Netflix's Centaurworld is an animated series that's equally about exploring one's past trauma as it is about finding one's chosen family. Set to a majestic score composed by Toby Chu (Bao), the animated series' debut season follows Horse (Kimiko Glenn), a warhorse who was separated from her owner Rider (Jessie Mueller) amidst a treacherous battle. She somehow finds herself transported into a fairy-tale-like world filled with bubble gum pink pastels, rainbows and a cast of singing centaurs, at a loss with how to fit in with the expressive and outlandish centaurs. The 10-episode first season falls somewhere between an epic quest, a musical and a journey of self-discovery stuffed with unabashed joy.
Series creator and star Megan Nicole Dong based the upcoming animated series, in part, around her own experience accidentally joining show choir in high school. In an interview with CBR, Dong explored the fantastical world's origins, music's powerful ability to reach people and what she hopes fans will take away from Horse's journey in Season 1.
CBR: Centaurworld contains so much. It's an epic quest, a musical and kind of a road trip. What was the first image of the series that popped into your head?
Megan Nicole Dong: Yeah, the very first thing I ever drew was five or six years ago, and it was Durpleton -- the giraffe centaur -- and just a horse. I always just knew that I wanted the main character to be a horse and for her to meet all these characters. And so that was the very first image that ever popped into my head.
Speaking of Horse, she's voiced by Kimiko Glenn. What was one thing that she brought to the table when voicing Horse that happily surprised you?
She brought so many things. Going in, I think a lot of us had visualized Horse having more of an alto voice, kind of a gruff-sounding voice. And Kimiko auditioned, and she performed several of the songs and she was so compelling. And we just knew it had to be her.
She also brought a lot of comedy to that character. It's easy to have the fish out of water character for the main character to come across as the straight character and not have a comedic voice. But she brought so much comedy to the role that we were able to play off of it. And almost like a naughtiness to the character, like whenever she would talk about war, she'd get a little too excited. And that was really hilarious. She was a lot of fun to work with.
This show is definitely about music. It's at the heart of the show. I know that you mentioned before that the show is based off, in part, your experience of joining show choir and how that just changed the course of your life. So I was really curious what it was like working with composer Toby Chu to make these songs. What was the storyboarding process like around that?
The process was super interesting for us. So myself, and my co-executive producer Dominic Bisignano, both have music backgrounds. We both have composed and written songs before. And for this, we wanted it to be a dedicated musical where all the songs were narrative. We knew that we were going to be writing all of the songs. Dominic and I were in the writers' room. We had the whole story mapped out, and we were just sort of dividing up the songs. So we were there during the scriptwriting process and we'd be sharing our demos with our writers. And as this went on, we would be sending our rough demos to Toby, who would produce them.
So I think what was definitely unique about this was Toby was on with us much earlier than a lot of composers would be for a show. He was on quite early in the process. So he was producing the songs as they came in. And he brought so much to the table because he's also very much a storyteller as well. The example that comes to mind is in Episode 4. We go into a forest area and so he actually went to Home Depot and made percussion out of chopping wood and made the shakers out of leaves and added like the sound of wood bending and stretching into the percussion. So he was really bringing, and elevating what we were giving him.
He went through this whole journey with us in pre-production and every time we would get his version back, after sending him the demos, it was always like opening a Christmas present. And then we would give these to the storyboard artists and it would be really exciting and provide them with a lot of visuals to work off of. And now that we're in post-production, we're going through the whole journey with him all the way from the beginning, because he's doing this for the show, too. So I think working so closely with our composer from the beginning, it's been a really special experience for us because he's so intimately involved in the storytelling as well. I've never worked like this before. And it's been really, really fun and also just really nice to build all these partnerships with people creatively.
So, Horse has a lot of fears about vulnerability. She's very much like, "No, no, I don't need anyone!" Why was it important for you to show that in your main character?
I really wanted... I've said this before, but it was something that I experienced before for myself; but I wanted a character that kids could relate to, as well. And I wanted friendships to be at the center of the show, and just the value of finding your family. I wanted a character that was likable and relatable. I wanted her to be able to be changed by having relationships with others. So that was always something that we just wanted to share. Because during a lot of times in my life, I kind of would have my head down and thought there was only one way to do things.
Speaking of the characters that she meets, Wammawink (Megan Hilty) is so fun and very much the opposite of Horse. She's all about others' feelings and being safe and not taking risks alone, so it's fun to see the two play off each other. Was there any kind of model that you had in mind for this character?
All of the characters are loosely based on people that I've met or combinations of different people. I wanted all of them to feel real and be flawed and for their flaws to be okay. I didn't want them to have to change this about them necessarily. It's more like, if they're all together, they can accept each other for those flaws and make each other better and learn from each other. And I think for the herd, especially Wammawink -- and we get into it in one of the episodes too -- I wanted them to have real reasons for being the way that they are.
At first, when Horse gets there, she thinks they're just silly and kind of wacky and out there. But I wanted a lot of their traits to be informed by trauma and Wammawink certainly has undergone trauma in the past and so has Horse, like everyone. I wanted everyone to have gone through some real stuff. But, to your question about her and the kind of over-the-top mothering and overbearing thing -- yeah, I have friends and family members who trend towards it. And I found myself doing that before too, so I wanted these characters and her to feel real.
Out of all the character designs of the herd, which one were you the proudest of?
Oh, it's hard. I do love Wammawink. I just want to squish her 'cause she's super fluffy. And then Durpleton was the first one that I ever drew of those centaurs, so he's also very close to my heart because he's a very sweet boy.
In the episode "Fragile Things," which is the second episode of Season 1, there's a tornado sequence that's just gorgeous. I was curious about how the idea for a tornado that is literally a centaur came to be?
When we were building out this world and developing it, we were talking a lot about what could be a centaur and how kind of anything could be. Like, some of the leaves are and sometimes we'll see a mountain in the background and notice that it has hooves and a torso. A lot of Horse's journey is inspired by The Wizard of Oz. She's traveling down a road with a cast of really interesting characters. And so I think the Taurnado was a little bit of a nod to that to The Wizard of Oz; but I also wanted something early on to show that there could be danger in this world as well. We have all this sunshine and rainbows but also there are threats. It was something that we thought could just be really cool looking and show what this world could be.
For my last question, what do you hope audiences take away from Centaurworld?
Making the show was really joyful. It was a joyful experience for myself and for the crew. I feel really lucky to have been able to work with so many people to build this show that was really ambitious and fun to make. So I hope that the joy translates, because we all had a lot of fun working together and making this. Also, I hope people find it relatable. We have some dark themes happening in the show as well. We have some scary stuff and I hope that the characters feel real to them. I hope that the characters are characters they can relate to and that they can find comfort in it too.
For me, I learned a lot through the process of making this. I did sort of feel like my journey was sort of mirroring Horse's. It was so ambitious that I had to learn to really trust the people around me to help make this happen. And so that was what I learned from it, so I hope that's also something that other people can take away from it too -- learning to trust those around you.
Centaurworld debuts its first, ten-episode season on Netflix on July 30.