‘Tuca & Bertie’: the show that was missing
Creator filled a need for something she would want to see
There’s a simple reason Lisa Hanawalt created the new animated Netflix series “Tuca & Bertie”: She couldn’t find the show she wanted to watch.
“I’ve seen a gap where the show I want to watch doesn’t quite exist yet, so that’s what I made,” the cartoonist and showrunner recently said by phone from Los Angeles, where she lives. Hanawalt, a Palo Alto native, said she wanted to create something relatable to her, a show that “focused on female friendship, because I haven’t seen that a lot in adult animation.”
With “Tuca & Bertie,” Hanawalt, who was a producer on the popular animated series “Bojack Horseman,” presents a warmly silly, ultimately poignant depiction of female friendship that, in its occasionally raunchy humor and dissection of the thorny realities of modern womanhood, is still largely absent in television. In the show, which begins streaming Friday, May 3, and is set in a world of anthropomorphic birds, Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong play best friends Tuca and Bertie, respectively.
Tuca, a toucan, is a distillation of the “sociopathic, confident” version of Hanawalt, and Bertie, a songbird, is the “more introverted and nervous” side that she presents to the outside world. The season’s 10 episodes follow the pair’s misadventures, while also slowly building toward deeper questions of its characters and of our culture, from childhood trauma to sexual harassment. It’s another strain of the unbridled, honest female-led comedy that has made its way into live-action shows like Hulu’s “PEN15” and “Broad City.”
“For some reason it hasn’t made its way
into animation yet,” Hanawalt says of the style. “Or the gatekeepers have not really trusted women to create a lot of animation yet.”
This reality presents a kind of paradox for Hanawalt, who is inherently pushing against the norms, while being potentially pigeonholed for her work as a result.
“I’m just being myself. It’s weird how sometimes just being myself is seen as political just because I’m a woman and I care about women’s issues. Like, suddenly it’s seen as niche and, you know, revolutionary somehow,” she says, with a laugh. “But I’m really just writing about stories from my own life. It’s funny. I’m not trying to be preachy.”
Yet, while the show avoids feeling didactic, the ways in which Hanawalt tugs at the “deeper, weird, dark stuff ” beneath her colorful animation do feel new and separate in their profound nuance. This is most apparent in the show’s treatment of sexual assault and harassment.
“It’s very, very complicated, and I’m curious to see how people respond to that,” Hanawalt says. “I’m sure some people will be mad because the wires get crossed.”
The gray areas of these situations are honest, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t difficult.
“That’s something that I think happens in the real world that I don’t see a ton of in fiction. She’s not necessarily reacting in the ‘right’ way, but she can’t control it,” Hanawalt says, in reference to Bertie’s unexpected reaction following a certain sexual encounter in the show. The subject is only complicated further by later developments of Bertie’s character.
Following in the format of “BoJack Horseman,” Hanawalt’s show traces a continuous, character-focused narrative — rather than the purely self-contained episodes of most animated sitcoms. But “Tuca & Bertie” is distinct from the often bleak tone and arc of “BoJack.”
“It’s a little bit less nihilistic,” Hanawalt says. “It’s more optimistic, a little warmer. Even the bad characters I have a lot of affection towards.”
Hanawalt’s creation reflects these complex truths of reality. In this way, it’s also a small step forward for television.
“I’ve noticed a lot of women are really excited about it, so I hope they aren’t let down, because it’s not for all women. But I honestly am hoping that it does well enough that more executives feel confident greenlighting more shows created by women,” Hanawalt says, before her self-effacing “Bertie” peeks through. “That’s my real, deepdown hope, ’cause it’s been rough out there for way too long. And I just got lucky, really.”