Undone 2: interview with the creators and the cast

Undone 2 is the second season of the drama and sci-fi animation series born from the creators of BoJack Horseman (you can find many themed articles here on Amazon) Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg. We have already brought you our preview review of Undone 2, which you can retrieve here for a more complete overview. In conjunction with the preview of Undone 2 we also had the opportunity to take part in two meetings to interview, in separate locations, series creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg and actresses Angelique Cabral and Constance Mariewho play, respectively, Becca Winograd-Diaz, sister of the protagonist Alma (Rosa Salazar), and the girls’ mother, Camila Diaz.

In this article you will find the written report of the two press conferences, at the end of each of which the video of the relative interview will also be uploaded.

Undone 2: interview with creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg

During the first press conference the two authors talked about their choice to represent Undone as an animation series, while aware of the fact that animation is underestimated as a means of expression, especially in America, due to the fact that it is not considered up to the level of stories for an adult audience, as Bob-Waksberg himself pointed out.

The speech was explained in more detail when the two authors talked about the choice of using for Undone the technique of rotoscope, which consists in drawing on each frame shot previously with real actors, to have more realistic and fluid animations. Kate Purdy stated that the rotoscope allows you to capture the expressive intensity of the actors and make them move within fantastic “drawn” settings, thus combining acting and animation.

The authors also spoke of the “therapeutic” role implicit in the writing of sometimes deeply dramatic events such as those depicted in BoJack Horseman And Undone: Kate Purdy stated that, drawing inspiration for her stories from her own real life experiences, she must “look within”, and that is why, for her, writing has a therapeutic role. Raphael Bob-Waksberg then added that this is also the case for him, since writing BoJack Horseman allowed him to exorcise his own demons, and also Undone has the same effect: despite the fact that he knew the scripts perfectly and had already seen the episodes of Undone 2, the author admitted that he was not immune to the strong emotional impact of some scenes, in an inexplicable way even for him, to the point that those negative moods accompanied him for the rest of the day. In this sense, therefore, personal experiences and writing influence each other.

Good evening, nice to meet you. This question is for both of us. Undone makes me think of products like the series Stains; Gate or the movie The Butterfly Effectbut what are the sources of inspiration for Undone and his theories on time travel?

(to Raphael Bob-Waksberg) Did you use any inspiration for time travel?

: No. I remember when we were in the early stages of developing the series, the idea behind it, especially when trying to explain it to people in our business meetings, was to explain that one of the fun aspects of the series is the fact that this woman gains a new knowledge of the Universe and what it contains, but not even she knows if she is in the Matrix or in A Beautiful Mind, and the tension between those two elements was one of the funniest things for us. As for the mechanics of time travel, however, we tried not to be too specific about it, which somehow puts us in contrast with other products made previously. I really like it, when I look at something that is based on time travel, I absolutely want to understand the rules: I want to understand that if I change this, then it means that this and that will change too, or that you need the Flow Channelizer to make operate the machine and go back in time, as it happens in Back to the Future,. Well, in the early stages of development we somehow tried to get rid of all this and we thought: what would a science fiction story be like if it followed a logic more linked to emotions than science fiction? So, we didn’t necessarily have to set rules, nor did we explain these powers, but we wanted it to be perceived as a journey through memories or into an old scrapbook, letting something unfold, then leading to something. other. Even the mechanism whereby we jump from one timeline to another we don’t want to always be the same: we want to find different ways to show transitions from one timeline to another. In that sense, we have dropped something that has always been so important to this type of fiction.

We have always tried to make it emotionally realistic, so even in the scenes that represent dreams, we have tried to make it faithful to the logic of that dream experience, but I will tell you that, recently, I got the book In the Folds of Time, and I thought: a dad, a scientist, a time traveler, so I thought, Well, maybe that has influenced me in a way that I didn’t even realize it!. I would say that Slaughterhouse n. 5 is something that perhaps influenced me without my being aware of it, but they are both books that I love and have always loved.

I also recently met theJapanese animator Satoshi Kon of which, if I knew him better, I would say: “Oh, I have been very influenced by his work, although I have only seen him now”, but time acts in strange ways, so it is likely that he has seen him now and that this reverberated back, so that I was influenced by it in the past.

Undone 2: interview with actresses Angelique Cabral and Constance Marie

Actresses Angelique Cabral and Constance Marie also spoke of the rotoscope as the only way the series could have come about. Constance Marie said that getting the same visual effects in a live action would cost a lot more than creating them in animated form. Angelique Cabral added that she felt free to excite the audience, because she was still on stage, albeit in an animated version. It is a long process, but it pays off returning to Undone a unique richness and depth.

In this regard, the two actresses also talked about the impact of technology on cinema and TV: Cabral said that this allows you to go beyond the limits, which is especially important during and after the pandemic, which has also blocked several productions. Constance Marie has in fact underlined how Undone 2 was one of the first series whose production resumed after the emergency, in Los Angeles: precisely because it was made with the rotoscope, the actors and crew were able to work in a more controlled environment in which there were never more than 8 people, actors and crew included. Of course, if technology were to create an avatar of Marie to play in her place, she wouldn’t like it, she joked the actress, adding that she was very impressed with it.skills of the animators in capturing all the expressions and the smallest details of the actors’ faces.

The discussion then moved towards the relationship of the two actresses with their characters, who act as balance pins for Alma; they explained that they managed to create a credible family relationship primarily because the actors for each single role were carefully chosen. Angelique Cabral then added that in reality she is older than Rosa Salazar, to which Constance Marie replied, once again jokingly, that she was younger than both of them! Also, as the series has been running for 5 years and it took a whole one to make Undone 2all the time spent together contributed to fortifying the relationships between the protagonists of the story.

Good evening, nice to meet you. My name is Lucia Lasorsa and I write for Tom’s Hardware Italia.

Good morning again!

Good morning again!

That’s all I know! Well, I also know a dirty phrase, but I won’t say it!

Undone it concerns the elastic perception of reality.

Nice!

So I’m going to ask both of you the question that Morpheus asks Neo in Matrix: “What is real?”

It depends on who you ask in the series.

Maybe! It depends on who you ask, and I think that’s the beauty of the series, when you could be sitting next to your spouse, your best friend or your child, and each person can take something different from the series with them, right? Some people will say, “Oh, this is absolutely stunning”, or “this alters the course of time”, while other people will say, “Oh, Alma and Becca are crazy, they are schizophrenic.” We don’t know, but I think, I mean, I’ve always felt very “fluid” in terms of time in my life. It’s something I’ve always been interested in and always been curious about, and when I was little I had these moments where I felt like I was experiencing deja-vu. I’m interested in deja-vu, meditation: when I immerse myself in it I feel outside my body, so I think: who knows what’s realgood luck to us all!

Undone 2 trailer

But I like that in this series we explore each character’s timelines, so Season 2 takes place more in your (pointing to Angelique) timeline, our / pointing to both) timelines blend together, and you understand the timeline. of Camila watching her when she was very young, but I don’t know how much of a spoiler that can be. However you understand the reality of her that she created her character. The same goes for our characters, and this, to me, is fascinating: we can do it in real life, literally sitting and watching someone else’s experiences from birth. There is a nice quote from Socrates about being kind, because each person is going through their own, personal battles that we know nothing about.

This is why I hope that no matter what people get from our series, just think about other people and try to understand that everyone has problems. Literally, I think that if we all behaved like this in real life, simply understanding that each of us has our own story, and that we don’t know what’s going on up here (pointing to his head), or even in previous lives, I think we could be kinder, perhaps.

It would take more understanding. Even if you may not like them all, we should be more like, “Ok, let’s let them go their own way.”