lord of the Flies”, and they’re all a bunch of sweeties.
JM: I enjoyed the vibe of these kids who are very smart. They are brainiac middle schoolers. Sunil, as families are watching this show, how skilled are these kids? What are they able to do that’s gonna impress audiences?
Sunil Hall: They’re incredibly skilled… and they’re completely unprepared for what they face on this island. They gotta re-learn how to deal with the world and what their place is.
RG: That’s part of the friction that we found a lot of jokes in. These are incredibly smart 10 through 13-year-olds but they’re still 10 through 13-year-olds. So, here’s that friction where their assumed competency doesn’t always match the situation.
SH: Yeah, Chip in particular is supremely confident and has a great attitude but fails all the time. (laughs)
Ryan Gillis, Sunil Hall (top row)with Jackson Murphy (below)
JM: A lot for these kids to learn. They expect to go to this summer camp to experience it in sort of one way, and then it becomes something completely different very quickly. Ryan, do you have summer camp memories that you wanted to make sure you infused into this extreme summer camp?
RG: I’ve never actually been to a summer camp, but I am lucky. I have a huge family. I was sent to stay with them in the summers a lot of times. And it usually felt like I was leaving my entire world behind and getting to spend it with a bunch of cousins and really generous aunts and uncles. Now that I’m an adult, I understand what it is to take in more children, but at the time, it was just what was happening to me. The idea of being that age and being plucked out of your world and being moved someplace, it’s sort of horizon broadening. I feel like it’s a really, really thing I’m grateful for, so it’s what’s happened to these kids right now.
JM: Sunil, they meet Dr. Lullah, who is quite the mad scientist. How mad of a scientist did you want Dr. Lullah to be?
SH: She’s a character. She’s not your classical mad scientist. I think she’s someone who’s got a lot of interests and kind of a short attention span. So she’s got a lab full of half-finished inventions of various levels of safety that the kids can get involved in.
RG: Lorraine Toussaint, who plays Dr. Lullah… we conceived of Dr. Lullah a little bit more mad, but she just infused it with this joy, and it made her harder to pin. She became more mercurial, and I’m really satisfied by that. And also, it’s so hot in the Caribbean, you can’t be that mad, you know?
JM: Yeah, she’s quite a character. You’re right. She’s energetic. And boy, all of these creations. Ryan, we see animals in mutant ways like we’ve never seen before in animation television. You got a giant crab. You got a lot going on here visually. What did you envision? How did you get it to the screen?
RG: I had a huge pot of inspiration. These old adventure serials. Ray Harryhausen. “Johnny Quest”. Stuff from my life in Florida. And then I gave it all to Sam Bosma, the art director, and he figured out a way to make it cohesive and appealing. The team we assembled to make this show… Sunil and I would leave art meetings and just talk about, “Man, geez, this thing’s looking good.” It’s better than we ever dreamed, really.
JM: You got another Disney animated show here that’s summertime. Of course, Phineas and Ferb, another iconic one in animation. I think kids love that summer experience. Sunil, how did you want to map out the summer for these kids [and] map out the challenges that they face?
SH: I think at the beginning of the season, we had Ideas of things we wanted to talk about or certain points we wanted to hit. But I don’t know if we had a hard map we followed. We kind of let things organically develop. We definitely had this board full of ideas and concepts and pitches and sort of half-baked ideas we wanted to work with, and we kept bringing that up and looking at it and seeing where it could fit in those things. And it kind of took shape organically as we created.
RG: My favorite part about comedy shows in this space is how much they can change depending on who works on them. So we were reticent to put too many really hard pins down because everything starts to take on a life of its own as the team gets to working on it.
SH: Most people create ideas for these characters and that idea becomes part of their lore and part of that character and changes and evolves over time and they become their own little person.
JM: I’m sure you have so much freedom with a concept like this for it to evolve, so that really makes it work. Another Disney iconic series is Lizzie McGuire. What I think made Lizzie McGuire work is that the kids led the show. And so Ryan, how did you want these kids to kind of lead the way and be captivating for audiences and engaging for audiences as we see them go on this unique journey?
RG: That was one of the nice parts about having an ensemble where everybody is a little bit of an overachiever. They all have things they want to accomplish, and that is just a way to get to stories instantly. What they want to accomplish can conflict with what the other one wants too. What they want to accomplish can conflict with what the island is going to do. Having a bunch of characters that all have an ideal version of their day that’s different is a way to get to a lot of stories quickly.
JM: That makes a lot of sense. Sunil, it’s the beginning of 2025, and it’s wintertime, but this is a summertime escape. How do you feel about a summer-themed show coming out in wintertime?
SH: I’m a big fan of it. (laughs) Sometimes you need to get out. And this island is not like a Caribbean dream vacation. It’s a dirty, messy, wild island. I think Ryan described it as humid. You get a real sense of place and the tropics, which I really enjoy.
RG: You get a little warmth in your living room in a cold January.
JM: What advice do you have for kids in student government… about leadership and about working with others, through the experience that you’ve had of working on this show?
RG: What I’ve experienced, especially working on this show, is leadership is a lot of listening to other people… ’cause they have better ideas than you most of the time. It’s not about resting control. It’s about being around the best people you possibly can and then trying to all get the same thing up in the air at the same time.
SH: Embrace failure. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to learn from your failings. Ryan and I have had plenty of joke pitches that fell flat and that just made us stronger the next time around. So failure is all part of learning.
RG: When we pitch a joke that bombs, I feel like it helps other people pitch jokes that bomb, and then that’s when they pitch their worst, even stupider idea, which usually ends up being the one we like.
- INTERVIEW: Taking A Trip With “Beautiful Men” - January 7, 2025
- INTERVIEW: Gear Up For “StuGo” - January 6, 2025
- INTERVIEW: Turning On “Wander To Wonder” - January 3, 2025
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