The DreamWorks Animation series showrunner and EP discusses the new season’s multi-layered character arcs, which include Kenji’s unraveling as he deals with the grief of Brooklynn’s rejection, and her growing inner turmoil as she’s drawn deeper into a web of criminal dinosaur trafficking; debuts April 3 on Netflix.
Despite covering DreamWorks Animation’s andseries quite extensively over the last five years, we’ve never run out of questions to ask showrunner and executive producer Scott Kreamer about his multi-layered, danger-attracting characters.And, for the third season of , releasing tomorrow, April 3, on Netflix, there were plenty of nooks and crannies to explore regarding new character arcs that could make or break the Nublar Six… permanently.
Since Season 1, has been following the adult lives of the six kids who were once stranded on Isla Nublar after disastrous events took place during their time at .Now back on the mainland and all grown up, the Nublar Five spent Seasons 1 and 2 of investigating the eerie death of their friend and sixth group member, Brooklynn.Originally, they believed she had been killed by a dinosaur while investigating nefarious and shadowy dino-related schemes.
But they find out, Brooklynn is alive after faking her own death. Encountering old (and new) friends after crash landing into another wild adventure, the group faces off against even more lethal dinosaur threats while dealing with the fallout of Brooklynn's stunning rejection of their friendship.At the same time, Brooklynn's inner turmoil continues to grow as she is drawn deeper into the Broker's criminal web of dinosaur trafficking and espionage.Check out the trailer: Per tradition, AWN chatted with Kreamer about the new season, discussing villainous character design, Italian grandmothers, recreating the black market from , and how Brooklynn might be getting in too deep and could lose her friends as well as her own humanity. Victoria Davis: Chaos Theory Scott Kreamer: Way back, we had the idea of this scary villain who was more comfortable with dinosaurs than people.
That's where it jumped off.And then our other showrunner, Aaron Hammersley, our art director John-Paul Balmet, and our character designer Will Nichols really dug into it and used Anton Chigurh from as a jumping off point for who this character was. I think Aaron really liked the idea of The Handler’s freckles being like scales.Originally, we had this idea where maybe she's got scars all over her face from being with the raptors.
We went through a lot of different iterations.VD: SK: Villains, if you can see their side of things, are always more compelling.Going back to the end of Season 1, it's her job to kill these kids, but her [raptor] babies are hurt and she's digging into that maternal instinct.
You don't want your bad guys to be one note.It was really fun to dig into that. VD: SK: The taco sign is actually in the black market in, if you go look for it.But yeah.
That set was way beyond the parameters of what we could pull off and John-Paul and our amazing designer Augusto Barranco cobbled that thing together with a bunch of reused assets and a few new ones.We knew we couldn't deliver exactly what they had in , but we definitely wanted people to feel it was the same place.You throw in Eric Hawkins’ lighting, making it as seedy of a place as you’re able to, and you know where you are. VD: SK: Especially after we first show her in that conference room, and she can't quite open up the water bottle with that prosthetic without making a mess. VD: SK: And for Brooklynn, there are so many things about her story that, in talking to our great consultants and writer Peter Lee, we try to make feel as real and grounded as possible.
When I first pitched the idea of , I didn't know Brooklynn was going to lose part of her arm. VD: SK: Yeah, that wasn't part of the original pitch.She was always going to be dead, and then not dead, but the arm came along later.So many of these things are happy accidents and you try to get it right more than wrong while figuring it out along the way.
And, when you see something like that scene in the black market, it's like, “Oh, this was what was supposed to happen.” Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle where it feels almost predestined. VD: SK: Our head writer, Bethany Armstrong Johnson, has an Italian grandmother and the character design even looks like her.And we've got a few well-traveled people with Italian heritage on the crew.But I would say Bethany’s family is where it started.
Then, of course, the voice performance by Isabella Rossellini brought another level of authenticity to what, we hope, felt like a real person.VD: SK: It’s all a tribute to the writers and animators, as well as our voice actor Darren Barnet, who did such a beautiful job.Kenji is a complex character, and we always knew in this season – when he discovers Brooklynn's alive, and she chooses to not go with them – it was going to be a big event and really shake the foundations of the group.
Kenji is coming around the bend on it, like how we find him at the beginning of this series when he’s taken off his rich kid trapping and gets back to basics.So, seeing Kenji trying to right the ship in this season was a lot of fun. VD: SK: There also was a lot of rough stuff to write and to watch this season character-wise.So, giving Kenji a little more peace definitely felt good.
VD: SK: We're trying to explore how these young adults are growing and figuring out where they sit in the world, which we all did at that age.We all see people on TV and in movies doing things that we would never do or have an opinion that we don't have.But you can certainly see where Sammy is coming from, even if you don’t agree with her.
We try not to repeat ourselves on this show and getting a different point of view on something that also feels organic and real to that character, getting into the nitty gritty and having it land in a real way, are things that make you want to be a writer. VD: SK: 100 percent.And depending on this or that, my opinion changes.I think it's for every person to judge for themselves, because it's easy to say that one is completely wrong, and we wanted to keep things real.
So, there were definitely a lot of conversations on the team about, “If we take this conversation this way, is it too one-sided?” Whether we agree or not, we wanted the conversations to be balanced and took great pains to make sure things weren’t black and white. VD: SK: Well, to me, it really does affect her.Brooklynn’s got her eye on the prize, but Santos is charismatic.I don't know if I would call her aspirational, but she's a woman who is living the life she's choosing to live.
I think that really appeals to Brooklynn.And Brooklynn has set aside so much of her humanity at times.We talked about the “Donnie Brasco” nature of it all, of this woman giving Brooklynn validation.
Along the way, I'm not sure Brooklynn exactly knows where she's falling.But viewers will find out by the end. Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.
Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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