DreamWorks Animation Television is currently the best in the business when it comes to bringing original animated series and adaptations of their hit movies to the small screen, hands down. Netflix has been a major partner in their success as the exclusive home to shows likeDreamWorks Dragons,Voltron Legendary Defender,TrollhuntersandDinotruxto name a few. And of course, there’s the multiple Emmy award-winning seriesAll Hail King Julien, a prequel series spun off from theMadagascarfilms, that arrives on the streaming platform today for its overall sixth and final season.
Executive producer and showrunnerMitch Watsonhas been there from the beginning ofAll Hail King Julien, and the fact that the show is coming to an end is a bittersweet one for him. We chatted about the final season,available today on Netflix, and what’s ahead for fans in these last 13 episodes. Watson also looked back on the run ofAll Hail King Julien, described how politics and the news cycle has influenced the show in surprising ways over the years, and remarked on how compromises and surprise moments in production actually made the series stronger and such a joy to work on.
Now’s as great a time as any to get caught up on the show, but if you haven’t watchedAll Hail King Julien, here’s what the series is all about:
Mitch Watson: It’s a tricky one, but I’ve always appreciated that Julien from the movies is a very myopic character, myopic in the sense that he sees something shiny in front of him and he gets excited and that’s really all he cares about. He’s not a mean guy, he’s not a malicious guy, he doesn’t have bad intentions, it’s just a large part of him is all id. So the way I’ve always described it to people is a show about a guy trying to figure out how to be a ruler and contain his own childish ambitions of essentially just having fun and enjoying himself, all while having this responsibility.
The other aspect of the show I usually like to talk about is that we satirize a lot of stuff. The mandate we were given from the very, very beginning was, “We want this show to reflect society in many ways. We want you guys, if you see subject matter in the news that you find interesting and you think would make a good story, go for it. We’ll pull you back if we have to.” And we ran with that idea. Even though we did 78 episodes on a fairly truncated schedule, it was never very hard to come up with storylines for it. A lot of them were simply [that] we saw something in the news we found very entertaining. We said, “Okay, how can we now look at it through the lens of this world?” The world we tried to create for Julien was like a small town … except with a bunch of lemurs and they live in the jungle.
And here’s just a teaser for what’s in store in the new season:
Watson: In the very first episode of the final season, “Julien 2.0”, it’s all about Julien wanting to make a kingdom that’s inclusive to everyone; it’s not just about his ego and what he wants, it’s what everybody wants. The whole episode was predicated upon the fact that myself and all the writers had a real problem with “trigger warnings” and all the stuff that’s going on in colleges, things like that, and we just think it’s ridiculous. So we said, “Let’s just do a whole episode on that.” So Julien tries to create this world where nobody’s feelings get hurt, where there’s no conflict whatsoever, and then we see how that completely unravels and goes awry.
We get another one which is all about the school system. My older daughter goes to public school and we deal with Common Core. A lot of it’s based on tests, not so much critical thinking, but simply, “Can you memorize things and repeat them back, so we get a good score and get more funding?” We decided to do a whole episode on this. We concocted an episode about Julien discovering that the lemur kids have been going to a charter school that has been teaching them completely wrong. They have to figure out how they can compete in an inter-school competition. Julien’s idea is, “We’ll just cheat.” We had a lot of fun with that one. It pokes fun at what we all thought was the hypocrisy of what the school system is becoming.
What is the audience breakdown like after four seasons and a seasonal spin-off?
Watson: We have a lot of adults who actually like to watch this show as much as the kids like to watch it. And that’s always the goal, because it’s not like most shows that adults might watch: There’s no swearing, there’s no sexual stuff, or anything like that. So to be able to hook in adults and kids at the same time without being able to rely on that stuff is not that easy. It’s very satisfying when we can get them interested.
Was there anything in the news you had an idea for but didn’t pursue?
Watson: There’s an episode coming up in the next 13 that was a little bit more political than everybody was [comfortable with], so we had to tone it down … A lot of our episodes don’t really pick sides–liberal or conservative. We’re equal opportunity satirists, I like to think; we make fun of just as many liberal things as conservative things … [This] episode is still there, but it’s significantly changed; if you watched the next 13, you’ll probably be able to figure out which one it is … I understood why we had to do it and I understood that the climate in the country had changed … That’s the only time we’ve ever had to do that.
On compromises and surprises:
Watson: That was one of the fun things about this show. There were times that we would push a little far and have to compromise, but the compromise would end up being better. Or something would come out of a record, the best example being the character of Butterfish. It was this voice that Kevin Michael Richardson used to do as a background voice. He would always do this really low voice, and he would do it on purpose, because it cut through everybody else and we’d all hear it. Every time we would play it, everybody in the room would laugh. So we created a character around that voice … That kind of stuff I love because it wasn’t anything we set out to do, but it was something that was created organically throughout the course of the show.
A lot of characters ended up being that way. Another example is the character of Pancho. It was because we realized that Danny Jacobs started doing this character of Pancho and we needed another voice for him. So he started doing this voice and we noticed that periodically the voice would change. We asked, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m doing Al Pacino, but I’m doing two different versions: an old Al Pacino and a young Al Pacino.” We thought that was the funniest thing we’d ever heard, so we began writing the character with that in mind. Slowly but surely, Pancho became a much bigger character because he was so funny; because of this weird dual nature, we could do funny things with him.
Any surprise guest stars or returning talents for the final season?
Watson: In the big 13 episodes, there’s this pair of dolphins who were trying to eradicate all sea life so that they can control the oceans, voiced by Max Greenfield and Glen Powell. They came in and were so funny together that, after they recorded, we went, “Okay, they have to come back.” So we wrote them into the final 13, as well.
We get to meet Karl’s family, there’s a whole episode that deals with them and their empire. Anjelica Huston comes back again. Every episode in the last 13, especially the last 2 episodes in the entire series–which is sort of a special two-parter–we brought back every single character that pretty much we ever had; they all come back. We brought back H. Jon Benjamin as Fred the scorpion. A lot of the guest stars we brought back in the last two episodes to finish it out because we wanted to tie up any loose [ends].
On bringing it all to a satisfying conclusion:
Watson: I’m not going to give away too much of the last two episodes, but they do tie into the movies in a certain way, and there are some things we need to deal with. We always knew it was going to be 78 episodes, so we were able to plan ahead for the very, very final episodes and sort of lead up into that. The hope being that the fans and the audience will find it satisfying, because it’s like, “Oh! I see how it all fits into the Madagascar world now, and why some characters are around and others aren’t.” There’s a super fun cameo in the very final episode. I think it’ll be a nice surprise for everybody.
What’s next for you?
Watson: There is a project, but I can’t tell you what it is or what network it’s going to be on. We’ve been working on it for almost a year. There are a lot of the same writers working on it, and there are also a lot of new writers working on it. All new storyboard artists, some of the same CG people, all new directors. I’m not getting to work with my buddy Bret Haaland, who I desperately wanted to work with, because they pulled him away to work on something else. I’m very happy with the way it’s coming out. It’s a different type of show fromJulien; it’s not quite as crazy or wacky. It’s been a good experience. It’s a serialized show with a much bigger scope, still a comedy. If you like Season 5 ofJulien, you’ll like this show.
All seasons ofAll Hail King Julienare available to stream on Netflix now!
