INTERVIEW: “The Dragon Prince” Influences, Inspirations, and the Mystery of Simpson

INTERVIEW: “The Dragon Prince” Influences, Inspirations, and the Mystery of Simpson

March 11th, 2024

W.R. Miller

When I last spoke with the executive producers of The Dragon Prince, they ended the conversation with a cliffhanger:

Aaron Ehasz said, “If you pay attention to Viren’s story arc and what happens to Viren, what I want people to know is Jason Simpson did something. Sorry, Jason, you know what you did. Don’t mess with the writers or that’s what happens.”

Jason Simpson is the voice actor performing Lord Viren, the High Mage of the land of Katolis, whose nefarious misdeeds left him dead, then temporarily resuscitated, then catatonic. He had a chance to be fully restored through the magic of the powerful Startouch Elf, Aaravos—at the expense of another life. This suggested the character of Viren could have continued in the series, had he accepted Aaravos’s offer. Would he or wouldn’t he? Ehasz’s statement implies that Simpson had determined the character’s fate.

What happened? I asked Ehasz and Dragon Prince co-creator Justin Richmond about it in a talk over Zoom.

Jason Simpson

“Quite simply,” Ehasz says, “if you’re not nice and even willing to buy gifts and special treats for the writers, we will kill your character off. That’s all there is to it. Jason didn’t seem to understand that this was part of the bargain with the Dragon Prince writing team. If you’re not nice, you should not have a future.”

All teasing aside, Ehasz says, “Well, first of all, nothing really happened with Jason in terms of the writers. Everyone loves Jason, and he is a great, powerful spirit who inspires everyone to do great work. He’s always been someone who has wanted us to challenge him with Viren, a character who was complicated and had some depth that it was a mixture of villainy and complexity. But certainly he was open to whatever the right story was for Viren, even if that meant that his character arc would come to an end, that he wanted the right arc for this character. Even if that meant he wasn’t going to continue to be working every week on the show. Jason’s great. We had a story we wanted to do and we’ve done it, but Jason was always supportive of whatever the right path was for his character.”

This is yet another example of the showrunners of Wonderstorm being receptive to the opinions of their actors and crew, as we’ve talked about previously.

When John Lasseter was the creative head at Pixar, he was asked the question, what made Pixar movies so popular? And he said, “It’s the Nancy Factor.” Who’s Nancy? His wife. He counted on his wife to give him feedback while they were developing stories. Mrs. Lasseter represented mainstream America, basically, everyone. And so John would tend to listen to her.

For Wonderstorm, is there a Melanie Factor? (Mrs. Ehasz.)

Ehasz laughs and says, “It’s a Bob Miller factor and I’m not totally kidding. We definitely have a layer that we think about, which is, we write it for our most intelligent, inquiring, detail-oriented, obsessive audience members. We also wanted, of course, to be fun and exciting and an adventure full of magic and wonder for an 8-year-old or whatever, but it’s the fact that Dragon Prince is built to be that fun, awesome cartoon, but also hopefully to have those details and those bits of world building that can be interesting, even to someone like you, Bob. So it’s the Bob Miller factor for us.”

Ahem.

General Amaya with gloves, from Season One.

Now without gloves.

Audience response, and Wonderstorm’s willingness to listen and act upon suggestions, has resulted in a better show. Namely, the increased frame rate for more fluid animation, and making sure General Amaya’s hands are legible in her use of sign language.

Both Ehasz and Richmond have kids. What feedback do they provide?

Says Richmond, “My kids see it all the way along. So they’ll see the animatics and all that stuff. Usually it’s positive. They’re like, ‘Oh, that was so cool.’ Occasionally they’ll be like, ‘That was boring’ and then we’ll be like, ‘Oh, maybe we should punch that up.’ And sometimes it’s like, ‘No, you’re wrong.’” He laughs. “‘That part’s not for you.’

“But yeah, I definitely listen to my kids. And then Aaron’s older kids watched the first three seasons a lot when we were making it. So yeah, if we have the time to watch it together, we watch it together.”

Ehasz notes, “My daughter Zelda plays Queen Aanya.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Richmond says. “Zelda’s in it. So she has her own notes.” He chuckles.
Astute Dragon Prince followers may note other influences woven into the narrative fabric, which Ehasz and Richmond confirm. I point out some of the ones they’ve mentioned online.

“For animation in particular,” Ehasz says, “Grave of the Fireflies just expanded my idea of what emotions and emotional places you could take something ,even in animation. Like the range of emotional experiences you could push on including like scary, sad, despairing, really big things. So it’s a beautiful film, how it looks, and it’s also beautifully-written and heartbreaking and it tells you it’s okay to go there. It kinda gives you permission to tell a bigger, sadder story if you have to.”

Richmond adds, “I remember we watched it in the first month of the company. We watched it as a group.”

“We were watching Miyazaki and Ghibli stuff every week for the whole team,” Ehasz says.

“We both love Twin Peaks,” Richmond says. “Twin Peaks is definitely a must-watch TV in my house for sure, and I used to watch it with my dad and then when we started working on some of the stuff in these seasons, it was like, “oh.” Of course some of our younger writers had never watched Twin Peaks and we made them go watch it.”

How about the 1980s anime fan-favorite, Robotech?

“Yes. Love Robotech,” Richmond says enthusiastically. “We both love Robotech. It’s a must-watch in our book. Like he [Aaron] watched it to the point where like he went out to try and find the toys. I never got that far. I just assumed they couldn’t find the toys.” Richmond laughs.

“Both Robotech and Twin Peaks have this long form storytelling that was not common in television for decades,” Ehasz says. “In fact when we wanted to do it on Avatar [The Last Airbender], there was some pushback from Nickelodeon because the idea was to put this show on five days a week in any order. The episodes have to be interchangeable. And so it took some compromise to get to a point on Avatar where we would say, “Okay, well, this is gonna be a long story, but also each episode’s gonna be self-contained so that it has a beginning and middle and end and it feels whole. We got away with telling a story with a longer arc on Avatar. So it was very rare before then. I mean, really like cable before streaming. But especially streaming has opened up a lot more serial type of storytelling, I think, than in television previously.

And the same for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which had a long story arc?

“I did watch a lot of Deep Space Nine,” Richmond says, “but nowhere near as much as like Devin [Giehl] and Iain [Hendry, series writers]. Devin and Ian were huge Deep Space Nine fans and they were also Babylon 5 fans. I like Babylon 5, but they’re like crazy fans in it for sure.

Lord of the Rings?

“Of course,” Richmond says with a laugh. “You can’t get away with not knowing about Lord of the Rings when you’re working in fantasy. Maybe you can, but, yeah, my uncle—I think I’ve told this story before to you, Bob — but my uncle owned a sci-fi/fantasy bookstore, and he sent me a whole box of books. Lord of the Rings was one of the ones in there, of course, along with a bunch of other stuff. The crazy thing was, apparently the version that I read was like some illegal riff. Like it was put out by a company that didn’t have the rights and it’s very controversial. That copy’s actually worth some money,”—he laughs—“which I have up at my house. They got sued and [the copies] were supposed to be destroyed, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

Despite the fact that The Dragon Prince is a fantasy, a significant inspiration comes from a modern-day detective show: Homicide.

“Well, yeah, Homicide was a great show,” Ehasz says. “It took place in Baltimore. There are a couple things that influenced me. One is the specificity of the place. There’s authenticity. That is something I’ve taken with me. When you’re world building. Places being rich, authentic, and real goes into how you suspend your disbelief for the characters in the story and everything that’s happening.

“The other thing is it’s really character-driven. It’s very much about these detectives and non-detectives including Luther Mahoney who’s played by Erik [Todd Dellums]. There’s wonderful characters who you watch develop. Their experiences feel real. They resonate on a lot of levels. Like it wasn’t like a cop show where it was like there’s a crime and the criminal’s clever and it’s gonna get solved, and it’s all wrapped up in the end. No, these were people going through things. This was about characters. So yeah, Homicide was important to me.”

Another influence: HBO’s Deadwood series, homaged in the fifth season of The Dragon Prince.

“Yeah, Deadwood was amazing,” Richmond says. “I love Deadwood. Ian McShane, he’s like the man. Now everybody knows him from John Wick but he was so great in that show.

Justin Richmond and Aaron Ehasz at “The Dragon Prince: Secrets in the Stars” panel at New York Comic Con, October 14, 2023, 4:45 p.m. EST, Room 406.2.

“It started stronger than it ended,” Ehasz observes. “A little disappointed that I don’t know exactly what happened. There’s probably some history to be read of it that may have to do with HBO’s commitment or lack of commitment to finishing the arc.

“It was a timing thing, right. I feel like it was a long time between the last season and the previous season, but it’s a great show though,” Richmond says.

I offer Princess Mononoke as another example.

Richmond replies, “It was like anything in the Miyazaki canon, I would say. I mean, Mononoke in particular with the corruption in the wilds. I think that definitely rubbed off on us for sure. The storytelling is amazing. They brought in Neil Gaiman to do translations to make the translation work in English. What a great choice (laughs) to have somebody like that come in, to be lucky enough to have John Lasseter and the guys in charge of bringing it over here actually look for a writer that would fit the genre. It’s really cool.”

A modern-day comedy also became an influencer: Friends.

“You know what? I was just watching Friends over Thanksgiving,” Richmond says. “I watched it with my kids, and our neighbor’s friends. They’ve watched every episode. They went from the beginning and went through the entire thing. It still holds up. I think it’s still really funny. There’s great moments in that show.”

And isn’t one of the characters an inspiration for Soren, the Crownguard?

“Yeah, he’s a little bit of Joey,” Richmond says with a laugh.

Ehasz says, “Joey meet Jaime Lannister, right?”

“From Game of Thrones. Like Joey, but not a serious Jaime, but a Joey-type Jaime,” Richmond says.

Any other influences?

“There’s so many,” Richmond says. “I loved the Forgotten Realms books, which were Lord of the Rings knockoffs growing up with a lot of those characters. I just love “The Icewind Dale Trilogy” and those books. They were great.

“I loved ElfQuest growing up too,” Ehasz says.

“ElfQuest. Yeah, that’s a good one,” Richmond says.

The Chronicles of Narnia?

“Sure,” Ehasz says. “Yeah, I liked it. It’s not one of the ones I would put in the main tier of influences, but yeah.”

What about the network? Does Netflix offer suggestions or viewer feedback in shaping The Dragon Prince?

“They’ll share some information,” Ehasz says, “like if people are responding to certain images that they click on to watch the show. So it was more about marketing kind of learnings. They’ve been pretty consistent about being creatively supportive. In more recent seasons, we’ve seen the show pop out of its maturity rating in a couple of regions. They’ve let us know, ‘Hey, these things are going to push it into more mature ratings in the UK or here or there. We’re okay with that, but you should know that so you can change it if you want, or you can let it become an adult show in those places.’ They inform us, but they usually support what we want to do creatively.”

Rounding out the topic, I ask The Dragon Prince showrunners about the advantages of being open to suggestions.

“It’s like anything,” Justin Richmond says. “Even if you disagree with feedback or you don’t necessarily agree it’s the right thing or that you disagree with how to implement it or whatever, there’s almost always something to learn from it, right? Like even if you disagree with it, you’ve got to hear it and then go, ‘Okay, well, maybe let’s think about it for a second. Maybe they’re right.’ Or taking the point of view of like, ‘Hey, there might be something valuable to this.’ And then you can ultimately decide that, ‘You know what? They’re wrong. I disagree. I think we need to go in other direction or whatever.’ But at least being able to hear it upfront for sure is [valuable]. You’ll miss valuable stuff if you’re not at least open to it to begin with.

“But it’s hard, right? Like my first reaction to anybody giving feedback is always like, ‘Well, screw you, man.’” Richmond laughs. “Just like my brain is automatically like, ‘You know what? It’s pretty good as well.’ But then if you can learn to hear it, obviously, then you’re in a much better spot to learn how stuff works.”

Aaron Ehasz adds, “I like the way Justin put it. Often it is not the solution, but hearing what someone has to say, or something like that. You might respond to it or solve it differently than what they think is the right solution, but being able to at least empathize with why someone is having a reaction or what their thoughts are, I think is valuable. I don’t know. I feel like we’re all here on this journey to learn from as many people as we can. So listening and being receptive is part of that and it enriches what you’re working on.”

Interviewed December 7, 2023.
The Dragon Prince is currently streaming on its fifth season on Netflix, with two more seasons forthcoming.

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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.