This Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time to catch up with the new season of Clone High, the popular animated series created by Bill Lawrence, Chris Miller and Phil Lord over two decades ago. The show, which premiered on MTV in November 2002, centers on an eclectic group of famous historical figures such as John. F. Kennedy (voiced by Chris Miller), Abe Lincoln (Will Forte), Cleopatra (Christa Miller in the first season, Mitra Jouhari in the new season) and Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan). The satiric series, which was canceled after audiences objected to the portrayal of beloved Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi (voiced by Michael McDonald), is back with some new additions to the cast. Among them: Harriet Tubman (Ayo Edebiri), Frida Kahlo (Vicci Martinez), Confucius (Kelvin Yu) and Topher Bus (Neil Casey).
We had the pleasure of chatting with animation powerhouse duo Lord and Miller (Spider-Verse movies, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie, etc.) about this fascinating rebirth and second season of their cult classic, which premiered on Max on May 23.
Well, congratulations on having the second season of your show premiering after a two decade absence. How did the revival come about?
Chris Miller: Well you know, ever since the show was canceled in 2003, we’ve been talking with our friend Bill Lawrence that we co-created the show about figuring out a way to bring it back. We would get together every year or two, get dinner or a drink, and then we’d say, “We really got to logistically figure out a way to get the show back.” We finally got through all the legal things to have the rights to it. Suddenly, in 2019, there were a handful of streamers that were reaching out to us and saying, “Hey, we would want to make this if you want to make it!” So, that really lit a fire under us and we called Erica Rivinoja, who was a writer on the first season and went on to do a bunch of other stuff. We asked her, “Hey, do you want to help figure out how we would do a next season and revive this thing?” So, here we are!
Of course, you introduce some new, interesting characters to the show. How does it bring the premise up to date for audiences who are very different in 2023?
Phil Lord: It was exciting to figure out how these characters would react to the contemporary world of high school and teenagers and contemporary politics. We watch them try to navigate what everybody’s trying to navigate. How can we represent an affirmative way that people can adjust? Let’s watch Abe Lincoln make friends with Frida Kahlo and let’s show that it is possible. What would happen if Joan of Arc, who had all these political attitudes that made her alienated in high school in the ’90s, found that everybody suddenly caught up to her, and she was really popular now. How would she handle that? That to me was all very exciting. There was a wonderful group of writers led by Erica and Erik Durbin, who were able to explore that and bring their own experiences to bear on it. We had a lot of age groups in the writers’ room and that conversation was really fun and funny and you can see the results on the screen.
What was the age range of the writers in the room?
Phil: There were a lot of young people. We had a handful of very funny people for whom this was their first show. People from all different sorts of backgrounds, and then a couple of old farts like us.
Do you have a favorite storyline that really had you in stitches?
Chris: I would say it’s been fun coming up with Mr. B’s origin story episode. It was a really fun idea, and it was really tricky to voice, because he’s a character who has three pitches. He’s a very monotone robot character, but to bring a lot of emotion to it was a real trick and had to work really hard to figure out how to hide emotion in a one-pitch robot performance. We also got to feature a bunch of different animation styles as it goes through different time periods: There’s a Ralph Bakshi era-one, an old-timey rubber-hose animation, and it goes through all different eras of animation, so that was also a really fun one for the whole crew.
Phil: I remember going back and forth a lot with our art director Tara Billinger about how to make that Bakshi look extra grimy and then even then there’s a passage in that where they’re like in an ‘80s Pac-Man animated series sort of vibe.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but I read somewhere that you actually came up with the idea for the show when you were both students at Dartmouth College?
Chris: We were just out of school. We had a notebook of ideas from college, and we were talking about what kind of shows we would make. It was Phil’s idea to make it about high school kids, because there were a lot of teen dramas on TV out at the time. That was where the germ of the idea came from. Then, we spit-balled what all the characters would be and what would be a funny twist on what you would expect from them. This season, we did the same thing for the new characters. What would be a twist from what you’d expect from Confucius, who is considered to be the wisest and most revered person of all time, but he’s a dumb teenager? How would you navigate that expectation as a kid, and so on and on with all the new characters.
Do you miss the Gandhi character?
Chris: Of course, Gandhi was a delight. But you know, we’re not fools. The show was canceled that first time because of it. We said, let’s go for the show not getting canceled this time. So, we decided to keep him on ice.
Do you have any ideas for more new characters?
Phil: Oh, all the time. You will see a few more in the third season of the show, but we love the new characters that were added this season and the way they interact with our legacy characters is really fun. You will see even more of that in season three.
How is writing comedy different for audiences in 2023?
Phil: You know, honestly it’s the same. You get a bunch of people in a room and they’re all talented and you kind of try to express the things that you’re feeling through the script. We had a really great writing staff . There’s this really dumb idea that you can’t be funny anymore, and it simply isn’t true. It’s just that we’re satirizing different things and different feelings.
Sadly, they only gave us 10 minutes with you, so we’re running out of time. Anything to wrap up the interview? What do you hope audiences will get out of the new season?
Phil: I think the show looks amazing. Because there was so much affection in the animation community for the show, we were able to get an amazing group of people to help bring it to life visually. I wanted to tip my hat to everybody who made the show look even better than it did the first time, and still honored the style and the quirkiness of what it looked like in the first place . I’m really proud of how we executed it.
The first two episodes of the new Max Original Clone High are now streaming. Two new episodes drop every Thursday starting June 1. The original season is also available on Max.
Here’s the trailer:
