A few weeks ago, I was out in LA interviewing the cast of Beauty and the Beast. While we were there we stopped by the Disney XD & Disney Channel to see a few new shows including the latest from Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh. I met them last year as they wrapped up Phineas and Ferb with Last Days of Summer. Don’t miss out on watching all-new episodes of Milo Murphy’s Law throughout the month of March on Disney XD.
Weird Al as Milo Murphy
Dan Povenmire talks about they hired Weird Al as the main character, Milo Murphy. “We auditioned hundreds of people for Milo. We auditioned kids, and people whose work we love. But, when they try to do that super-positivity thing, it always came off Pollyanna and false. We just needed to find somebody who just actually has that voice, ’cause the character is modeled after a friend of ours who just sounds that way when he talks. He just always sounds positive. We needed to find somebody who has that positivity just naturally. Weird Al came in and did a voice on Gravity Falls and Alex, who runs Gravity Falls, posted it, and I was like — Weird Al is this super, super positive guy. What does he sound like? I looked up an interview with him to remind myself what his voice sounded like. We had him come in and it just immediately worked.
Social Media Response
The group of us including the writers Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh watched two episodes of Milo Murphy’s Law in a theater. This is something unique that TV show writers don’t get. With movies, you can hear the response to the film in a movie theater. TV writers and show runners don’t hear this response; they have to look to social media to see what people think. Dan spoke about appreciating our input. “It is fun to watch that with an audience. We sometimes forget, by the time we’re done with it, none of it’s funny to us anymore because we’ve seen all of those jokes 30 or 40 times each. It’s always a matter of “Well, this made me laugh the first several times I heard it. I should probably leave it in,” because otherwise, you end up changing things because you’ve heard them a lot. It’s always nice when people laugh at the things you thought were funny originally. It is nice. You work in TV, you work in a vacuum, and you send it out into the ether. If you’re in features, you can go to an actual theater and hear people responding to it. If you’re in a play or something like that, you get that instant gratification.”
Dan & Swampy look to social media normally to see what jokes hit and what didn’t. Dan says, “A lot of times you’re looking to see what starts getting quoted. There’s always the Monday morning gag. The gag that kids will come to school and talk about.” Swampy chimes in, “It’s nice to know that things that you were hoping that would connect, do connect. I look for it to find the surprising things I didn’t expect.”
Thanks to Coralie of Lovebugs and Postcards for the photos.
Show for the Whole Family
Q : How important is it for you to create a show the whole family can watch together?
DP : That’s the best thing that we hear because when we started Phineas it was right at the time where TV watching had gotten so segmented. There’s cable stations that are segmented: there’s the Food Network, and Home and Garden Television, and…
JM : There’s a whole Bass Fishing Network.
DP : Yeah, there really is, and what the research was showing was that every age group in the house had its own TV.
So, family viewing as we remembered it, from when we were kids, had sort of disappeared. You know. When we were kids, it was the whole family on the couch watching TV. It was everybody watching one show, and you had to pick something that everybody liked, and since that was no longer the norm, people weren’t doing as many shows for the whole family. When we hear that, to us, it just warms our heart, that we’re bringing back family viewing to the family.
Follow Milo Murphy’s Law on you favorite social media!
Follow DAN POVENMIRE(Creator and Executive Producer) on Twitter
Follow JEFF “SWAMPY” MARSH (Creator and Executive Producer) on Twitter
Follow Disney Channel on Twitter for updates on the show.
Get details on the Disney XD Milo Murphy’s Law
Like Disney XD on Facebook.
Don’t forget to watch all-new episodes of Milo Murphy’s Law throughout the month of March on Disney XD.
This is blog post is sponsored in exchange for an all-expense paid trip from Disney. However, as always, all experiences and opinions are my own.