PRETEND BEST FRIEND
Jenna Elfman picks up a CGI co-star in new sitcom Imaginary Mary
Jenna Elfman has an imaginary chum in great new US sitcom.
Fourteen years ago, actress Jenna Elfman shared the screen with Bugs Bunny and pals in Joe Dante’s live-action/cartoon hybrid, Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Despite the old adage of never working with kids or animals (animated or not), Elfman’s back at it on the small screen playing Alice, a career-woman whose life is upended when she falls in love with a guy with three kids. Her anxiety about being a wife and stepmother spurs the return of her childhood imaginary friend, Mary (voiced by Saturday Night Live’s Rachel Dratch), who appears on the down-low to counsel Alice on her next big phase of adulting.
As it turns out, Mary is a fully animated, CGI character designed by Academy Award winner Patrick Osborne, who is also an executive producer on the series. In an exclusive interview with Red Alert, Osborne reveals he’s got a team of about 30 animators and VFX people bringing Mary to life every episode. “Animation just takes time to make it good,” he explains. “The real trick in getting animation done quickly is planning what you want to do ahead of time as much as possible. You will have opinions coming from everyone, and in this case, from people who are new to animation. The real challenge is walking everyone through the process, from my co-producers all the way to executives at the network. On the bright side, Jenna knew what she was doing,” he smiles.
Picked up in May 2016, the ambitious series was given extra time to get the look, and execution, of Mary right. Osborne admits the character has changed a lot from the initial pilot. “In the creation of the show, it was a lot more of an antagonistic, monster character who was meaner,” he says. “She started out as
an ’80s, Labyrinth-y monster. But it became clear that was less appealing. In the tailoring of the personality, we didn’t want her to look scary. The character pushed away from that eventually in the writing, but we had already made the character for the pilot and we had a time crunch.”
With the pickup, they went back to the drawing board. “With the opportunity to revamp, we wanted to bring the design in line with the personality more. It was necessary to make her cute and appealing and warm. We even got on the phone with John lasseter, my old boss at Pixar, to weigh in, and he gave us thoughts in that direction as well.”
Comedian Rachel Dratch then added the final touch with Mary’s voice. “We tried a lot of voices,” he says. “It was clear that Rachel added so much texture and depth to it, with such an interesting delivery that she was giving us which made the character more fun.”
With the nine-ep season almost complete, Osborne says he’s proud of what they’ve accomplished. “We got a real, resonating performance out of Rachel and Mary. It stands up against what people are seeing in films; some of it might even be better. I’m proud we got to make a show about comedy and performance, and it’s not just CGI action.”
Imaginary Mary airs on ABC from 29 March.