Nona is a new CG Pixar SparkShort that premieres tomorrow, September 17th on Disney+. Longtime Pixar layout and story artist Louis Gonzales (Monsters, Inc., Cars 3) makes his directorial debut, joining producer Courtney Casper Kent (art department manager on Coco). Nona is the story of a grandma who loves wrestling and fights her way through a day with her granddaughter to watch the TV event of the year.

Jackson Murphy: Louis, thank you for friending me back on LinkedIn the other day. One of the things in your bio says, “He has personal projects he hopes will see the light of day.” Was this one of the personal projects you hoped would see the light of day?

Louis Gonzales: Oh yeah. I’ll tell you this, Jackson. All personal projects I want to see the light of day, at some point, if possible, in this lifetime. I just want to tell stories. I love film. I love short stories. I love long stories. I love series. It’s all good. I love stories.

JM: And you’ve got a very good one I think a lot of people will relate to. Louis, where did it come from for you first? Was it a love of grandparents, or was it the wrestling on TV, or both simultaneously?

LG: It really was both simultaneously: a grandma who loved wrestling. A tough looking but loving grandma who enjoyed wrestling. I felt like that was such an interesting character that I haven’t seen in animation or other. I was like, “This feels special enough to start something to talk about.” Unbeknownst to me, there was something beneath it that was calling to me that I didn’t realize until I actually got into the story. So it’s funny how these characters sit with you and they wait for their right time to come out, and this was the right time for Nona.

JM: Good. Courtney, how does this story speak to you?

Courtney Kasper Kent: I remember when Louis and I met for the first time and he pitched the story, and I also really loved the unexpected of a grandma who doesn’t make cookies or those normal grandma things, but she’s into wrestling. I don’t know much about wrestling but it sounds so interesting – and a different approach. It’s kind of her facing-off with her granddaughter. And I have, at the time, a four year old daughter, who I face-off with on a regular basis. Just that ability to instantly connect to the story he’s trying to tell felt like a great place to start our partnership.

JM: Nice. I remember watching some Pixar movies with both sets of my grandparents when they were alive – “Cars” with one and “Up” with another. Louis, what do you think it is about what you’ve created and what everybody at Pixar has created that speaks to people of all ages?

LG: I’ve come to really love Pixar in that they strive to find the emotional truth, whether it’s dogs, bugs, superheroes or fish. It isn’t what they are that matters, it’s the storytelling. The human endeavor matters. The human truth that they put across – and that doesn’t come easily. Human truth really requires a lot of mining, digging and testing. You have to dig deep to get layers, those emotional layers. You really have to dig. Pixar makes sure they do. That’s what they do. They make sure that every movie goes to this mad gauntlet of trials and tests. If I ever make a film at Pixar, and if I had hair, it would probably go gray – more or less gray – because these directors and teams put in so much work to find these layers of interest. To me, that’s what I wanted. If I could get a little bit of that in the short, I was gonna be happy. I feel like we got way more thanks to the team.

My hope was just to get a little bit of what I love about the films in the place that I make and work. A little humor, a little emotional truth. And I feel like once you talk about the human endeavor, you’re reaching all ages, right? Maybe kids have a little fun with that. You have a joke or some kind of emotional truth adults can resonate with and the kids can too because they see the adults doing that. You talk about human truth, that’s what spans old to young.

JM: All these Pixar movies are on so many Top 10 lists because they get people. And the shorts have [impacted] people too. Louis, when it came to the wrestlers themselves and what you wanted to put on the TV screen, did you study that certain major wrestling association (that you flip the letters around) for some details?

LG: I grew-up loving wrestling, so it wasn’t like I had to do much studying. I just called back to the wrestling I loved, which is the really fun, over the top, ’80s/’90s wrestling [with] Hulk Hogan and Macho Man. All those fools. And I loved it as a kid. When my grandma told me she loved it, that’s when we bonded the most. That’s what the story was built on the most – my grandma bonding with me over wrestling. I thought I had the coolest grandma – and still think – because I’ve never heard of anybody who had a grandma talk about wrestling or something I liked like my grandma did.

JM: Listen, this may have more grandmas tell their grandkids, “Hey guess what my secret passion and obsession is?!”

LG & CCK: (laugh)

CCK: I hope so!

LG: I hope so too! That’d be great.

JM: That would be fantastic. Courtney, as somebody on the inside, with this SparkShorts program that has done so well with the awards season and on Disney+ and all the Disney platforms, what is it about this program that’s been really changing the game over the last 2-3 years?

CCK: I think, at least within Pixar, it’s really given opportunities to people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily get the opportunity. Almost our entire crew was doing their job for the very first time. With that just comes the hunger to want to do as much as you can. I know each person on our team really stepped up to try to make this the best film it possibly could. In shorts, you’re working with such a small team that everybody contributing so much has such a huge impact. It makes the SparkShorts a special little slice within the Pixar world.

JM: That’s amazing that for many this was their first major animation job. That’s really cool. They must’ve appreciated the guidance from both of you being in this world for a long time. Could you tell that?

CCK: We were also first-time producing and first-time directing.

JM: True!

CCK: When everybody is going through their first time in more of a leadership capacity than their normal day job, that automatically makes a bond between your teammates – your filmmakers – to help make the greatest story while you’re also trying to figure out how to do your job.

JM: Louis, you referenced maybe wanting to [direct] a feature. Are you seriously considering that now that this short is gonna get out there? Maybe it will be the right time to step into a feature?

LG: Oh I wanted to do a feature before the short. Features are what I cut my teeth doing. That’s what I love. The majority of my career has been make-working on features, some with some great directors and some with some good stories. A feature is an hour and a half moral tale vs. a series that… Honestly I have stories for different areas, and I’m just trying to get myself in a position where I can line them up on the runway and have them take off one by one. That’s the hope, because yes, I do wanna make a film.

JM: Okay. I hope you get that opportunity. How did you want to balance the humor and emotion [in this]? You cover a lot over a short period of time: introducing the wrestlers, these two key characters and getting to that emotional breaking point before the fun?

LG: You know, I wasn’t sure, to be honest. I didn’t have grand plans. All I had were loose plans. And actually, I’ll use the word ‘plans’ loosely. I had thoughts about some potential ideas for how animation could be and all this kind of stuff. In no way did I feel like I would’ve gotten this much emotion out of it early on. I was hoping I’d get a little bit. And I think we’ve exceeded it. The team brought it. Finding that moment with [Nona] not being mad, but breaking, actually it being so hard on her that it breaks. Making sure we understand that wrestling is not just on TV but it’s how she celebrates and remembers her deceased husband. With these two things, it gave me leverage to play anywhere.

I knew that the playtime sequences is where we wanted to see her smile and be big and fun. But what that means story-wise is that we kind of have to hold off on that. She can’t be that happy until we get there. I felt like it was more of a balancing of trying to have some with Renee to annoy – the total kid thing they do with parents. Kids are so beautiful when they’re 2 and 3 and they have so much energy and love and want so much of your time that it’s exhausting. And sometimes you just want a little break but they don’t know. And they might do the weirdest stuff to get your attention. They might even break something. Sometimes you feel like you have to laugh because you’re like, “Why’d you think of that?” Kids do these amazing, weird things that just both are endearing and annoying. So I wanted to get that across. If Renee is the fun, she’s gonna be the annoying, endearing character while Nona is gonna be the goalie, where she’s trying to stop things from happening so she can maintain her routine.