Pictures: IMDb / Nickelodeon
The first ten episodes of the first season of The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish just dropped on Netflix globally (it is a Netflix Original internationally and branded as Nickelodeon in the US), with the second batch of 10 episodes coming soon. To celebrate the Netflix release, we spoke to one of the series’ showrunners, Linsday Katai.
In case you missed it, The Fairly OddParents is back for a new animated series 18 years after its initial season wrapped up on Nickelodeon. It’s got a new protagonist and setting, but Cosmo and Wanda are back to serve as Hazel Wells’s fairy Godparents, granting her every wish.
Kasey: Hi Lindsay, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions about the show now on Netflix. Can I ask a bit about your background first? Many will know you for your work on Cartoon Network’s Infinity Train.
Lindsay: My first professional writing job was as a staff writer on Infinity Train. Before that, I was doing improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade, where I worked various jobs to support myself. Since Infinity Train, I’ve written for Wolfboy and the Everything Factory on Apple TV+ and Max and the Midknights, which just premiered on Nickelodeon on October 30th and is airing Wednesday at 7 pm ET/PT. I was writing on Max while we were in development for A New Wish.
How did you become involved in the reboot, and how familiar were you with Fairly OddParents before becoming involved? How long have you been working on the project for?
In 2021, my manager at the time left the business, and I panic-emailed everyone I’d had a meeting with to try to get myself work. One of those people was the lovely Jason McConnell, a creative exec in animated features. We got coffee, and he asked if I was familiar with Fairly OddParents and if I would want to participate in a brainstorming for a new series in the franchise. I’d never seen it because I was in college when the show came out, so I watched a bunch of episodes they suggested we watch to prepare. Then, for the brainstorm, I just gave my opinions on what I personally thought a new show could and should be like. I was hoping to maybe get a staff writing job out of it and it turned out they were looking to fill a Co-Executive Producer/head writer role. I’m honestly relieved I didn’t know that because I might not have been as relaxed and talkative in the brainstorming if I had known.
Butch Hartman is listed as an executive producer on the show – can you speak about how involved he was in the process, or was he more removed and let you go in your own creative direction?
Both Butch and Fred Seibert were given Executive Producer titles as the original creators of the show but weren’t involved in the day-to-day production of the show. In development, we pitched what we’d come up a couple times so they could give feedback, but they were pretty hands-off and very supportive of everything we were doing. After production began, we only met with them a couple more times, though they got all the emails with scripts and animatics and everything, so they certainly had the opportunity to give feedback, but were quite generous in letting us make it our own. The only substantive change Butch made was the name of the town. In my initial pitch, I was calling it “Dimmsopolis,” and he suggested “Dimmadelphia,” which we liked and is frankly much easier to say.
How early on did you know that you’d be having a brand new protagonist? What were the pros and cons of not having Timmy Turner back? Were there ever discussions on having different fairy godparents other than Cosmo and Wanda?
Keeping Cosmo and Wanda and replacing Timmy as the main character were decisions they were leaning toward early in development; it was the simplest way to maintain the spirit of the original while opening up new storytelling possibilities. It also just makes the most sense in the lore of the show. It was well-established that Cosmo and Wanda had been doing the job for years and had other godkids before Timmy. You even meet some of their other godkids in the original, one of whom essentially wished for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and set off World War I. So yeah, the best way to set up a new series for success was to introduce a new godkid who’s different enough from Timmy that the wishes won’t be too similar, while still making that kid messy and fun and relatable to the audience. That was the easiest decision to make.
Picture: Nickelodeon
The hardest thing to figure out was how to make Hazel miserable enough to get fairies without repeating the neglectful parent and evil babysitter story. For one thing, the show already did neglectful parents and an evil babysitter, retreading that ground would have given us less to do. For another thing, that’s not the nature of the problem most kids have today. The ‘80s and ‘90s were all about latchkey kids, but into the ‘00s and up to today it’s about helicopter parenting. If anything, the more universal problem would be to make her parents too attentive. But we couldn’t do that either, because Hazel needed the freedom to go off and make wishes and have adventures. So we landed on the difference being that Timmy’s problems were external, while Hazel’s were more emotional and internal. Timmy’s parents and babysitter were his problems, and Hazel’s anxiety and overthinking were hers.
What was it like crafting dialogue for and working with Daran Norris and Susanne Blakeslee who are iconic in their roles? How did they adjust in getting back into their roles after all these years?
So very, very fun. For one thing, we knew their voices very well from watching the original. We could hear them in our heads as we were writing. We always tried to schedule their records together because they play off of one another so well in the moment. Many times voice actors are recording their lines separately, unable to read live alongside their scene partners, but Daran and Susanne were almost always recording live in one session. It was so fun to watch.
They fell right back into it like pros. Then again, thanks to Fairly Odder before us, they’ve actually had very little time off from these characters. And it was so fun to see the dynamic between the two of them and Ashleigh as Hazel. They made for a great trio.
Picture: Nickelodeon
What’s your favorite episode from this season? Either one you wrote or another one written by someone else on your team.
My favorite episode was by staff writer Neyah Barbee. “1500 Minutes of Fame.” Because it’s such a bonkers plot, and I think it’s so fun. That thing got away from us so many times in the premise stage and we ended up with the most ridiculous story. It started as a completely different wish. It was that Hazel wanted to be able to hear what her classmates thought of her after she messed up a class report, so she gets a radio that transmits their thoughts to her, and my God, we went through so many iterations trying to address network notes and story problems. By the time we landed on the plot as it is, I honestly questioned whether the execs were just over giving us notes and that’s why they gave it the go-ahead. Because trying to explain the story to anyone outside of the writer’s room was next to impossible. “Okay so she wishes to be famous at her school in order to get a class superlative, a term everyone is familiar with even if they don’t know that’s what it’s called and we had to Google in order to know what to call it, but this gets her in trouble with the Principal, but she can’t just unwish it because Father Time granted it, because uhhhhh… you know the phrase ‘fifteen minutes of fame?’ So yeah, time has to run out. So a character named Nick of Time, a concept for a fairy that didn’t previously exist, shows up and says she can make time go faster because, okay, so you know the saying ‘in a New York minute?’” and on and on. It’s ludicrous! And I love the song the Loftys wrote for it, “New Yorkity York.” It’s so silly. Watching the animatic made me so happy. It was somehow the episode with the dumbest plot, yet it was the first time I was 100% sure the show was working. Because bringing this franchise back… we knew it was going to be fraught. We knew there were going to be people asking why and who needed this. But watching this episode, I was like, “Oh my God, we did it. People are going to like this show.”
Picture: Nickelodeon
Fans seem aware online that you’ve yet to be officially picked up for a season 2 – can you talk about any plans you’d have for the show going forward if you were to get picked up, and what’s the best way fans can assist in any renewal?
Yeah, because Nickelodeon aired every episode we produced, we’ve been able to be very open about not having a season two yet. This is a spoiler for season one (and only the first half of season one will be on Netflix as of November 14th; we don’t yet know when the second half will be available to stream), but if we get another season, I’m most excited to include Hazel’s friends and brother in the wishes now that they’re allowed to know about fairies. That was a change in the show’s DNA I was pushing as early as the brainstorm. I was so excited they let us make that change and then we didn’t get an immediate pickup and I kept wailing, ”THEN WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR?” It was such a darkly comic thing to happen, to let us open up the world like that and then to have Papa Paramount be like, “Actually, all shows now have to wait for viewer data before getting a decision about more episodes.” And for us, because Netflix was a producing partner from the beginning, that meant we had to wait until we premiered on Netflix! We’re animated, are you kidding me, do you know how long that will take? Like, I got pregnant in the third week of development, and my kid is two years old now, and we are still hoping for a second season.
So anyway, the best way for fans to help is to watch it on Netflix, watch it all, watch it in the first week, watch it AGAIN, tell everyone you know to watch it and keep posting about the show on social media. The only way we’ll come back is if we have the numbers and I sincerely hope we come back.
Finally, as we ask most of the people we interview, what have you been watching on Netflix recently?
This is so goofy of me, but Madam Secretary. I finished season two of The Diplomat in literally a day because I love Keri Russell, and I was like, “Damn that went fast, okay, what else can scratch this light thriller foreign policy female character study itch that allows me to live in a fantasy world where people in government are good at their jobs and/or care about people?” And the answer was Madam Secretary. And then, of course, I loved Baby Reindeer and am in an almost constant state of watching the Great British Bake-Off. If I’m not watching the newest season of GBBO, then I’m rewatching the Nadiya season of GBBO. Or I’m watching whatever other Nadiya Hussain show Netflix has, which thankfully has several.
