Everett Downing and Patrick Harpin are the creators, writers, directors and executive producers of the new Netflix sci-fi animated action comedy series My Dad The Bounty Hunter. It premieres next Thursday February 9th. When two kids discover their father is an outer space bounty hunter, they’re in for the adventure of their lives. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, Downing and Harpin take me through the show’s development process and how they hope the mission of the series is accomplished. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Having all those attributes! Does that add pressure?

Everett Downing: (laughs) I don’t think it adds pressure. For us, it’s all about “we can do that”. We love this show and wanted to get it off the ground. We were doing what we needed to do to do that.

Patrick Harpin: We also come from story backgrounds. You’re always constantly rewriting stuff. I did scratch voices throughout my career. Working in animation, you get to touch a lot of different departments. And that led us here.

JM: You’ve both had great careers. Everett, you were a part of “VeggieTales” and at Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky. And Patrick, you and Everett both worked at Sony. Is that how you two met?

ED: That’s correct.

JM: Working on big movies like “The Emoji Movie”, which I liked! I will go down and say I liked “The Emoji Movie”!

PH: (laughs) Hey — you’re the one guy!

ED: (laughs)

JM: (laughs) And Everett, you co-directed “Hair Love”, which went on to win the Academy Award. What a success and impact that short has had over the past few years.

ED: Yeah. It’s been so incredible. It seems like a fever dream. Very fortunate to have been asked to work on that.

JM: How did you come together and decide to work on this show for Netflix?

PH: We basically were at Sony and we wanted something more and make something together we were really excited about. This idea came from that need. “What would we want to work on every day? What do we feel like doesn’t exist in animation?” We were talking about sci-fi and a main Black cast. We were spitballing it. And we were actually pitching it as a feature, originally.

JM: Wow.

PH: Because TV has gotten more like movies now, we were like, “We can tell a big, serialized story over a story.” We pitched it to Megan Casey, our exec at Netflix, and she went for it. And then we were in development here.

JM: Netflix is the perfect home for it. Siblings Lisa and Sean discover their dad is a bounty hunter. Everett, what I discovered in watching the first episode is that… you guys are making this story go 10 episodes and have a real arc, but… there is a legitimate arc just in Episode One. You pull it off so well.

ED: When we put our writers’ room together, one of the keys we were talking about… a lot of times in serialized television, when you’re doing an arc across a season, sometimes the episodes themselves don’t have arcs. And that’s what we were finding. [For] every episode, people have to be satisfied with the episode itself. That was super important. Each episode has an arc — a beginning, middle and end… something really has to happen. And characters have to come to conclusions and evolve.

JM: What I found moving are the conversations amongst this family — even before we get into the action. Patrick, they are so real and grounded.

PH: That was kind of our mission from the jump. We were talking about stuff we grew up watching. We were talking about “ET”. The parents split up. The mom’s referencing it. Even “Stand by Me”. It’s not a kids movie really, but you loved it as a kid because it felt real. That was kind of in the DNA. We wanted that feel to it. Even early episodes of “Everybody Hates Chris”. When you put that in sci-fi, it grounds it so much and it makes the sci-fi feel like it’s really happening. So that was by design and we tried to keep that throughout the show. This is a real family. They can interact with crazy aliens, but they are like you.

JM: And that relatability factor is there, especially with Grandma. In one of the first couple episodes, Grandma’s watching “Maya and the Three” on Netflix, which is a nice little nod to Jorge [Gutierrez] and that team. But she also says that she “cleans up everybody’s messes”. Everett, I think that’s relatable to so many people.

ED: 100%. When we wrote Grandma, of course we love the character, but Leslie Uggams who voices her, brought so much to that. She made that character work. And we wanted a sweet Grandma we love… who has a little edge to her. (laughs) Grandma’s seen some things. She’s been around for a little bit. We like that surprise.

JM: And Patrick, we meet a whole bunch of cool-looking characters in the galaxy and an interesting vibe. What were your goals with the sci-fi aspect?

PH: We felt that sci-fi had gotten a little serious with very desaturated colors. We were like, “Let’s make it playful. Let’s make it fun. Let’s go the opposite route that we’re seeing everyone else go and go more of a Fifth Element route.” It’s consistently crazy with bright colors, with influences from marine life and drawing from other inspirations — so it doesn’t feel like you’ve seen this already. We wanted bright colors in space. It can match the emotion of the scene: bright red, green or blue. Really throw out the rule book a little bit.

JM: That’s cool because… I see so many sci-fi movies and watch some sci-fi shows, and you’re right that recently they have taken more of a serious and sophisticated turn. And sometimes that works, but sometimes we just want the fun, bright colors and zaniness. At the same time as you’re doing everything with the sci-fi, we’re seeing emotions and reactions from Lisa and Sean. They also feel authentic. Everett, you do a really good job with that.

ED: A big part of that is the voice acting. Both JeCobi Swain and Priah Ferguson are amazing. I wanted Priah since the first time I heard her on “Stranger Things” say, “You can’t spell America without Erica.” She’s amazing and brings so much sass but she questions [things], with gravitas to the character. With JeCobi, we just wanted a kid with curiosity who’s all-in from the beginning. He’s the one who’s believed all the conspiracies. When he finds out his dad’s a space bounty hunter, he’s all-in. JeCobi brings so much character and sweetness to the role. It’s easy to fall in love with them.

JM: They’re great. On Episode Two, we go to this sports bar in space called Bucky Quanto’s. Everett, you capture the look, vibe and feel of a fun sports bar well.

PH: The joke was basically, “What if the John Wick hotel, where everyone has to behave themselves, was a wing place where all these bounty hunters have to behave themselves because the wings are that good, and you do not want to get banned?” That stupid joke turned into this and our production designer and art director, Yukhi Demers and Alex Konstad, really designed this out and made it look like… I think they got a TGI Friday’s vibe nailed perfectly. Obviously, we couldn’t do it without Buffalo Wild Wings. Definitely high up on our reference list.

JM: And you also allow the scenes that take place in there (action and comedy) to breathe. Obviously knowing you had 10 episodes… but it is refreshing to see that in episodic animated television these days… the way you comfortably let scenes breathe.

ED: We were very conscious of that. We wanted that. You kind of got to fight for that. In a lot of modern animation it’s, “Let’s get there as quickly as possible.” We had to push back really hard to make sure, “Trust us. By this time… it’s gonna pay off!”

JM: I’ve watched the first couple episodes. I look forward to watching the rest. What do you think about the possibility of this being a modern family sci-fi classic? I can picture the whole family gathering around the TV for this. Have you been able to picture it?

PH: That was the dream. That was the hope. I love that you’re using the word “classic”. I will take that to the bank. The whole time when you’re making stuff, sometimes you can lose sight of who it’s for. For us, we’re always thinking about… if parents are doing stuff in the background, you want them to join the kids. The toughest thing is getting both parents and kids to invest. I like the same stuff as an adult as when I was a kid. “SpongeBob”, to me, is still smart for kids and adults. If you can ride those wavelengths, you can do it! And so far we’ve been hearing from people that kids are watching it and… are sitting still to watch the whole season [through]. If they can do that, then we’ve done our job.

ED: Hearing you say that, that’s incredible. That was the hope. I remember co-watching when I was a kid. We really wanted it to tap into that feeling. Just seeing these characters together, it’s really gratifying, as a Black creator. But beyond that, just for families — a lot of people are gonna see a lot of themselves in it. The characters are very relatable because we based it on people that we knew and situations that we all go through. We really wanted relatability. That was number one, in terms of importance to us.