Natasha Kline is the talented creator of the new Disney animated series Primos, which is inspired by her childhood growing up in Los Angeles. Tater, who’s about to turn 10, has a memorable summer at home with her 12 cousins. Primos premieres this Thursday July 25th at 8pm on Disney Channel and Friday July 26th on Disney+. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This is your passion project. This is inspired by your true life story. How does it feel at this point to get your show, your passion project, on the air?

Natasha Kline: Oh my gosh, it’s been really surreal. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been wanting to make this show since I was a little kid. So it’s a dream come true. Disney making dreams come true. (laughs)

JM: What are some of the highlights for you of the steps along the process of Primos happening and making your dream come true?

NK: So many amazing amazing highlights for me. When I got the news that the show was greenlit, it was actually on my birthday. I think the execs must have found out what my birthday was and lined it up just perfectly. I remember we hopped on a Zoom because it was during the pandemic, so we were all Zooming. And as soon as I got on the Zoom, they were like, “Happy Birthday! You’re greenlit.” And it’s kind of the best birthday present I’ve ever received. That was a peak moment. The amazing days of the writer’s room getting together and us just bouncing stories together and sharing our lives was really, really special. Working with my art director, Ivan [Aguirre], who actually grew up right outside L.A. in the same area as me. Generating those ideas, it’s kind of unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

JM: And now it’s a gift for all of us to watch Primos, which is about Tater, who is turning 10 in the summertime. And you even got to do a promo with Tater that’s on the Disney socials. That had to be surreal. You and your character.

NK: I was a little bit worried because I was not sure how that was going to turn out. And I was also like, I mean… this is like stuff that Walt Disney did. He would sit there and talk to Mickey or whatever. So I hope I’m not aiming too high by making this happen. We worked with the Disney Multi Platform, who also does the Chibi Shorts. And they’re amazing. They’re super funny. Gino [Guzzardo], who runs that department, is kind of a genius. So I kind of felt like I was in good hands. And it turned out really charming. I was really proud of it.

JM: Yeah, it is like Walt and Mickey. Yes, you’re right about that! For the next generation. Wow!

NK: (laughs) I don’t want to aim too high, but…

JM: You’re at Disney. You have the right to say that. You’re at Disney. You have the right to do it. You’ve accomplished this show. It’s about Tater, who has all these cousins show up. 12 cousins. But in real life, you, Natasha, have 23 cousins. Is that right?

NK: Correct. Yes. So I nearly have double the amount of cousins that Tater has. I obviously couldn’t showcase everybody. So I had to kind of whittle that number down, but definitely those 12 cousins in the show are a blend of all my favorite qualities that my cousins have. So it’s, it’s been really fun.

JM: Was it tough to decide what number it was going to be?

NK: It kind of was, actually. Yeah, because I think the original Pitch Bible had 11 cousins. And for some reason, 11 just didn’t sit well with me. I don’t know why, but I was like, “I think I need to add one more”. So then we rounded it out and made it 12. Even numbers just feel good, I guess.

JM: So all the cousins stay with Tater in the summertime in Los Angeles, and you directed the first episode as well. What was the goal for you with presenting us with this very unique situation?

NK: I really wanted everyone to be in the driver’s seat with Tater. I really wanted her to be a universal, relatable character who was also kind of terrifically weird and funny. And all the big emotions that she experiences in that first episode, I really just wanted everyone to feel them with her. I think that that’s the way you can successfully tell a story — engaging with that main character and just making sure the audience is with every single emotional up and down that that character has every step of the way.

JM: You do a great job with showing us what’s going on and giving us the comedy, the humor and the different personalities of all the cousins that we meet on Primos. You directed more than 30 episodes of Big City Greens, which is also one of the big hits for the Disney Channel. What did working on that show prepare you for what you would be taking on with your own show?

NK: Quite a lot. The Houghton brothers have been amazing mentors for me. Even as I pitched my own show and started developing it and started producing it, they’ve always been there if I need a listening ear or anything. While I was working on their show it was very interesting. Because they have a very specific brand of humor. So it was interesting for me to be able to hone my own humor based off of what they thought was funny. And we worked very closely together because as a director, it’s literally just like sometimes the three of us in the room throwing ideas around and rewriting things and reshaping scenes. So I definitely got a sense of what their flavor is.

JM: What we see on the show in one of the episodes is a vision board. We see Tater with the vision board. What was your vision board like as you were mapping out this first season of Primos that we’re going to see?

NK: (laughs) Oh my gosh. How did you know I had a vision board? (laughs) Because I’m Tater — that’s why. I’ve honestly had so many vision boards. We’ve got a lot of half hours of stories. As the season was going on, I always felt like the vision of the show was shifting. So for me, it’s always been images of L.A., and especially in the ’90s — the golden smoggy sunsets of L.A. Being an no sabo kid, basically, and growing up in a household with two languages but also maybe not understanding what people are saying, but feeling the love and support of that. So my vision board often was images of my family and especially my grandmother, Wella. I have a big picture of her that she took in the ’50s and that was kind of always front and center, honestly.

JM: And remembering what it was like to be nine and 10 years old and kind of getting that energy out into the character of Tater. Did you think back to a lot of those times?

NK: Yeah, that was really fun to dig into because as soon as I started developing the show, I reached out to all of my cousins who had spent summers with us, and my sister and brother too, and I was just like, “Share your memories with me because maybe it could be an episode, maybe something we could talk about.” Even before the writer’s room started, I had this huge Google Doc of hilarious memories that everybody contributed: Remember that dog? Remember that weird cactus? The most random, big things, things that I had forgotten. That was kind of a vision board. This is what these stories could look like and it’s literally just about kids being kids and just going out in the yard and finding a weird stick. Somehow a weird story transpires out of that.

JM: Myrna Velasco voices Tater and Melissa Villasenor as [sister] Nellie, have fun chemistry.

NK: Melissa Villasenor, I pretty much knew immediately that that’s who I wanted for Nellie. She’s such a star and at the time she was actually still on SNL. So I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if we’d be able to get her” but I was literally writing lines for her because I knew that that’s the vocal quality that I wanted. I drew a piece of art for her. And so when we sent the ask basically, she surprisingly said yes. Later on, she revealed to me it was because she identified with the project so much that she was like, “Yeah, I really want to do that.” Because she grew up in Whittier [California], which is hilariously actually close to where my parents grew up and my grandmother lived. So it’s very close to her heart.

NK: Tater on the other hand was really a search. Disney casting’s really amazing. They kind of shake all the rugs out. Everybody that they can get, they will send you like so many auditions. And generally I’ll listen to like 20 auditions. But for Tater I think we got close to a hundred auditions because I was not really hearing what I needed, which was kind of a comedic sparkle, something really specific, kind of like my own voice, honestly. I wanted her to be able to do impressions and have all these really massive emotional ranges that she could traverse. I didn’t really find that until I found Myrna because her audition was just… weird. (laughs) She had a weird way of saying things. Sometimes when you hear auditions, you kind of hear the same thing being said over and over the same way. And hers was the first audition where I was like, “That’s a really weird way to say that. Well, maybe there’s something there.” And then, sure enough, when she came into auditions, she was completely excited because again, she was like, “I really relate to this project. Tater’s me. I need to be Tater. This is my family. This is my community. And I want to help tell the story.”

JM: That’s terrific that it’s speaking to so many people. It’ll continue to speak to so many people as they start watching the show this week. There’s inventive visuals in the episodes, kind of sketchbook drawings, brought to life. Did you do a lot of sketching, doodling in notebooks when you were younger? And now that’s, that’s really paying off.

NK: (laughs) Yeah, I was always a drawer. I was always an artist. I always had sketchbooks or at least church flyers to draw on for sure. My grandmother used to collect church flyers for me from church and she’d always give me a giant stack of them so I could draw on the other side. There’s always been that support from my family. I’m very lucky.

JM: Nice. What is a memory you have: maybe you were younger… it’s the summertime and you’re watching a Disney movie… it’s an animated film or a live action movie… is there a memory like that that has stuck with you?

NK: Oh, absolutely. We were a huge Disney household. We had pretty much all the VHS’s of every single Disney movie and me and my sister just proceeded to completely memorize every single one. And anytime there was a new Disney movie, we’d go see it in the theater. And it was really fun to have that experience with my sister, because we would sing the songs together. We always picked who we wanted to be in the movie.”Okay, you’re Simba and I’m Timon.” And then we would act the scenes out together whether the movie was going on or not. We literally would just have them memorized. That was a key of my childhood — these movies. So Disney has been a huge part of my life.