NATASHA KLINE

“Primos”

It was time for a new music video release on MTV, so Natasha Kline’s family gathered around the television. Three-year-old Kline sat on her mother’s lap as Tom Petty’s animated “Runnin’ Down a Dream” video blew her mind. “It was moving drawings,” Kline recalls. “I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I have to do this.’”

Kline made her first animated film in high school using an old VHS camcorder. “The most horrible way to animate frame by frame,” she says. “That was not good, but it was a film.” She eventually worked her way into real animation, earning an Emmy nomination for writing on “Big City Greens” while also serving as storyboard artist, director, designer and writer for everything from “South Park” to “Bojack Horseman” to “The Lego Ninjago Movie.”

Kline, who credits Trey Parker as “a huge inspiration in helping me see what is possible as a storyteller,” is finally helming her own show: Disney Branded Television’s “Primos” follows Tater, a quirky Mexican American girl whose 12 cousins move in for the summer; Tater’s diary turns her private thoughts into elaborate animation sequences.

“When I was growing up I always wanted a girl character who could make anything happen for herself,” Kline says. Giving kids the sense that their imagination can make anything possible is important to her, but it’s especially important that Latinos see themselves on screen.

“Representation is one of the main reasons I got into animation. Growing up I felt like an outsider, wondering why I wasn’t being included, so it’s exciting to be a voice for them. I’m picturing my niece and cousins and thinking about how they’d want to be represented.” — Stuart Miller

When I was growing up I always wanted a girl character who could make anything happen for herself.” — Natasha Kline