March 6th, 2023 
Jackson Murphy 
Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal are the creators and executive producers of the fun new animated series Kiff, premiering this Friday March 10th at 8pm on Disney Channel. For adults, it’s a show that will bring you back to the joys of your school days. For kids, Kiff celebrates friendship and feeling free. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: What you have created with the world of Table Town, including squirrel Kiff and bunny Barry and their family members and friends, is so much freedom. Take me through the origins of the show and wanting to create this kind of freedom.
Lucy Heavens: You totally hit the nail on the head! That’s exactly what we wanted! (laughs) We wanted to create something for ourselves to have a great time making. We wanted to have a show that we could tell every kind of story we wanted to tell in it. And here is Kiff ready to go!
Nic Smal: When we’re telling stories, we find it so fun just to go, “Well, let’s go here! Why not?” We’re free to go here and explore this. It’s a lot of fun to play in that world.
JM: And you incorporate a lot of comedic commentary… with very fun, quirky, eccentric, enjoyable animal characters.
NS: We have a good time in the writers’ room talking about stories. We’ll share stories from when we were kids or just last weekend. That’s always the best place to start because it’s grounded in reality. There’s so much humor in the day to day. Those are the types of stories we want to be telling: relatable, fun and feels down to Earth.
LH: It might have talking animals in it but it really is a show about being a human and how funny that can be sometimes.
JM: Who’s your direct inspiration for Kiff and Barry and that friendship? Is it yourselves or people you know?
LH: (laughs) There’s a little bit of Kiff and Barry in everyone. I think it’s that sort of zest for life that you have, as well as a more nurturing and sensitive side. Kiff and Barry very much come from both of our personalities in that way — elements of all of our psyches.
JM: The first episode is about Kiff wanting to go to school even though she might be sick. Usually when kids are sick they’re happy to stay home from school but in this case Kiff wants to go to school. I love that spin on it. I know you grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. Do you have school memories that you infuse into these storylines?
LH: Yeah. All of them. (laughs)
NS: The Table Town school, when you see the establishing shot, is very much modeled [after] the primary school I went to in Cape Town. That story is a great introduction to Kiff because the unveiling of a new drinking fountain and Kiff’s desire to be first — the first ever to sip from a new fountain — it’s so specific but a great example to show how Kiff will go for something 100%. Nothing’s gonna stop her — even if she’s being told she’s not well and it’s for her best to stay home from school, nothing’s gonna stop her from getting that first sip. It’s completely flipping the script. Mostly, kids would love to stay at home. It’s Kiff’s personality in a nutshell.
Nic Smal and Lucy Heavens
JM: Yes! A statement piece, really, for Kiff — to be out there for the first episode. And nobody remembers the second person who does anything! You gotta be the first person!
LH & NS: (laugh)
JM: One of the other strong aspects of this show. I now want to always sing along to The Sing Along Song that we have on the car road trip. I know, Nic, you’re directly involved in the music. There’s a song about every episode-ish, right?
LH: Every half hour. Yeah.
NS: The music element is definitely one of my favorite parts of making the show. I grew-up listening to a lot of music and also playing in bands since high school — punk bands, rock bands, and some even more heavy metal. It’s a real passion. Music and comedy go so well, hand in hand. We really found a way to amplify the comedy through song in “Kiff”.
JM: You take some of these storylines to EXTREME levels. We’re at a water park or on a road trip. Lucy, when you come-up with these storylines, is it always to the EPIC level we see right away or does it sort of build and build and build as you’re flushing out these storylines?
LH: The freedom you spoke about earlier factors in here because we really let ourselves do a lot of different types of episodes. Sometimes it’ll start with a big idea, and sometimes it starts with a very small idea, like, “Hey, don’t you hate it when people come over to your house and drink all your juice?” And it becomes an episode. There’s even freedom when some of our episodes stay quite small — and some of our episodes go totally off the wall. We allow a lot of different ways of finding the episodes and of different sizes as well.
JM: I really enjoyed the sleepover episode. When Kiff goes over to Barry’s family, there’s this task of getting the bath in. Again, Kiff wants to make a statement about being over there and wanting to try to get the first bath. That must’ve been a fun episode to put together.
NS: Absolutely. It’s that feeling of when you’re going over for a sleepover at someone’s house for the first time: those little things that are a little different. “This is how they do things here. That’s different.” It’s always fun to see Kiff in a situation that’s familiar like that. We all remember our first sleepover.
LH: I’m the youngest of five children. When kids came over to our house on the weekend, they were always a little shell-shocked, especially for an only child. We drew on a lot of our own sleepover stories.
JM: I gotta ask the both of you about your all-time favorite interactions with squirrels or bunnies or any crazy animals. What comes to mind?
LH: There are actually so many. We love the outdoors and being in nature, so we have been lucky enough to see some great stuff. Nic has a strange ability to draw animals to him. (laughs) They love him! Even wild animals. Table Mountain is Cape Town’s main mountain and the source of the name Table Town.
NS: In the early stages we would often go on hikes on Table Mountain, and we would talk about the characters and story. It’s always in those moments when you’re out in nature when you can have these sorts of encounters. We came across these two deer that stuck with us the whole time on the path, just ahead of us. It’s like they went on a walk with us.
LH: And those deer were best friends! It was beautiful.
JM: That’s lovely. I also really enjoyed an episode about Career Day. What do you think your career in animation has opened your eyes to? You got into an incredible profession that has allowed you to become a part of the Disney family. What has working on “Kiff” opened your eyes to in terms of the career and the profession of being in the world of animation?
LH: We work with such talented people. It is really all about the people. The industry itself draws to it. Our project has drawn to it. We’re very lucky to be working with some of the most lovely, talented people I’ve ever met.
NS: It has been quite eye-opening, especially coming from Cape Town, South Africa, knowing what the animation industry is like there and stepping into this world here. It is fun. Animation is fun across the board, and like Lucy said, filled with wonderful people who enjoy having a good time. It’s really been quite a special experience.
JM: This is one of the most creative animated shows I’ve watched in quite some time. What do you hope your show says about the state of animation comedy today and the opportunities and possibilities of what you can do?
LH: That’s quite a question!
NS: I wanna just go back to fun. When you’re having fun making something, it’s infectious. Everyone starts to have fun and contribute and it becomes a very collaborative environment. Collaboration is incredibly powerful. Stories that can start quite… grounded can be a great place to connect and hold-up a mirror to the world and to society — and to find the joy and the simplicity.
LH: Nic and I decided to do the show that we wanted to do the most. I think maybe it helped that we were outsiders of the big U.S. machine because we didn’t have ideas of what we should be doing and what we should be trying and how we should be molding it to fit. That helped us to find our own way. And everyone should be finding their own thing that they want to do the most. So we were free to do that.
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