Christmas has been at the heart of The Simpsons since the show's earliest days. In fact, the show's first released half-hour length episode was a Christmas special, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire." Since then, there have been over a dozen other holiday-themed episodes and specials centering around the family and the rest of Springfield -- including the latest, a new animated short coming to Disney+ where the Simpsons family gets the chance to meet the world-famous opera singer Andrea Bocelli and his family for a musical ode to the season.
During an interview with CBR ahead of the Disney+ debut of The Simpsons Meet the Bocellis in Feliz Navidad, Showrunner Al Jean broke down the origins of the short. He dove into the biggest changes to the show's legendary writer's room and what makes The Simpsons such an ideal show to pair with the Christmas holiday. Jean also teased the future of the long-running series.
CBR: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me about the new short!
Al Jean: That's coming out on Disney+ on December 15th. It's been a very eclectic jump through the Disney+ world... We'd just finished our tribute to Disney villains. The Bocellis wanted to work with us, and they wanted Andrea Bocelli with two of his children singing on it -- Matteo and Virginia. He wanted the Simpsons to meet the children. Then we had to think of a funny premise, which is basically Homer gets Andrea Bocelli as a Christmas gift to Marge. We do some Disney+ where we have him say the Mouse is a miser. It's really funny. We even have Bart start to sing "Con te partirò" with him, which is hilarious -- you know, Nancy Cartwright really belting it out. Maybe my biggest surprise is how good our cast was at singing that.
It is a tricky task, asking someone to be funny and in character and also still be a good singer.
Nancy's voice is funny, but it's also good. I mean, I was amazed when she got to the song's bridge, and in one take... I can't believe she just did it. It's obviously one of the greatest songs in the last thirty years. That was in my head for like five days after we were recording.
This isn't the first time the show has tackled Christmas either. What is it about this show and this holiday season that fits so well together?
That's exactly what I think, too -- starting from the first one [Season 1's "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"]. The episode that we did where they burned down the tree [Season 9's "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace"] or I wrote [Season 26's "I Won't Be Home for Christmas"], where Homer was hanging out with the sad and lonely people at the mall... Nobody ever goes, "Oh, you ruined Halloween!" Halloween is just always fun, but Christmas has so many emotions tied up with it and so many people... If you don't feel you know a whole lot [of people around] Christmas, you can feel incredibly depressed, and that's what the show is always trying to show and trying to say. If you feel a little sad around this time, you're not alone, and I love those episodes.
While I've got you, I did want to tell you how much fun the currently-airing Season 34 has been.
A lot of great work by a lot of people. I thought that Halloween show that [Matt] Selman produced was fantastic, and then with "Not It," all these great and different voices, all these different things, I'm very pleased to be a little part of it.
I still can't get over "Lisa the Boy Scout" and how much that felt pointed at people like me who obsess over those kinds of fan theories and ideas.
Like "Bart's Dead" and so forth. There are theories that we're aware [of], like the one that Homer was in a coma after the April Fool's episode. So what's funny about that is the April Fool's one sounds great. It's a really cool idea, but the idea that we would hide this for years through different staffs, you know? Nobody plans that. How can you keep that a secret?
This past season, what has the energy been like in the writer's room? I know some shows lose steam after Season 4, and here's Season 34 firing on all cylinders.
The enormous change is that there is no more writers' room. Since Zoom, the room has evolved and [is] communicating like this, but you still work every week. I mean, I literally haven't had a week off since 2020, but if you have to take a personal day or something, it's not as hard. If you'd have to go drive your kid to the doctor during the middle of the day, that's not so hard anymore, either, and you can work from around the world. We've had writers in Europe. [We've had] writers pretty much fully based in Hawaii.
Now I go to New York myself. If there's been a change in the work environment, that's the big change. It's been that way for three years. It was a little hard at first, getting used to it. It's never been easy in terms of the table reads. That's probably suffering the most, where if something gets a laugh, it shuts off the next line. People have made phone calls inadvertently during the reads. People lost their audio feeds or their scripts. So that's always an adventure.
Is there anything else you can tease about the future for The Simpsons? Any new shorts on the horizon?
There's an episode I wrote coming out in Season 34 where Flanders goes to work for Fat Tony, called the "Many Saints of Springfield." It also has a great live-action couch gag by the Robot Chicken people where Homer digs inside the couch... It's funny. Flanders goes like, "I heard you're a wise guy," and Fat Tony goes, "Yeah, and a good fella." Flanders is like, "All right. I'm satisfied." Then when he finally realizes it, he's really upset, and then you can take it from there. The way I wrote it, the way it is everything about Fat Tony -- Flanders meets him in a church because of Tony's religion. So it's reasonable that he doesn't quite get it because Flanders believes the best about everybody.
I don't know what the next short will be. Honestly, that hasn't been determined. I want to pitch one, but I don't know if I'll do it, where... Maggie was the star in the first few shorts, and she's kind of dropped out. So I wanted to do a little short like Sunset Boulevard with Maggie, where she's sitting watching her old shorts, like "They don't want me anymore." That would be my next short if I could.
The Simpsons Meet the Bocellis in Feliz Navidad debuts Dec. 15 on Disney+.