From dealing with her feelings towards her best friend Scott, to suddenly coming face to face with a mysterious professor from the future who tells her that she will end up saving the world, a crafty young girl named Hailey Banks has a lot on her plate in the soon-to-be released Disney Channel original show, Hailey’s On It!
In order to achieve this ultimate goal though, the visitor from the future tells her that she must complete all the objectives in her notebook, “My Big List of Things I’m Totally Going To Do.” Along with her new sarcastic robot companion named Beta, Hailey Banks must conquer her fear of the unknown to become the hero she is destined to be.
With many eager fans already trying to solve the mystery behind the reason why Hailey suddenly has this time traveling prophecy in her hands, creators and executive producers Devin Bunje and Nick Stanton sat down with MovieWeb to tell us all about the main themes and crucial storytelling elements that make up this new animated series.
Saving the World with Long-Term Storytelling
MW: As seen in the trailer, Hailey doesn’t necessarily like trying new things. But given the fact that she now has to go on some wacky and crazy adventures in order to save the world, she’ll have to conquer that fear. Through Hailey’s On It, what messages do you want to send to the younger audience about having to come face to face with the unknown?
Nick Stanton: I think at the heart of it, what we really want to say is that anybody can accomplish great things, and we thought it would be really interesting that we start with this character who, in episode one […], has trouble stepping outside of her comfort zone and could be shy, and has moments of anxiety. We get a little peek into her accomplishing great things. It’s an exercise in opposites almost, taking a character from point A to point B and then, how do we evolve that character in this journey, and we didn’t want it to be a series where we reset every episode. In an animated series, we thought it was an interesting idea that the character grows every episode, and the Hailey that we meet in episode one is a different character personality-wise than we meet in episode 21.
Devin Bunje: We love the idea of following someone on a journey that comes from a place where we’ve all been at, and where you’re sort of nervous or self-doubting yourself. But having that keep behind the curtain that you are able and capable and destined to do great things, we thought was a fun sort of catalyst.
MW: There still seems to be quite a bit of discussion online about the nature of the narrative within Hailey’s On It and the storytelling route that the show will end up taking. With that being said, will there be an overarching mystery or plot that will keep fans excited throughout the season or is more of the emphasis going to revolve around contained episodic adventures?
Devin Bunje: Honestly, there’s both, yeah. We definitely have an overarching story both on a character growth standpoint and relationship standpoint with Scott. The relationship changes quite a bit, and that dynamic changes quite a bit and just […] by his nature, as you know, there are elements from the future that are coming back to kind of disrupt Hailey’s progress on the list, and we’re going to learn more about what’s causing that and kind of get to a point where it’s harder and harder for her to complete different list items, etc. That said […] there are going to be episodes where accomplishing a list item is the goal of the episode opposed to always reminding us of the overarching things but in our mind, it’s all steps.
MW: Gary Anthony Williams, who voices the character of Beta (whom I absolutely love for his sarcastic behavior), said in a very recent interview regarding the show that even though he is an adult, he would definitely put Hailey’s On It onto his watch list. Being the creators, what makes this Disney Channel series enjoyable for both children and adults?
Devin Bunje: I mean, as Gary said, it’s just fun, honestly. It’s a really fun show, and truthfully, we don’t dumb down anything for the kids. We put in anything that we think is funny and the writers think is funny and [that] people will laugh at when we show them pieces or anything that usually makes it in. We remember as kids watching shows that were probably geared for slightly older than us and even if we didn’t get the jokes either, we got the fun rhythms of it. There’s definitely something in there for everybody. For kids, adults and families.
Crafting Hailey’s On It Through Past Works
MW: Speaking to your previous works, specifically noting Gamer’s Guide to Pretty Much Everything and Prince of Peoria, what are some very striking and notable differences when it comes to making an animated series compared to a live action one?
Nick Stanton: Well, we’ve really enjoyed working in both mediums, ya know. At the heart of it, a good story is a good story in our minds. The benefits to working in animation […] you can expand the world a lot and go to crazier places, and we have this character, Beta, a stuffed teddy bear smartphone, and we can’t do that in live action [laughs]. It really opens up the world.
Nick Stanton: The one drawback or, I’ll call it a challenge, was our last show, Prince of Peoria, was filmed in front of a live studio audience, and we would get immediate feedback whether a joke was working or wasn’t working and in animation, we have to get used to the process. It’s just much slower. Animation footage, you don’t see for months. You can’t rewrite a joke really on the fly. That said, we try to approximate as best we could. We did table reads with the writers, the crew to see what was playing and what wasn’t, and eventually we got to do in person storyboard pitches which were amazing and fun. Our directors, Cat Harman-Mitchell and Leslie Park, did amazing jobs, and so we could kind of approximate that. But in the beginning that was a little bit of a challenge.
MW: The growing online community has already begun to compare Hailey’s On It with other hit Disney Channel shows like Phineas and Ferb, Amphibia, Owl House, and Star Vs. The Forces of Evil just to name a few. While they are all great shows in their own right, what were your own inspirations behind the making of Hailey’s On It?
Nick Stanton: We’re fans of all those shows, so I’m glad that people are comparing us favorably. In terms of inspiration, I would say that one sort of template that we used was […] ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances. We were both fans of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure as kids and what we thought worked in that was two regular kids just trying to pass a history test and there’s all these future ramifications, obviously. They form Wyld Stallions and do this great thing in the future. At the heart of it, they were normal kids, and it was a sci-fi movie if you break it down […] so we like that formula of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
The Future Looks Exciting for Fans
MW: One of the strongest character connections in the show has to do with Hailey and her best friend, Scott Denoga. What is not very known yet from what we can see is the relationship that she has with her family. Is there anything you can tell me regarding her parents, any other relatives and how they will come to factor into this world saving adventure that she is suddenly tasked with?
Devin Bunje: Yeah, we actually get into a lot of fun family stories pretty early in season one. [Hailey’s] family is very supportive. Her dad is sort of a stay at home dad who, we always say, is taking a permanent break as a therapist [laughs]. Her mom is a hardworking realtor in town. One of the fun things we found at some part in the season is that Patricia, Hailey’s mom, finds out about her daughter’s feelings toward Scott and sort of complicates it in a sense that she finally has someone to talk to but also, it’s her mom which has everyone knows, is kind of an embarrassing person to have your romantic secrets known to. That’s one of the fun elements that are coming up.
MW: Seeing how entire shows can be changed according to initial network feedback, was Hailey’s On It ever any different from what is shown through the official trailers and clips? Are there any original concepts towards the show’s making that you would think fans would love to hear about?
Devin Bunje: What I thought was most interesting was that, I think this was one of the few shows that got greenlit to pilot where the art wasn’t actually nailed down. We came up with the story, the concept, the script I think even, and we had a general idea of where it would take place and the kind of characters […]
Devin Bunje: Nick and I are writers and story guys by nature, so we had the development department here at Disney TVA [who] had this incredible array of artists that we were able to lean on and who would come up with what the world would like, and what the characters would look like. A shout-out to Bobby Pontillas who came up with the first version of Scott and Hailey that everybody just fell in love with and everybody was just like, this is them. I think it’s pretty rare that a show starts from the story side instead of the art side, and we got to polish the art to really fit the story that we were trying to tell.
Hailey’s On It! premieres June 8th at 8pm on the Disney Channel.