Shea Fontana is the showrunner and co-EP of Nickelodeon’s new Monster High animated series, premiering this Friday October 28th at 7pm. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, Fontana discusses the influence of the popular toys on the fun new show, as well as a revamped Dracula and her own high school memories. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: I was at New York Comic-Con recently and saw the huge Monster High clock tower display and everything with the combo live-action movie and your new animated series. That’s gotta feel cool that Nickelodeon is really behind this brand.

Shea Fontana: Yeah. It’s been amazing how supportive both Nickelodeon and Mattel have been of everything we’re doing on Monster High.

JM: I remember when I was young and these toys were coming out. There was an instant popularity. Can you really feel the fandom?

SF: Absolutely. It is everywhere online right now. It’s really exciting to see all the fan responses. We’re already getting fan art. It’s been incredible to see how the fans have reacted to the new, reimagined series.

JM: That’s great the fans are so into it. This is not your first rodeo when it comes to adapting toys to the screen. You’ve done that with Polly Pocket and a few others. What is it like actually studying the toys?

SF: The idea of breaking down what people really love about the franchise — what the DNA of the franchise is and figuring out how we make that for a new audience… some of the same audience, but definitely thinking about younger kids who may not have been born when the original Monster High came out. How we [take] those same ideas from the original and make it into a show that kids today will love. With Monster High, it’s really about embracing, accepting and being your authentic self. From the beginning it’s always had this beautiful metaphor of, ‘We all feel like monsters in high school. We all have this monster side to us… and that’s what makes us awesome.’

JM: And these girls are trying to find their powers and see what they really are and see what they can do. How will we see that over the course of this season?

SF: Within every episode, it is about that monster power and the monster side of ourselves. In each episode, our characters arc through their journey of either finding something new about themselves, accepting something about themselves or really discovering who they are as a monster and as a character.

JM: And in the episode that’s already aired, you turn so many foods into crazy monster creatures, like tater tots and burgers! What was the thought process going into that? It’s quite something.

SF: (laughs) With the food fight episode, we wanted to push both the monstery spookiness of it but really make it silly and fun. We brought the entire refrigerator full of monster foods to life with Draculara’s magic. It was starting with our tater tyke, the initial little food piece that comes to life, of how this explodes into something bigger that Draculara really can’t contain — and how that reflects on how she feels about herself and then leads to her embracing even more of her magic.

JM: It’s fun. What were some of the foods in your high school that you ate at lunchtime that maybe you might’ve wondered about turning into crazy creatures?

SF: (laughs) You know what? We had off-campus lunch at our school. I grew up in a very, very small town. The choices for off-campus lunch were walking across the street to a gas station that had a little convenience store with it, or going to a grocery store. I ate a lot of jalapeno poppers from the grocery store, and also that convenience store had a soft serve ice cream machine where you could get a ‘free sample’, and it was a little, little, tiny cup that you could test the flavor of the day. We had a whole thing of seeing how much ice cream you could get in that tiny cup before it fell.

JM: Wow. That’s an interesting high school lunch experience. Obviously when you think of “Monster High”, you think of the halls of a high school and this place. What went into those designs, and did you think about your own high school with this?

SF: This high school is way, way, WAY cooler than any high school I’ve ever seen.

JM: (laughs)

SF: I don’t know how much of my actual high school aesthetic experience went into that because I was definitely in a high school built in that plain, 1960s, box of ‘this it what it is’. Our “Monster High” is really about pushing the spookiness we can get within the halls of the high school and having those deep, dark shadows that things can disappear in and pop out of — as well as having all those monster cues. Our lockers are coffin-shaped. Our desks in the classrooms are shaped like bats. We want to make sure around every corner there’s a monster twist with the things that you see.

JM: Love that. So Dracula’s an ’80s movie star? What?! That’s awesome!

SF: (laughs) Dracula, in our series… we really re-imagined the idea of Dracula being the most famous and powerful monster in the world. [He] took a little turn in the ’80s to go into action films about himself. He’s a movie star but he’s also the premiere, first and foremost, top monster, which is the ultimate judge and ruler of the monster world. He definitely is different than your mother’s Dracula. We have a lot of twists with our Dracula here. He’s played by Ken Marino, who brings such a fun charm to him.

JM: Draculara’s not thrilled that he’s a big movie star, but maybe that bond will grow over the course of the season, right, of their relationship a little bit?

SF: They have a sort of tumultuous father-daughter relationship as we get into our series. Draculara is hiding this idea that she’s practicing witchcraft, which is completely against the rules. But as our character grows, we’ll see a turn in that relationship.

JM: What were some of the classic monster movies you grew up with, Shea?

SF: You have all the classic Universal stuff. I was also a reader, so Frankenstein and the story of Mary Shelley and kind of her being the mother of sci-fi monsters is the coolest thing in the world to me.

JM: You also have a lot of fun with the dialogue. There are puns in every episode!

SF: I love a good pun. I’m always trying to get some puns in there — and really intrinsic to the Monster High brand. From the beginning there were these puns. Draculara’s catchphrase is “Fang-tastic”. Clawdeen is “claw-some”. Frankie is “voltacious”. It’s really about getting those monster-specific puns with each of our characters and then seeing what kind of fun we can have on all the puns of all the classic high school stuff.

JM: What I’ve noticed with this and Hotel Transylvania and many animated horror films and series over the last 10-15 years is that they put a spin on these classic monster characters and make us realize not everybody is scary and we all have these commonalities. We can all relate to each other. That’s really coming through with this “Monster High” as well.

SF: Thank you. That’s really something we wanted to push. We want every kid to be able to see themselves on screen, even though these are monster characters. They make look a little bit different than you, but [we’re] really pushing the authenticity of the character.

JM: And overall, what do you think has been the most rewarding part of this experience and as you continue down this journey?

SF: It’s been an absolute blast to have both the Nickelodeon teams and the Mattel teams. As you work on a franchise, there’s the toy people, there’s the brand people, there’s so many different people in addition to our animation crew that are working on this series and are really striving to make it the best possible series that it could be. It’s been really rewarding to see that cooperation between all the teams.