To the delight of its many fans, Steve Dildarian’s clever and wry animated series 10 Year Old Tom returned for a second season on June 29 on Max. The show, which first debuted in the fall of 2021, follows the misadventures of its young protagonist as he has to deal with “litigious parents, drug-dealing bus drives and inappropriate band teachers.” The minimalistic, 2D-animated series — which is a joint venture between Max, ShadowMachine, Tomorrow Studios and Insane Loon Productions— features the voices of Dildarian (as Tom), Edi Patterson (his mom), Byron Bowers (Nelson), Gillian Jacobs (Dakota), Jennifer Coolidge (Dakota’s mom), John Malkovich (Mr. B.) and David Duchovny (Ice Cream Man).
“Hopefully people will feel like they know these characters on a more meaningful and deeper level,” says Dildarian in an exclusive Animation Magazine interview. “All of the characters play a little less like they are there to serve a joke or a story and now they are just a human being with their own problems.”
As an example, Dildarian points to Nelson’s dad who isn’t just a lawyer and he has a poker game with the other dads in the neighborhood. “Rick isn’t just a jerk of a neighbor, he is going through a messy divorce,” he adds. “So with a lot of the characters, they could really have their own storylines because we know them better and not just as they relate to Tom. I think the deeper the show goes, the more this is a living and breathing world. It’s a real community with a bunch of people that we are able to see their points of view more. You can think, maybe their behavior isn’t so indefensible or immoral, there is a reason behind it because we know them better. These are real people that I know in a way I didn’t know before.:
The actor, painter, writer, filmmaker and former advertising exec, who also created and voiced HBO’s The Life and Times of Tim says the most challenging part of working during the pandemic was tied to working remotely. “Once everyone was working again, all of the actors that were locked up in their house and fully available during season one and the pandemic, now were shooting all over the world,” he points out.
He adds, “We record Ten Year Old Tom as an ensemble so the hardest thing was now that everyone was free again, we had sessions where Jennifer Coolidge was in Sicily, I was in Scotland, Gillian Jacobs was in France, Byron Bowers was in Baltimore, etc. Everyone was shooting another production or somewhere else so we were trying to orchestrate zooms and ship microphones around the world. It was kind of like the opposite of pandemic problems for creating television. Our producers and our sound engineers had their work cut out for them trying to wrangle everything. “
He says there were times when he was able to record with the other actors in person this season. “It’s what I love most about making the show,” says the New Jersey native. “After being starved for performances with actors for so long because of the pandemic, to have the same actors we originally recorded remotely with in the same room was so much fun. Everyone was so amped up through the sessions because we all wanted to hang out and talk. And once we got in the booth and started recording the show, we were all able to make eye contact and read off of each other. I could feel the looseness and the silliness in a lot of these sessions and I think it shows on the screen.”
Dildarian says he always felt that the creative environment plays a huge role in the final version of the show. “If you create a fun supportive environment, creativity will come out of it. It wasn’t just me that felt this way, everyone kept saying it was too much fun. So, getting to read with everyone wasn’t just fun on a selfish level it helped the show. It is the heart and soul — the personalities and the energy.”
According to the show creator, there are certain recurring themes and ideas that he always goes back to whenever he embarks on a project . “Whether it’s a ‘me against them’ mentality or kind of peeking over the fence at a different, better life” he told The New York Past recently. “Maybe some of that is growing up in New Jersey and looking over the river into New York City and always, to some degree, not quite participating in the success and fun that the rest of the world seems to be having. I’ve been told I’ve got a natural skepticism of things … whatever it is, it’s an underdog quality and an outsider mentality that I think is consistent… I don’t think about it when I’m writing — it just comes out.”
The show creator says the process goes back to the very beginning of his early career days. “I had a long career doing a lot of Budweiser commercials [the classic Budweiser Lizard ads] and 30-second snippets of comedy. I’ve written no shortage of half-hour scripts and the only prior show I got on the air was The Life and Times of Tim. At the time, HBO said, ‘Hey, we liked your short films — let’s not change it too much, let’s not put our TV hat on and make it a show now.’
The second season (10 half-hour episodes of Ten Year Old Tom is currently streaming on Max.
Watch the trailer below:
