September 27th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Disney’s newest hand-drawn animated series The Ghost and Molly McGee premieres this Friday October 1st at 9:40pm on Disney Channel. New episodes air Saturdays at 9am. It’s about a girl named Molly who moves with her family to a new neighborhood and into a haunted house. But she isn’t scared by the ghost inside (named Scratch)… they quickly become friends! Creators Bill Motz & Bob Roth and EP Steve Loter join me to discuss the show… and one of them also reveals a heck of a (toy) story.
Jackson Murphy: Bill, the great news even before we get into Season 1 is that you’re already renewed for Season 2! How does that feel?
Bill Motz: That feels amazing. What a vode of confidence. We love this show. We love making this show. We have a lot of stories we want to tell, so it’s a thrill to be able to continue telling the story of Molly and Scratch.
JM: How did you find out about the news? Was it still while you were making episodes of Season 1?
BM: Yes. We were kind of coming toward the tail end of writing [Season] 1 and they were seeing animatics. They were liking what they were seeing and felt that this is the kind of show we want to be making and putting out there. It was nice: a good vode of confidence.
JM: Nice. The kind of fun animated family show we need right now. Bob, what really appealed to you about telling THIS ghost story?
Bob Roth: It took a while for Bill and I to realize it: it’s our story. I am Scratch. Bill is Molly. Bill’s an extrovert, an optimist, happy go lucky. I’m an introvert, a pessimist and I’m happy to just go home. That’s Molly and Scratch. It took us a long time to figure that out but once we did the show… this is our friendship. We’ve been friends for over 30 years now. Just to get to share our friendship through the lens of Molly and Scratch has been a real joy and pleasure.
JM: Molly quickly meets Scratch. Her family quickly meets Scratch as well. So Steve, that’s a little bit different than other animated or live-action series where they want to keep a character a secret. Why did you decide to go in this direction?
Steve Loter: The dynamic of Scratch with the family is so funny and there’s so much juice in the storytelling that we kind of wanted to get them all together very, very quickly. That’s when the adventure really begins. Scratch kind of works his way into the whole family unit. He’s actually part of the family pretty early and that’s the dynamic we wanted to get across: the family love.
JM: Yes, there’s a strong family bond. Now Bill, there’s three key elements I noticed. When it comes to the story, the animation and the comedy, which of those three was the most difficult for you to craft perfectly?
BM: That is a great question. I think… Comedy came pretty easily, for a lack of a better word, because of our cast. Ashly Burch and Dana Snyder are brilliant and hilarious and we get them recording together and they’re riffing off each other. We are laughing and the biggest problem we have there is they leave us with about 40 minutes of material that we have to cut down to an 11-minute episode. The animation – we had a very strong point of view of what we wanted it to look like. Our partner animation studio, Mercury, felt confident that they could bring to life what we wanted to do. So I don’t think we were too worried about that. But I think story: we… do want this show to be not just funny but also moving and touching and something the whole family can enjoy and sort of speaks to some of the issues of our time very legitimately. The audience will hopefully laugh but there are times I think where they’re a little taken aback, maybe a little sad. That’s tricky. That tonal choice of that whole spectrum of emotions was tricky to manage but I think we pulled it off.
JM: One of the strong ones that comes through is this idea of friendship and finding new friends. Bob, can you expand upon that a little bit and why you really wanted to incorporate that element right out of the gate?
BR: That goes back to [my friendship with Bill]. I’m the introvert and I’m happy to just be here and not interact with anybody if I can get away with it. Bill is the mayor of our town. We go out to lunch and he’s like, “There’s a guy I know! There’s another guy I know!” Just through that, the Scratch in me is like, “I have to talk to another person?!” Bill is out there throwing himself into everybody’s lives and over time I’ve come to, as Scratch does with Molly, feel like maybe that’s not such a bad thing. That guy he introduced me to made me laugh. He’s a fun guy. That woman we chatted with: yeah, sure. There’s a little bit of a learning curve for both me and Scratch.
BM: And I would say that’s true with Molly too because one of the things that Bob has shaped in my life is a little bit of… boundaries. (laughs) Not everybody has your best interest at heart. There’s a little bit of balance in it. Scratch is good for Molly just like she’s good for Scratch. And Bob’s great for me just as I hope that I’m good for him.
JM: And another strong theme, I think, is this idea of a curse being a blessing in disguise. Steve, did you ever feel like in making this show there was: “Oh man. We’ve got ourselves in a troublesome situation but it ended up being a blessing as we worked through it.” Anything like that?
SL: Narratively: just the fact that Scratch thinks he’s so clever to find a way to eliminate Molly McGee from the house but actually bonds them together is hilarious. And it’s from that point on where… that curse could’ve gone many different ways but it actually went the way he so unexpectedly benefited from. He needed it, honestly. And as far as production goes, the funny thing about the making of this show is actually the balance. It’s the balance of the comedy, the heart and the quirk. This show has a good amount of quirk in it, unexpected comedy, comedy that comes from the left side that you don’t quite expect or see coming. Maintaining the balance of all of those was the most challenging aspect of production.
JM: It’s quirk, but it’s positive quirk, and I think it’s gonna be mainstream quirk. One of the episodes I saw involves softball. Out of all the sports you could’ve chosen, why did you choose softball, Bill?
BM: It’s a team sport and it’s also deceptively softball. A lot of people feel like “Yeah, I could do this” and it’s more complex. But also it gave us maximum opportunity for Scratch to interfere with the game. That was a lot of fun. Plus they look great in uniforms. It was definitely giving us a chance to have some playfulness between what Scratch is doing, what Molly’s goal is and that interaction and intersection is a lot of fun for us.
JM: Bob, any interesting dreams you’ve had since working on a show about ghosts? Or have you thought about how you’ve wanted to interact with a ghost if you had that chance in real-life?
BR: Well, I’ll tell you that unlike Molly, I would not hug a ghost. If it presented itself, I would look for the nearest door and run as fast as I could. Unless Scratch appeared in my bedroom. I feel like he doesn’t wanna have anything to do with me. I don’t wanna have anything to do with him. We’re gonna be fine. We might split a pizza.
Creators Bill Motz & Bob Roth and EP Steve Loter
JM: Listen, Scratch may appear in your bedroom one way or another depending on the Disney merchandise. So you always gotta think about that too.
BR: Yep. You’re seeing into the future, Jackson.
JM: (laughs) Now Steve, the show has its premiere this Friday night but new episodes are on Saturday mornings at 9am. What does it mean to you that this show is part of the new legacy of “Saturday Morning TV”?
SL: All three of us grew-up with the Saturday Morning Cartoons. It’s definitely an important part of our childhood and one of the reasons why we’re in the industry today. The fact that The Ghost and Molly McGee will find its way into the lexicon of that is super important to me. But also the fact that it’s kind of classic Disney in a lot of ways. It’s got the comedy. It’s got the humor. It’s got the music. But most of all it has the heart. It’s got something that’s relatable and this big, beating beautiful heart, which to me is classic Disney. I’m thrilled to be a part of not only the Saturday Morning lexicon but also the Disney lexicon.
JM: I love that in one of the episodes Molly says that a lifetime of animated films has taught her to believe in herself and that she can do anything. So… what are the animated films in your life that have taught you that you can believe in yourself and do anything?
BM: Oh my gosh. Off hand I think of Hercules, believe it or not. And part of it is we worked on that series too, so we lived with Herc for a long time. What was fun about that is you kind of know the end of the story, this big hero, but part of it was the journey of getting there. There’s nice hope about: the journey might be a little tricky but in the end you’re gonna get there and it’s all gonna work out just fine.
BR: It’s a tough question. I’m gonna go with Toy Story because Bill and I had this really fantastic interaction with Toy Story. Somebody snuck us a VHS copy of the animatic. There was hardly any animation in it. The animation that was there was stick figure crude. But what you could see in it was: what a great movie it was. Even in just pencil drawings, you could see the richness of the characters and the story. That was a moment that opened up my eyes to the potential of animation. We were watching this animatic with temp music and crude drawings and we felt all the emotions that movie brings to the form and makes bubble out of your heart. That to me was the potential of animation and that’s what we’ve been striving for since that moment.
JM: Wow! Who’s got that VHS tape? Do you have it?
BR: (laughs) I don’t know what happened to it! A friend gave it to us and was like, “Here – you didn’t see this.” It was so good we watched it twice in a row.
JM: That is amazing. That is animation history.
SL: I’m gonna say Lilo & Stitch. I think it’s an amazing movie. It was such a breath of fresh air within the animation industry of all these amazing characters. Similar to The Ghost and Molly McGee where you pair two very unlikely characters together and they become the best of friends. Where it strikes me emotionally is: it shows me you can be a little troublemaker, a little stinker guy, but someone will eventually love you. That’s an important thing I carry in my heart.
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