October 5th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Simon Otto, the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy’s head of character animation, is the executive producer of new Netflix animated series A Tale Dark & Grimm. It’s based on books by Adam Gidwitz and premieres this Friday October 8th. Otto dives into this unique fairy tale adventure and also teases a major animated feature he’s directing.
Jackson Murphy: You are in England. You are working on an animated movie you’re directing for Locksmith Animation, the studio behind the upcoming Ron’s Gone Wrong. It’s called That Christmas. First of all, how’s England?!
Simon Otto: Oh my God, I’m loving it. It’s incredible. I’m biking around town like I’m in some romantic comedy. It’s beautiful. (laughs)
JM: That is awesome. What can you tell me about That Christmas? I know you’re working with Richard Curtis, an icon. Is there anything you can share at this point?
SO: Not really. It’s Richard Curtis. It’s a Christmas movie. And we’re having the best time doing it. It’s a movie based on his children’s books. He wrote three children’s books that have come out over the last few years and we’re turning those into an animated feature that is written by Richard Curtis himself.
JM: I’m so happy for you. And speaking of taking a book series and turning it into an animated project, we’ve got A Tale Dark & Grimm, based on another trio of books, I believe. What attracted you to these books?
SO: I was given the book to read right after I left DreamWorks. Chris Henderson, who’s a friend of mine said, “Hey, you should read this. This is something cool and we’re thinking of maybe doing something with it.” I read it and immediately called him back and said, “That can be made. That’s gotta go. You’ve got something really great on your hands.” He said, “Well, do you wanna be involved?” I said, “Sure! That sounds amazing. Let’s develop. Can I please meet Adam Gidwitz?” (who’s the writer). The moment I spoke to him and watched him… he’s a school teacher turned novelist. There’s some clips of him online talking to school children. The way he wraps these kids around his finger and brings them into the story is really phenomenal. We felt: let’s use that magic he brings to his books and podcast and find a way to turn it into a TV show.
JM: I like the way you describe how he hooks kids in with these stories. And this show really hooks you in as well. What were some of your goals in wanting to tell this kind of Hansel & Gretel story?
SO: What was really fascinating to me is this idea that when you read a Grimm fairy tale, or any kind of fairy tale from that period, you go like, “I’m not sure you can tell this story today. We have to sanitize it and somehow make it kid-friendly.” In a way, there’s something lost in that. Sure, there’s lots of things about it that you would maybe question today. But I love what Adam Gidwitz did in his novels. He took the stories and then helped the kids through it in a way that actually intrigues them even more. For example he’s like, “Maybe I can’t tell you this part. Maybe you’re too young. You should probably go to bed right now because it’s gonna be *really* scary.”
By saying this, the kids are even more interested and the humorous aspect of it helps them through relatively storylines and dark storylines. In that sense, it allows the kids to experience things – kind of complex emotions – that because of the humor and the narrator helping you through understanding and getting through it and getting to the next thing in the story, that’s what really fascinated me about it. And we really tried to find a way to keep that tone through Adam Gidwitz’s books in our series. I think it makes it even more surprising and challenging and wonderful.
JM: Yeah. You use the three birds in this as the narrators to guide us. You’re right about those “breaking the fourth wall” moments. You said challenges: what were the challenges of this great humor? I love breaking the fourth wall, but that’s not always easy to pull off in animation.
SO: Yeah, and it’s very unusual. But the fourth wall really gives you that experience that if the narrator looks at you and says, “Look Away” or “Close Your Eyes” or “Use a Pillow”, [the narrator] engages the kids directly and makes them actually wanna get through and want to see it and understand the humor about it. Maybe sometimes something dark can be seen through a filter. Our story is really about understanding. It’s about understanding your parents, why parents may sometimes make difficult decisions or decisions that you may not like as a child. OR that maybe sometimes parents make the wrong decisions because they’re flawed human beings as well. In a way, we hope this is a show kids will watch with their parents so they can talk about it – or that they have a shared experience that’s emotional. Ultimately this show, in our minds, does it all. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s dramatic and it’s ultimately really emotional. It has a very emotional conclusion and you really go through an adventure with our heroes.
JM: You mentioned scary, and I think it would be nice for a shared experience because there are gonna be moments where kids are like, “Wait – what kind of crazy, violent moment just happened?” You use some creative ways of depicting violence. Did you ever feel like you were maybe going a little bit too far?
SO: Our goal was: we wanna scare kids, but not scar them. We wanna build it up right to the moment where kids are like, “I’m not sure this is right” and we come in with comedy. We try to set-up those rules right from the beginning of the show. If you get into those moments and you feel comfortable or you laugh along with it, the show is gonna be great for you. If there are kids that are a little bit younger they may actually be scared, although I think… there’s an age group it may be a little dicey, but that’s really, really young. I think generally kids will get the humor and feel like they’re in safe hands because they are being guided through with the help of these three raven narrators. And the fact that the ravens are telling us a story that they experienced but it’s a story nonetheless. That gives you that multiple layer version of the story that makes you feel a little bit more okay with it. You’re hopeful you’re gonna be able to laugh along while also knowing this is meant to be a little bit cheeky/creepy. That’s why it gets released around Halloween and hopefully builds excitement up to that period of the year.
JM: It definitely will. Once you get into the vibe, after the first five minutes or so and the first twist happens, you understand where we’re going as far as the tone. You’re the executive producer, one of the developers and the supervising director as well. Wearing a lot of hats on this! You juggled a lot, huh?
SO: It was a period of time where you develop the project from basically just the book and you get together with a small group of people. And then of course as it goes with these big projects… think about it: it’s four hours of entertainment at quite a high quality level, done during a pandemic in a little over two years. So the teams build. They get bigger and bigger. My role evolved because I wasn’t actually on the floor. The episodes were directed by a veteran director, Jamie Whitney and produced by Audrey Velichka from Jam Filled [Entertainment] and Boat Rocker [Studios], the companies behind actually making and executing the show. So I was there from the beginning developing it and then eventually I moved, along with David Henrie and Doug Langdale and Bob Hoggins… together we oversaw the execution of the actual episodes.
JM: You’ve been part of a lot of animated films and series that are big journeys and big adventures, most notably the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. What appeals to you about animated adventures and epic stories, specifically?
SO: I’m really interested in projects that have a wish fulfillment aspect to them, where you get to experience a world, a place, a set of characters in a way that you have never experienced before – and that viscerally takes you onto a journey or a ride or an experience. And in a way where you kind of forget your own world and yourself and live out this thing that you have in front of you. That’s something I’m very interested in. Within those worlds, I wanna have fun. I wanna feel drama. I wanna feel emotions. I wanna believe in the world I’m in. More than anything else, I love the visceral aspect of film and I love to be able to believe in the world and in the characters.
I love really funny animated films. There’s a whole number of comedies that could never be done by me because I don’t have that exact sensibility that those comedies have – really broad slapstick comedies. I love those, but I’m really somebody who loves a world that I can believe in – that I can hold onto and that will fulfill my fantasies. Making films for my 12 year old self is what I’m most interested in. And the projects I’ve had the chance to work on, particularly over the last 10-15 years, were all doing that, which is an amazing blessing for me as an animator and a storyteller.
JM: When it comes to A Tale Dark & Grimm, I would imagine that this experience was NOT dark and grimm, working on an animated show like this!
SO: (laughs)
JM: Can you pinpoint one specific, fun moment from this entire experience?
SO: Oh my God, there were so many! One of the funniest, unexpected things was the fact that we had to record all these amazing actors in all different places. Jonathan Banks from Better Call Saul was basically telling us about how this was “the only time I left my house to be able to come to this and do these voices in a hidden booth!” Most people were recording from home. I remember one specific moment with… Andre Robinson [who voices Hansel]. And the first recording out of his house, we did an hour and our… voice director asked, “So Andre, can you check that we’re recording and that it’s recording okay?” And he went, “Oh.” (laughs) We did an hour of recording, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things where he actually didn’t record it.
All these technical hurdles: hearing lightning strikes in the background and people not being able to make it to their recordings – all that stuff. We had so much fun in laughing at the absurdity of doing all this while the world is going belly up, in a way. There was some shared humor about it that we all really enjoyed. We had so much fun making this show. It was very intense, particularly for the studio in Toronto. The mountain they had to climb to get this show done. And I wasn’t on the floor, so I’m sure to them, often times it wasn’t fun anymore. But the team’s spirit and working together and accepting that we’re gonna make the best out of this and we’re gonna be ambitious but also never gonna lose a smile on our face doing this… there was a dark time during which we made this whole thing. In a way… we all were taught a lesson by the show itself that even in the face of darkness, you have to have a smile on your face. You have to burst the bubble of darkness with humor and laugh about it. That helped us through it. That made it fun for everybody.
Simon Otto
JM: You overcame obstacles with a positive attitude and made it work. A lot of people interpret the term “fairy tale” differently. Some use it in a romantic sense. Some people apply it to their life. Can you exactly apply the term “fairy tale” to your life and specifically your animation career? Has it really felt to you like a fairy tale or something a little bit different?
SO: I’ve never called it a fairy tale, but considering I was a young boy in Switzerland in the snowy mountains telling my parents and my school advisors (when I was 12 or 13) that I wanna become an animator, that was a little bit like telling them I wanted to be a sailor in the Swiss Navy, and Switzerland doesn’t have an ocean, famously. Or like becoming an astronaut in the Swiss Space Program, which doesn’t exist. So they all looked at me like, “What are you talking about?!” The fact that I actually got there via Paris and all these different places, I ended-up being an animator on an animated feature… and a 2D animated feature of all things. That’s what I started with on The Prince of Egypt.
It’s still sometimes, I have to sit down and remind myself what a lucky person I was because it wasn’t just determination or talent… it was really luck. The gates opened at the right time for me. I’m still enjoying it as much as I have all throughout my career. What’s really amazing about it is that I was somebody who had a dream, such as yourself… at a young age where I knew what I wanted. I think most people don’t know what they want until much, much later in life. And on top of that, I still enjoy what I do. I still would go back and make the same choices in terms of general career directions. That’s a real blessing. That *may be* a fairy tale thing that’s so rare. I count my blessings.
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