INTERVIEW: Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond Flying “The Dragon Prince” to a Third Season

INTERVIEW: Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond Flying “The Dragon Prince” to a Third Season

July 26th, 2019

W.R. Miller

It’s been over three months since Netflix announced a third season for its fantasy-adventure series, The Dragon Prince. With Season Two ending on a cliffhanger, viewers have clamored to find out what happens next. It’s not surprising that, at Comic Con International: San Diego, the fans filled a conference room with a 480-person capacity to learn from the show’s producers, Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, as well as enjoy skits performed by actors Paula Burrows (playing the elf, Rayla) and Jack DeSena (playing Prince Callum, a teenaged mage-in-training). The producers didn’t announce when the new season would premiere, though they did tease certain events to come.

After the presentation, we met to discuss what was in the works.

“We’re really excited to announce that we’re working with Scholastic,” Richmond says. “We have books and graphic novels and guide books that are all being worked on as we speak. And, it’s not a licensed throw-it-over-the-wall and let Scholastic handle it.

“We’re intimately involved with everything that they’re doing and that partnership has just been amazing. Like, they are super-excited about it. They call us and ask questions. They’re super-fans themselves.”

Ehasz adds, “When the fans see the books that come out, all of it will feel valuable and be a deeper, richer part of the world. The graphic novel stories are canon stories.”

This means, of course, the producers can continue the story of The Dragon Prince in the event Netflix decides not to renew it.

“Look, we are going to tell this story no matter what,” Richmond assures. “Netflix has been a great partner, but we have plans for seven seasons. The way we break it down is taking up the three seasons of The Dragon Prince, which is Sun, Moon, and Sky. Those three books are one piece. The next two books are another piece and then the last two books are another piece. We think of them as like, Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi. And so, we’re not going to not tell Empire and Jedi, right?

“They need to be told. So, we’ll figure that out. Yeah, God willing, Netflix is our partner with those and we’re super-excited about those guys. But, yeah, we’re going to tell that story regardless.”

“Right now, the current era in The Dragon Prince—the saga that’s being told—we think of it as a culmination of history,” Ehasz says.

“We have 5,000 years of lore and eras and all these different places,” Richmond points out.

“The current story connects in really important and deep ways to a very long history. And, that’s what is important right now. There could be stuff in the future after this,” Ehasz says.

Currently, a war is brewing between five human kingdoms and Xadia, a land of magical beings like elves and dragons. Prince Callum befriends and teams with an elven assassin, Rayla, to bring a newly-hatched dragon, Zym, to his mother in Xadia to try to placate the Xadians. Meanwhile in the kingdom of Katolis, Lord Viren tries to prod the neighboring kingdoms into fighting the Xadians.

It doesn’t look good. Dragons and powerful elf warriors versus peasants and knights and a trio of sorcerers. One dragon could incinerate a town. What is Viren thinking?

“I would say that the side that you think does not have a [chance] may make the other side seem like underdogs,” Aaron Ehasz says. “You may be surprised by what’s been happening on the human side. Humans can’t do magic, everyone is told. And, yet … Callum.”

Yes, Callum has discovered that people can perform primal magic, without resorting to the sacrificial approach of dark magic. But if this knowledge is spread amongst humans, would the Xadians give them time to learn?

“That’s a good question. These are all things that people want to know,” Richmond says with a chuckle.

Not only do our heroes Rayla and Callum try to save their respective kingdoms, they have their own personal challenges to face. That is, what do they want to do with their lives? Callum has found that he has a talent for wielding magic. But what does he want to do with it?

Ehasz replies, “Initially, it’s that identity thing when you find out who you are and what you’re good at. In terms of what does he want to use it for: Callum is a good-hearted human who is very committed to changing things. I would say long-term, there could potentially be conflict between what do you want to do with magic and what will you do for magic? Right? It’s always going to be a conflict for him.”

But Callum lives in a land of people with handicaps. So far we’ve met a three-legged wolf, a deaf general, and a blind sea captain. Logically, kind-hearted Callum would use his magic to heal.

“The kind of magic that he has learned has been primal magic,” Ehasz says. “It’s not that healing-focused, at least thus far, right? It’s sort of more like kind of physical impact types of magic. Whereas, we’ve seen Claudia do healing magic with dark magic. So, if he did want to do healing, what would he have to do to do it?”

In Rayla’s case, she’s trained all her young life to be an assassin, yet has never killed anyone so far. Her association with her human companions Callum, his half-brother Ezran and their pet, Bait, has brought compassion into her life.

“I always think about that moment where she decides to go defend the fallen dragon in Season Two,” Ehasz says. She says how she’s never felt more right about something in her life. So, there’s something about being a protector that she’s discovering feels right to her—which is not to say that it’s a crystal-clear resolution, because I think you spend your whole life training to be the offense. You know you’re still going to have times when you’re drawn to that.

“But, she connected in the moment of standing up for the dragon. That’s what she’s doing for Zym, right? There’s something about being a protector and a guardian that feels right to her, as well.”

Richmond adds, “Rayla still has a lot of conflict inside of herself about a lot of things that she needs to figure out. Some of that is like, okay, if I’m not a killer, then what am I? And, what does it mean to be a Moonshadow Elf who’s friends with humans? There’s a lot of really interesting stuff we’re going to explore.”

One improvement the showrunners have made for the third season is that General Amaya, who communicates through sign language, has had her gloves lightened for the sake of her fingers being easier to read.

“We just switched the gloves. We didn’t do a whole story line about her buying different gloves or anything,” Ehasz says.

“She went to Neiman Marcus; they were too expensive, so she went somewhere else, yeah,” Richmond quips. “No, no, she has new gloves in Season Three. After getting that feedback, we tried to make sure, (a. her gloves were a different color, but (b. that the background when she was signing was something that you could see easy, as well. The directors just needed to be cognizant of it, so once we knew about it, it was like, okay, I understand why this is important and the rendering guys understood why it was important and then it was like, okay, let’s tweak this to make sure you can see what’s going on.”

Amongst their many other duties, Ahasz and Richmond are also hands-on in casting and directing the actors.

“In our case, as producers, we had a clear point of view on what kinds of performers we wanted to work with and in particular, people who could be funny and dramatic and incredibly authentic hopefully, and who would bring their own voice to it,” Ehasz says. “Part of our process is discovering the characters and not just making them do things. And so finding someone who had an artful and authentic approach would help us discover the characters. That was a big part in selecting the right people to play those roles.

“Then, in terms of directing, for us, the process is about, “Okay, here’s how we heard it in our heads, how do you hear it in your head?” And, almost experimenting and playing with the actors to find the right performance with some give-and-take between us, you know?

That’s what we like to do. We fortunately managed to bring on a really amazing cast to evolve these characters and breathe life into them.”

Richmond adds, “Yeah, I worked with Gordon Hunt when I was at Naughty Dog and he [and Andrea Romano] instilled basically the same lessons. It’s exciting to do it ourselves and cast and direct it that way.”

Once the producers were familiar with the capabilities of their performers, it became easy for them in the casting of minor characters—such as selecting Paula Burrows for the talkative parrot, Berto.

Richmond says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a one-off where we’re like, ‘Oh, crap, we don’t have somebody for Berto’ and we were contemplating whether one of us should do it or not. And, it was like, ‘I think Paula can take a crack at this. Okay, let’s go.’”

“It was so good,” Ehasz says.

“If it hadn’t worked out, we would’ve gotten somebody else. But, it was absolutely perfect,” Richmond says.

As of this writing, recording Season Three has been completed and the producers are confident in the show’s future.

“We feel super-lucky to be building this story and sharing this saga with a great and passionate community and we really wanted to clue them on what our plans were for the saga, and how much we have in mind and how much is coming. And, we hope they want it badly enough to say, ‘Give us the saga.’ And, that their passion and love for it lets this become a reality and that we can keep making them,” Aaron Ehasz says. “That’s the message.”

So there’s hope?

Justin Richmond replies, “There’s always hope. It’s the only thing left in Pandora’s Box.”

For earlier interviews with Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond on The Dragon Prince, please click here and here. Special thanks to Justin Santistevan, President of Wonderstorm and Jennifer Greene of Illuminate-Communications.

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W.R. Miller

W.R. Miller - known informally as “Bob” – has written for Starlog, Comics Scene, Animation Magazine and Animation World Magazine. Bob has been involved in animation for two decades, as a writer, character animator, special effects animator, and storyboard artist - For more information about Bob, check his website: http://wrmilleronline.com/.

He has just completed Batman: The Animated Interviews, a five-volume work featuring the executives, producers, directors, writers, actors, designers, storyboard artists and composers involved with the making of Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs. BearManor Media is the publisher.