If you’re any level of fan of animated features or series, there’s a good chance you’ve marvelled at Andrew L. Schmidt’s work.
As an animator, he’s worked on major Pixar productions like Brave and Up.
More recently, as a director, he’s been a regular on the various Trollhunters franchise series and also directed eight episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy.
As the supervising director of Apple TV’s WondLa, he oversaw the epic three-season arc of the series, piloting an adventure with sweeping world-building, huge character development, and wholly novel alien elements.
In this exclusive interview, he shares the challenges and triumphs of the process.
The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.
Andrew L. Schmidt, Supervising Director on Apple TV’s WondLa
What was it like supervising the direction of WondLa?
Well, this was my first supervising director gig. And I’ve learned that it’s different on every production because every production has different needs, different teams, all that kind of thing.
I tried to apply my theory that I use when I’m directing in general: just make sure you have great people around you and clear obstacles out of the way so they can do the best job that they can do. Things always pop up.
There’s always something that’s slowing somebody down or stopping them, whether it’s a physical thing or a mental thing. So I try to work closely with the team just to make sure everybody’s got what they need, that they’re operating at their peak level.
And then part of it was the directors and writers are down in the nitty-gritty depth, like the 10,000 foot view, and then I’m up and taking the 30,000 foot view, trying to take each episode when the directors are done with it and [asking]:
- “Did they hook up with everything in the back end?”
- “Are they aimed correctly towards what’s happening in the front end?”
- “Is the tone okay?”
- “Are the scenes balanced?”
- “Do we have the correct shots?”
So I add another layer of what we call “plussing” on top of what they’ve already done. It’s icing the cake, in a sense.
The World of WondLa
How did you get your brain around the WondLa series with its epic world-building, huge character arcs, and diverse alien elements?
With a lot of help. It was really a collaborative effort. You really lean on your team to bring all these elements up to a certain level, and then you can look at it. They’ve already done a lot of the work.
As my editor, Torbin Bullock, would say, they’ve carried the ball 60 yards down the field. We’ve got to get it to the finish line.
So, a lot of it was, like, with world-building, working with top artists, but working with Tony DiTerlizzi, who had already established the world, and making sure we’re honoring his vision.
It’s an iterative process where you’re building and building and building until you reach where you need to go. It’s not instantaneous.
The People of WondLa
Was there a “favorite child” element in the series? A character or feature that made you smile every time you were working with them?
I gravitated towards Rovender, I think. I’m a step-father as well, and that’s the role he assumed, and so I could relate to him a little bit. I can also be very curmudgeonly.
It was nice to see him grow and learn lessons along with Eva, and then fall in love with Eva as a father figure, and then help guide her. I just really loved seeing him change and grow.
And I love the performance that Gary Anthony Williams gave in really fleshing out this character.
When we spoke with Gary Anthony Williams, he mentioned how they rerecorded some scenes multiple times, striving to perfect the character. How well do you think the voice cast as a whole embodied the characters?
Everybody really embodied the characters that they took on. Jeanine Mason, who voices Eva Nine, even when we felt she nailed it on the first take, she’d be, “Wait, I want to try this. I want to do that.”
And there was a lot of play and experimentation that gave us a wealth of material to build performances together. All the actors gave everything. It was really fantastic to see.
Musical Foundation
WondLa’s musical score is a foundational part of the world-building. What can you tell me about incorporating the music into the show?
We stayed away from being specific about what it should sound like, and we opened up an opportunity for Joy Ngiaw, our composer, to come at it from the emotional point of view of Eva, our main character.
Everything she was composing was based on Eva’s experience and emotional point of view. But on top of it, she did a huge amount of research on what instruments to use to give each…
Lacus has its own instrumentation, where she used a lot of world instruments to make that unique compared to some of the other cities, like Faunas, [where] she chose a whole different instrumentation to bring that to life.
We would sit down together, and we would talk about what’s being said, what the emotion is, where Eva is, and then turn her loose. She would come back with astounding compositions and music.
Honoring the Work
[SPOILERS] WondLa Season 3 ends differently than Tony DiTerlizzi’s books, which the series is based on. Whose choice was it to change the ending?
I don’t know if it was a specific choice. I think it was through the process of working the story that that’s where it needed to go. As the story was being developed, Tony was right in there with us every step of the way.
We were always making sure we were being true to what he was trying to say. And if we didn’t, he would let us know. He’d say, “That’s not quite what I intended.” And then we would rework it a little bit to make sure we were staying true to his original intent. We always wanted to honor his work.
The Final Message
The theme of WondLa is “There is no Them. Only Us.” Additionally, there is a recurring message in Season 3 of “A Promise Fulfilled.” Whose promise was best fulfilled by the WondLa series?
Both Eva and Rovender. Rovender’s promise… He needed a family, in the end. And he got a family. He lost his daughter and his wife. He gained a daughter in the end.
Eva lost family, and she gained family. They’re related. Both promises were fulfilled together. Again, they needed unity. So it wasn’t “them.” It was “us.” It was together.
Following up on that: What about Eva Eight? Her sacrifice is a hugely emotional climax. What was the guiding thought in directing that moment?
That one was directed by Carlos Baena. The idea was that Eva Eight had been on the trajectory of division and domination. Eva Eight had always been angry that the world they were promised was not given to them.
And then, in the end, she realized that her sister was right: It could be better. “Yes, this isn’t what you were promised, but we can make it better.”
All three seasons of WondLa are available to stream on Apple TV.
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