Bluey creator Joe Brumm said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Disney initially wanted to change the accents in the wildly popular animated series for its international distribution.
- Bluey, which can be streamed on Disney+, was among the top 10 most streamed programs in the U.S. last year.
- It is also the number one children’s show across all age groups in Australia, where the show is created by Brumm.
- In his interview, Brumm explained that when the show began being licensed around the world, Disney had some ideas to change things up and make it less distinctly Australian:
- “It was definitely something that I was always going to hold my ground on. At the time that I was making season one, we were training 50 people and I was writing and directing, so a lot of this stuff was happening on my periphery. But I remember hearing that Disney had had a conversation about changing the accents for the American audience; and then someone else told me, ‘No, no, that was never gonna happen.’ So, I never really knew. But then very, very recently, I heard from someone at Disney, who happens to be Australian, that it was absolutely going to happen and this person just fought and said, ‘No, you’ll lose so much,’ and she managed to convince them to stick with the Aussie accents, which I can categorically say saved the show internationally.”
- Obviously, Disney ultimately brought the show over without altering the accents.
- Brumm also talked about the fact that he originally wanted to make this series for adults, even comparing it to an “R-rate Peppa Pig“:
- “Oh yeah, that happened. It was going to be a kids thing, and then we weren’t getting much traction with the pilot because it was a bit hard for people to see what it would be. So, I always thought it would be kind of funny to do an R-rated Peppa Pig. Using Peppa Pig’s grammar but telling the story about parenthood as it really is, you know, mastitis and all that. And I wrote that script out and it was 22 minutes and I reread it recently and I really like it. I’d love to make it one day. We ended up touching on it a bit in the episode “Baby Race,” in a very G-rated way, but [in the adult version] there was nothing left out. It was pretty dark, man. But on the eve of going any further with it, there was a show out here [in Australia] called The Letdown, which was live action but hit the same territory, and I just thought, “Oh, that’s doing that really well,” and I pivoted back to preschool.”
- He went on to explain that he still finds himself writing things that are deemed inappropriate for a preschool show:
- “In almost every script, I would say. And some more than others. But you’ve gotta be really careful in preschool. There are two categories [of things that won’t fly]. There’s things that are going to get a kid hurt, and I rarely have an argument for that. The other one is more about taste – it’s what’s appropriate and what’s offensive. So, definitely lots of words have to get changed, and then behaviors and concepts get dulled down. And eventually I would just hit these walls and sometimes I’d say, ‘Look, I can’t change this. This is too funny.’ Or, ‘I like it too much.’ And so, we’d just be like, ‘Well, we just won’t show that entire episode or that scene or that sequence.’ Some of them, like ‘Dad Baby’ [an episode where Bandit, Bluey’s dad, pretends to give birth,] for instance, doesn’t get shown in America. But what are you going to do, not make ‘Dad Baby?’ I love it.”
- You can check out the full interview with The Hollywood Reporter here.