Blue’s Clues is back! The iconic Nickelodeon show that I (and millions) grew-up with has been revived with Blue’s Clues and You, premiering November 11th at 1pmET/PT. New title, new host and new look to Blue. But the spirit of the original show is there, as enthusiastic co-creator Traci Paige Johnson (who also voices Blue) explains:

Jackson Murphy: The original show was such a success. When did talks of the revival begin?

Traci Paige Johnson: I think was about two or three years ago. There was the whole revival thing of “Will & Grace” and “Roseanne” and there’s so much out there on the landscape, and everybody was kind of harkening back to the good old days, those memories. We’ve been planting the seeds of wanting to bring Blue’s Clues back for a while, and I think the planets just became aligned again. And Nick was super excited. I know they did some preliminary research, and everybody just has so much love for this show. And also the kids who grew-up on Blue’s Clues are now having kids of their own, so they want something heartfelt and they want to share their childhood with their kids. So the timing is just right. And the feedback has been phenomenal. We’re so excited and honored to be sharing Blue’s Clues with another generation.

JM: I remember seeing about a year and a half ago that you put out a Casting Call for the new star of “Blue’s Clues”. You got Josh Dela Cruz, and he’s great.

TPJ: 3,000 people [auditioned]. Nick was amazing. They put out feelers everywhere and went through 3,000 tapes. And it was hard. We were open to everybody: age, color, ethnicity, gender. And it was a hard decision, but Josh really has all the chops.

JM: He really, genuinely connects with you. Did it seem like he felt comfortable right away?

TPJ: Yeah, and actually we were so happy that the original host, Steve Burns, helped us. He’s a consulting producer… and he helped in casting. He was in the final casting calls, and there’s some great footage… They came in for their final call backs, and we had about five of them. And Steve was there helping direct, and it was kind of a surprise. He would pop out from behind after they did a scene to give some pointers. It was hysterical. They would just freak out, because it took them a moment to realize, “Oh my God It’s Steve!” He was fantastic in giving them the tricks and the tool kit of talking to the kids at home.

You’re not talking to a huge audience, but you’re focusing on that one kid at home who’s listening to you. It’s been a wonderful process with Steve back helping write and direct. We’re passing the baton on, and it’s going so swimmingly. And Josh is the real deal. He’s so genuine. He has that connection – he does singing (he’s done Broadway). And he has the sweetness that you just can’t help loving this guy.

JM: And it’s so surreal that Steve and Joe are back in the first episode. Was that always the plan to… pass the baton?

TPJ: Yeah. They’re family, and it’s a Blue’s Clues family. When you have a reunion, it’s meaningful to have everybody come to the table. They were so excited to hop on board. Now the show is for the pre-schoolers, certainly, but it’s also for all the people who grew-up on Blue’s Clues, too. So you want to make that connection with that audience. And now with social media, too, what a difference in creating a show before social media and after. Now there’s much more ways to connect.

JM: Absolutely. Now, on the original show, and on this show, you voice Blue. And the Blue character this time is CGI. Was that a difficult decision to make?

TPJ: Yeah. We did a lot of exploratory and development. We knew we wanted to refresh the show. We were breakthrough back in the day because we were one of the first shows to do cut-out animation, just in After Effects. And now we’re kind of continuing that of being breakthrough in that we’re the first show that has mixed media of 3D, 2D and live-action. But once we saw Blue rendered (when we did the tests) of a three-dimensional character with real fur, she just popped off the screen. She felt so real that you could put out your arms and hug her. She’s so lovable and so huggable.

It’s been a challenge. It’s been hard marrying the 2D and the 3D. And the props she touches in the show – even though they’re 2D, if she touches them, they have to be 3D. It’s really this complicated process. The show is deceptively simple. You think it’s so simple, but it takes a lot to create all those different elements to fit together so seamlessly to make it feel that Josh is in the real environment of “Blue’s Clues”.

JM: Do you remember the first time you tried to do the Blue voice and you realized, “I got it!”

TPJ: We were doing the Pilot, and we… ran rehearsals at the last moment. We didn’t really have money to hire a voiceover person, but also because Blue wasn’t really speaking. And we just went around the room and said, “Can you bark? Can you bark?” And I could bark! Doing the Pilot, I just barked. But I thought for sure if the show got picked up that we’d get a real voiceover talent. And then, when the show did get picked up and we were holding auditions, I guess we just got used to my voice. Having created the character, you have that special heart behind it. It wasn’t my decision, it was Nickelodeon’s, after all the auditions, to keep with my voice. And now it’s my favorite part of the show.

JM: I’m glad they kept you! Blue’s Clues relies so much on a green screen. Give me the “BC” secrets of pulling it all off when it comes to Josh standing in front of that green screen.

TPJ: It’s a tribute to Josh, Steve and Donovan [Patton, who plays Joe] who’ve been acting to nothing. It’s the whole crew coming together and really storyboarding out before we go in to shoot the general composition of the background and the eye lines. And then once [Josh] is on in the green swimming pool, we have to do little eye lines. So we have screens set-up, almost like the weathermen and weather-women (who are standing in front of a green screen), so we can find Blue’s eye line, or whichever character is in that scene.

They also use little tricks of tape, or Josh will have a laser pointer, and when it looks like he’s looking at Blue he’ll take the laser pointer and say, “Okay! Put a piece of tape on the floor right there” where the laser pointer is – and that helps him get into the rhythm. And then we’ll do many takes of the same shot, and it’s hard because since we are a preschool show our takes are longer – and a little bit slow with the pause. Sometimes they’re a minute long, so he has to hit the mark every time. So we do do a lot of takes.

But one of the reasons Josh was hired is that he’s like a machine of absorbing the space and where the characters are – and connecting with the camera. We always love that magic step when he leans forward and gets really close and talks just to you. It’s a lot of practice and a lot of hard work. It’s certainly a marathon. We’re up in Toronto right now shooting. But the crew’s fantastic. It’s so wonderful to have another family again. It’s so fun having kids who grew-up on Blue’s Clues now working on the staff.

JM: You watch the show, and I know there are edits, but it all feels so seamless that you sort of don’t realize there are edits. And was it tough getting Josh’s blue shirt just right? It was important the last two times.

TPJ: We thought we were gonna do something green, and then when we were doing a photoshoot after he was hired… we were saying, “Oh, he looks so good in blue.” And then it was just some out of the box thinking. We were there with some Nickelodeon execs and we were like, “What if we do blue?” It just felt so fresh and new, but still so signature and classic. But we did spend a lot of time with the blue shirt in the color correcting process. It kept coming out purple. We kept trying, but we knew we could get there.

JM: And I’m glad that you didn’t change the theme song too much.

TPJ: Just enough to refresh and feel modern, but still so classic. The show was so good. It was so well-researched and well thought of then. We didn’t have to do that much. But now once we refresh the host and Blue and the look, the music gets a little refreshed, too. We kept a lot of the classic songs and then we also refreshed some of the new ones. We did a perfect job of refreshing but not too much that it felt so different, but still keeping true to the classic nature of Blue’s Clues.