“When we set out to make this show I can say the original goal was simply to fill the void,” Bruce W. Smith revealed about his original vision for The Proud Family, which premiered in 2001 on Disney Channel. With a reboot streaming on Disney+ beginning February 23rd, the creator was joined by members of the cast and fellow executive producer during a TCA press conference. “I just simply said, ‘Well, where’s the African American family? Where’s the African American animated family sitcom?’ So I knew that right away I wanted to craft the show to fit into that lane. So whatever that audience was, I figured that there’s an audience for us as well. And, really, when I got with Ralph [Farquhar], we had this ‘for us, by us’ mentality. So it was like we’re making this show for an African American audience, and everybody else will come. I think if we spoke to us first we knew that it would become kind of universal in terms of its appeal, and so when we make the show, even when we think about ideas and just crafting things that matter, we’re speaking to us. So it’s the ‘for us, by us’ brand of how we thought we would effectively make the show, and everybody else would come.”
(Disney)
Come they did, with the original series running for 51 episodes, plus a Disney Channel Original Movie. “When you’re growing up, to see representation of yourself lets you know that you are not alone in this world,” Kyla Pratt said of the show’s impact and why Penny Proud has remained relevant twenty years later. “When you bring a show back like this you have to upgrade what we’re talking about, what’s going on right now, and I think it’s amazing to do that. Because now kids watching it they can relate to it, and I think that was one of the best things about our show when it was out originally. There was so much content that anybody watching could relate to, and Bruce and Ralph have always been on top of everything making sure that we see everything involved in the show that people can watch and be able to connect with.”
“Before we had to sort of tiptoe around certain issues, sort of use coded language,” Ralph Farquhar revealed about how the writing process differs on The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. “Now we can go pretty much straight at it. The biggest change in the twenty years is sort of the gender identity, and so we’ve introduced the LGBTQ community into the series with the Michael character especially. We went out and hired EJ Johnson to voice Michael, and that is probably one of the biggest changes we’ve made.”
EJ Johnson, the son of NBA legend Magic Johnson, was thrilled to join the show. “It’s a huge deal for me to be part of the series generally,” EJ shared. “Being a kid, I think I must have been like nine, eight or nine when the show came out originally and just loving it then, but also now seeing myself represented in something like this is such a huge deal. And I know it speaks volumes to other kids like me who are growing and figuring out their gender identity from the youngest of ages, and so I feel like this is definitely going to speak huge volumes to them whatever color they are but more specifically in the African American community. So just to have a character who is out and proud and fabulous and just completely and utterly unapologetically themselves is really just so beautiful to voice the character… When I was watching the episodes, I just was blown away that this character now exists and will be able to just be there for young people. And so it’s just so magnanimous all around, and I'm so excited for the impact that it will bring.”
The reboot also introduces a same-sex couple, voiced by Billy Porter and Zachary Quinto. “It’s funny how things happen because we went after Billy and Zachary, that was our wish, at the top of our wish list,” Ralph recalled. “And then when we started talking to them, Zachary says, ‘Oh, yeah. Billy was my college instructor in Pittsburgh.’” It was a surprising happenstance for the creative team. “It was kismet after that,” Bruce added. “We had no idea that they even knew each other, and then come to find out they were like sensei and student. It was like, wow, that’s fantastic.”
But for all of the progressive changes made for The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, fans of the original will still feel right at home. “That was the important asset in all of this is making sure that both series, from the one that we produced in 2001 and 2022, can still sit side-by-side with each other,” Bruce W. Smith shared. “You’ll see the upgrades but in the overall, when you’re talking about how we upgraded the content… how we were let loose to really lean into the truth of the stories that we wanted to tell, I think it simply accelerated everything, and because of our amazing cast they knew exactly how to bring their character back into the fold, so that was the fun of it.”
The first two episodes of The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder debut on February 23rd, with new episodes streaming weekly on Wednesdays on Disney+.