This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
*Premiering globally on Friday, June 13, “Not a Box” is an all-new animated preschool series inspired by the beloved, award-winning children’s picture book by the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator Antoinette Portis. The eight-episode series follows bright-eyed bunny Riley, who, with just one cardboard box, imagines magical worlds full of new friends and fantastic adventures.
Voiced by Isabel Birch as Riley and Ian James Corlett (Dragon Ball Z) as ‘Adult,’ “Not a Box” invites young viewers and their families to step into a rich world of environments, characters, and encounters that is as limitless as their imaginations to create, explore, and celebrate. Watch the trailer above.
The show is produced by Dete Meserve’s Silver Creek Falls Entertainment with Meserve serving as executive producer. It is written and co-executive produced by Emmy Award winner Michael Rabb, and animation is produced by Passion Pictures with executive producers Debbie Crosscup and Andrew Ruhemann, and directed by Siri Melchior. The series also features contributions from Kate Robinson, director of the Sir Ken Robinson Foundation and daughter of the late Sir Ken Robinson, as the imagination and creativity expert through Apple TV+’s changemakers initiative.
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Honoring the Book’s Simplicity with a Handmade Look
When asked how the creative team balanced the minimalist charm of the book with the visual vibrancy of an animated series, Rabb shared: “The book is very simple, and it looks like a child could have drawn it. So that’s how I always thought the series should go. It should look handmade, and it should look like a child could have made it… I thought it needed color and stimulation and a little bit more excitement to it as far as the show… It looks like it’s handmade. It’s got cardboard effects to it. We used cotton for the clouds and lots of cutout pieces of paper and things.”
Meserve added: “We wanted to make sure that we were true to what Antoinette Portis, who wrote the book, had said when I first optioned the book from her, which was, we’re not telling kids how to imagine. They already know how to do that. We’re empowering them and encouraging them to use their imagination, to tell their own stories… It’s imagined from a child’s perspective.”
The Perfect Creative Partners
Assembling the right creative team and animation partner was crucial to bringing Riley’s world to life. Dete explained: “In finding Mike on the creative storytelling part… Mike perfectly embodied that, as he shared, with his approach to storytelling. When it came to the visual… we were 100% certain that it had to be child-driven. It had to look like it came out of a child’s imagination… if there’s going to be a sea monster… it’s not going to look like any old sea monster you’ve ever seen before…”
On choosing Passion Pictures, she noted, “Their designs were very whimsical and inventive and also thoughtful… there was like a sort of beautiful, imaginative and creative center to it that spoke to us of childhood.”
Rabb echoed the sentiment: “In the original drawings that I saw, in the original ideas, I thought, wow, that looks like the most beautiful picture book that would come to life… that’s what Not a Box is all about.”
Crafting Riley’s World and Heartfelt Adventures
Describing Riley’s character, Rabb said: “Riley loves to imagine and she loves to play… Part of her imagination play shows itself in her storytelling… She starts by imagining what her box could become. Then she imagines an adventure, and she changes her mind as she goes. When she comes across certain problems, she creates a new friend to help her along the way… I think kids are going to be on the edge of their seat waiting to see how Riley solves a problem.”
Rabb also reflected on the process of writing the scripts: “I’ve been writing for a little over 20 years now, and I’ve written on a lot of preschool shows. And there’s a certain formula that a lot of them have. There’s a problem to solve, and there’s a regular cast of friends. I didn’t want to do that with this show. So getting writers on my team to think differently from all the shows they had worked on and try to think like a kid…. we would watch lots of videos of kids telling stories. When we were making this show, it was during COVID. We ended up watching tons of YouTube videos of kids telling stories. So we tried to help the writers write like that. The way a kid tells the beautifully imperfect stories with changes and twists and turns, and try to push your imagination to come up with something that no one else could come up with.”
Favorite Moments That Capture the Show’s Spirit
Asked about episodes that best capture the spirit of “Not a Box,” Meserve shared: “One I was just watching… Riley turns the box into a comet… I loved the journey… but what’s also on screen allows kids to imagine even beyond their own world… seeing a planet that’s made out of cookies… a joy that seems to leap off the screen… That enjoyment and motivation to go imagine their own story in the box.”
Rabb highlighted another favorite: “Riley imagines her box as a rocket ship and she ends up on a planet and she meets a space alien… even though they look completely different and they don’t speak the same language, they learn to become best friends because they both speak the language of play… It’s a universal language.”
Watch our full conversation with Dete and Michael via the clip below.
MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Apple TV+ Debuts Trailer for ‘Not a Box,’ New Animated Preschool Series | WATCH
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