The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumballis a fun revival of the Cartoon Network modern classic, bringing a fresh set of voices and creatives to the surreal cartoon comedy. Created by Ben Bocquelet,The Amazing World of Gumballwas a huge success for the network that embraced a loose approach to style and method. The show could swap mediums or change format from gag to gag, which lent it a great comedic potential that kept it from ever feeling tired.
The show has a successful six-season run from 2011 to 2019, with a pair of miniseries coming out across the following two years. Now, Gumball and his family are back for a new season, which comes with a new title. During an interview withScreenRantahead ofThe Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball’s return, the creatives and stars of the show discussed what it’s like stepping into the absurdist riff on family cartoons, the biggest surprises they encountered along the way, and the state of animation in the streaming era.
Growing Up With Gumball And The Joy Of Bringing It Back
“We Have To Be Hitting A Higher Bar, Which Is A Cool Challenge”
The surrealist comedy created by Ben Bocquelet ran for six seasons and two miniseries,Darwin’s YearbookandThe Gumball Chronicles. The show has now formally returned asThe Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball,but Bocquelet hasn’t relented on the bizarre touches that have always helped Gumball stand out. “The show’s so amazing, we had to rename it,” Bocquelet joked. “It was a brand new team. We have Matt showrunning and Eric being the Supervising Director.It was a little bit of a step back for me.”
“Ben’s joking,” Erik Fountain said, explaining that “Bensays he’s sitting back and giving an Emperor’s thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s not the case. He’s the one that, if something isn’t working, he knows this world and these characters the best. Bring it to him,he’ll find an angle and be able to make it seem character-driven, so that this chaos and absurdity are all motivated.”
Having previously worked onGumballas an animation supervisor, Matt Layzell noted that returning to that comedic absurdist landscape was the biggest learning curve in taking on a bigger role on the revamped show. “I think Gumball, the importance of the comedy had to be surprising. It has to give the audience something they haven’t seen before. It had to be tight, and I think working on a lot of comedy shows before that, I knew that this would be a level up. We have to be hitting a higher bar, which is a cool challenge.”
Fountain specifically noted that the multimedia aspect of the show presented some unique challenges and opportunities, noting that"it’s really freeing to be able to make a show with so many different types of characters with different executions. It’s been a huge opportunity for me to be able to steer on that stuff and see how it’s done. No other show has that diverse of a technique, and that’s incredible." “I think we just lean into the [absurdity,” Bocquelet noted with a wry smile. “We go as unhinged as the lawyers will allow us to.”
Stepping intoThe Wonderful World of Gumballwas a treat for everyone, especially the young stars of the show. “I grew up on this show,” Hero Hunter said. The new voice of Darwin, Hunter recalled how"my sister put me on it. She was always talking about it, and when I got old enough to watch it, I was blown away. I loved it so much." Kinza Syed Khan, the show’s new Anais, has a similar experience, finding the show through her cousins. “Then I got hooked. I’ve loved it ever since.” The odd one out was Alkaio Thiele, who plays Gumball.
“As a kid, I did not grow up on TV. That was just not a thing we ever did, so I chose a profession that forced my parents to let me watch TV. I was not aware of Gumball a ton growing up, I knew there was a blue thing and an orange thing on Cartoon Network but that was the extent of it. A few months before I started auditioning, I found it and realized how great and wacky and awesome it is. I started watching it, and then I got the audition, which was super cool.”
I’m so excited to be a part of this monumental show.
While Thiele has experience playing established characters in shows likeSpidey and His Amazing Friends, the chance to play in a slightly more absurdist sandbox has been a particularly exciting aspect of the show for the young actor. Recalling previous Gumball voice actors like Logan Grove, Jacob Hopkins, and Nicolas Cantu, Thiele noted that “This one is so unpredictable, and I don’t know where it’s gonna go… it was really fun trying to put my own Alkaio-isms in Gumball and see what people enjoy about it.”
Kinza and Hunter were both excited to join the show and also put their stamp on the characters. “Even though she’s so young, it’s so fun [to be Anais] because she’s very intelligent,” Kinza explained “[Kyla Kowalewski] did so well portraying the character, and it’s fun to put my own spin on it while keeping in mind what Kyla did.” Hunter still can’t believe he gets to be such a big part of the show.“I was astonished. I was blown away. I was so excited to play Darwin. I’ve just been studying… I’m so excited to be a part of this monumental show.”
Gumball’s Creatives On The State Of Modern Animation
“I Don’t Think This Would Have Been Possible Ten Years Ago.”
Animation is in a very different place in the modern era than it was at the turn of the century. 25 years ago, programming blocks like Adult Swim were giving a broad audience a taste of absurdist comedy through shows likeSealab 2021andAqua Teen Hunger Force. In the years since, respect and recognition for animation has grown in the public sphere — even as animators and studios face challenges from an ever-changing landscape.
Looking at the biggest ways the animation industry has changed sinceGumballstarted, Bocquelet explained that"People watch cartoons now. It’s just a medium and not a genre.That allowed animation to go into really interesting places. I’m thinking of shows like Scavengers Reign or Common Side Effect, which are really fascinating to me. It’s amazing they got made. I don’t think this would have been possible ten years ago."
“We were fans of animation when we were kids,” Layzell recalled, “but we’ve grown up and so has that audience pool I think the different tastes and different appetites for animation are a lot broader, which is making some really interesting new stuff.“It feels almost cyclical,“Fountain noted, “the way there was a spike in the festivals, these short format things that people made themselves in their own voice and style.”
“Now, with the way people consume entertainment, mostly in short-form content — in a way, the creators can make things themselves and put it out into the world. Now it’s not all collected at a film festival, it’s on YouTube. There are whole brands, just because people have been putting them out there as they want it.“This sense of creative optimism was shared by all the creatives, who looked ahead to the future of animation with hope. “I think it’ll continue to thrive as long as audiences love watching it,” Layzell said.
The Biggest Surprises About The Wonderfully Weird World Of Gumball
“Comedy Is Such A Punishing Process”
Gumball coming back to the airwaves caught Bocquelet by surprise on some levels, noting how shocked he was by the “appetite” for a return. “You have to understand, we were making this show in England, where it wasn’t famous at all. People didn’t really have Cartoon Network. We are working in this vacuum, and then we only really realized that people liked it. That was a beautiful surprise. I think having the chance of continuing on after all these years, it was a surprise that people still watch it enough online to justify another season. That is quite beautiful and touching.”
“I was surprised to see how much work it is just to reach the bar of jokes,” Fountain admitted with a laugh. “If there’s a gag, it has to be the best possible version of that gag. It has to be pushed as far as it can go. That way, when you’re watching it, it feels like that’s how that should be. It’s easy to fall short of that and not realize that you’re falling short when you’re crafting it. That was some growing pains. On another show, we could have stopped and it was fine. Here, you come with all you got.”
The Wonderful World of Gumball’s first season will include 40 episodes. The show will be streamed on Hulu in the United States and Cartoon Network internationally.
“Comedy is such a punishing process,” Bocquelet admitted. “It’s supposed to induce a reaction, a physical one. If it doesn’t, that means it doesn’t work. You have to rework it until it does. It’s a hard mountain to climb.“Finding those laughs amid the chaos and absurdity meant embracing the different styles involved. “I came into the show approaching it a bit more like the other traditional shows I’ve worked on,” Layzell noted, “where everything’s in the same style. You’ve got a roadmap that you can kind of lay down and just follow.”
“Gumball, because it’s so multimedia fluid… we have to be inventive about what we’re concentrating on. It’s a huge part of the process. The fantastic production crew that we have makes it possible to move all these puzzle pieces around, figuring out how we can actually produce all these wacky ideas that we’re coming up.”
The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumballwill premiere on July 28 on Hulu and Disney+.
