from 2008
JOHN TARTAGLIA
talks about creating and starring in "Johnny and the Sprites"

by Scott Wolf

I wanted to interview John Tartaglia because I'm a big fan of the fantastic show that he created and stars in on the Disney Channel, "Johnny and the Sprites," but he's such a mega-talent and has done so much! Performing in Disney's Beauty and Beast on Broadway and having his own Emmy nominated Disney series were not taken for granted by this huge Disney fan. Therefore, it was appropriate that we did the interview at one of his favorite places and mine, the Disneyland Resort. It's fantastic to have John in the Mouse Clubhouse and to share his story with you.

Scott Wolf: How did "Johnny and the Sprites" come to be?

John Tartaglia: I got a letter backstage (at "Avenue Q" on Broadway) from Rich Ross who is the president of The Disney Channel. This was the year we opened on Broadway so it was about 2003 or 2004. It just said he's a big fan, he loved the show and he'd love to meet with me. I stupidly for awhile didn't respond to the letter. At the time we were so overwhelmed. I was running on empty and finally I was like, "What am I doing? Of course I should respond!" So we set up an appointment for dinner and he couldn't have been more complimentary. He said, "I know you've worked with the Muppets for a long time and on "Sesame Street" and I love what you do as a performer in the show. Have you ever wanted to do your own work?" I said, "Yes, since I was younger I dreamt of having my own kids show someday." And he said, "I want you to create it for me." Literally like that.

So after panicking for a day of, "Oh my God, what am I going to do?" That's one of those things you dream about doing when you're in your fifties and you won the lottery, not when you're twenty four or twenty five years old.

So I went off and I had this inspiration, when I was sixteen I made these drawings of these characters. I knew they were sprites, I knew they lived in the woods. I really loved fantasy and I'm always fascinated by the idea of something existing that we don't know about whether it be fairies or whether it be like "Fraggle Rock" underneath the world. Whatever. So I remembered when I was sixteen that I had done these sketches and I've written sprites and they lived in the forest. That's all I knew. I think I had written Ginger and Basil at the time. I said, "I wonder if that would be an interesting concept." So I took it and looked at it a little more and went back to Rich and I said, "I have this idea, I don't know if you're going to like it, but here it is." He looked at it and he said, "Wow, that's really cool. I like that a lot. I'm going to set up an appointment for you with Nancy Kanter and Paula Rosenthal who are the vice presidents of development. "

At that time I brought in my friend Michael Schupbach who designed the puppets, the way they look now, and a writer named Daryl Watson who's one of the co-creators and the three of us went in and pitched the show. At the time there was no Johnny, it was just the sprites. They really liked it, but they were like, "There's something missing. I'm not sure what it is. Come back to us." So I brought in Jill Gluckson who was my original co-producer on the show and Louise Gikow who was a very well-known Emmy nominated writer and Jill is an Emmy award winning producer. We sat down and I showed them the show and we talked about it and Jill said, "You know, the one thing that's missing is you." She said, "There's a reason Rich loved what you did and came to the show and asked to meet with you."

So we started talking about how I could be, what was my relationship with the sprite characters, and that's where the show developed from. So we went back and of course Disney said, "That's it. That's what we wanted," and that kind of started it.

SW: One of the many things I like about the show for me and for my sons is that it has a a little taste of Broadway. The theatre and going to musicals was a big part of my own life growing up. Was it always intentional to give it a Broadway feel?

JT: Yeah, I remember talking about what kind of music do we want to do. Another thing I hate about a lot of children's entertainment is the music is so icky. The good thing about working on "Sesame Street" is I had so many perspectives. I worked on the show that is so well-respected by parents but I saw all the shows the parents didn't like. Parents love to be able to watch stuff with their kids. The most successful movies and the most successful TV shows are family based. I thought, just because something's on the air for a preschooler doesn't mean that a parent and an older brother or a cousin or grandma shouldn't be able to sit down and watch it with them.

So we talked a lot about the quality of music and I said, "For me, not only working on Broadway, but also growing up listening to Broadway cast albums, there's such a complexity, and layers and different types of music that goes with a Broadway show." I thought there's a reason why people attach themselves to it. There's a reason why everyone from your age to my age to your great grandmother knows "People Will Say We're In Love." It's because they're good songs. I said, "What if we took that concept and brought in Broadway composers who know how to tell a story in a song, know how to make it listenable, but also will give it a sense of quality that a lot of kids show music doesn't have. Maybe that will also encourage parents to listen to it." In studies they say that kids learn the most when you're with them and your kids appreciate things the most when you appreciate them with them. So I thought, okay what if we could find a way to do that.

Also, from a convenience place, all the composers I knew for the most part wrote Broadway music anyway, so it all came together like that and it was really neat to be able to go to people like Stephen Schwartz who was like a legend...

SW: He wrote the theme song, right?

JT: Yeah, and what I found which I think is wonderful is everyone I went to was so passionate about it, too. There's not a lot of money in it, there's not a lot of fame in it, but they really wanted to say something to this generation. We had a musical director for season one and season two, two different guys but they were both wonderful. They also were very passionate about it and they really believed in let's bring every kind of music. So you have jazz, you have country, you have rock, you have pop, you have Broadway. Everything. It's neat because the nicest compliment I get is like what you said earlier, "My kids and I love listening to your music in the car," or "Thank you for making a show that doesn't make me want to pull my hair out." (NOTE: “Johnny and the Sprites” is available on CD from Walt Disney Records.)

SW: It's true, because I like the show as much as my kids. It's not babyish.

JT: That limits your audience. You'd get to a point where you outgrow it. The nice thing is that we have kids as young as Henson (my two year old), up through Arnie (my six year old) up through someone who's thirteen years old watching the show. We have a huge college following and I think it's because we didn't make a show that's, "(babyish sounding) Hey, everybody."

Yes, I talk to the camera and there's childlike aspects of that and yes some of the storylines are a little simpler and you have to know your audience, but I don't think it's a show that kids age out of as easily as other shows. So I'm happy that we were allowed to do what we did with it in the sense of keeping it relevant and keeping it older. I was up at UCLA the other night doing a show there and I had these college kids come over and say, "Oh my God, we watch your show by ourselves. We love it." They were embarrassed and I said, "Don't be embarrassed. That's great that the show appeals to you."

SW: When you started the show, it was five minute segments?

JT: Yeah, we did shorts first. They didn't want to do a pilot and I remember at the time I was kind of disappointed about that but they felt that doing the shorts was better because they would actually air and they would air repeatedly. We did five of them so you had five different stories, five different focuses. One of them was being focused on one character, one was focused on the other, one was focused on a certain type of music so we could really gauge what really works and what doesn't. With a pilot you only get that one half hour. In this case, these were on the air no matter what. So not only did you get to test it, but you also got info back from parents and ratings. Luckily the shorts were so successful that they said, "I think there's something here for a half hour series."

SW: And now those original shorts are on the DVD (from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) .

JT: Yeah, which I didn't even know. I thought it was cool when they sent the DVD to me because I get that a lot from parents who are like, "Oh, we're missing the shorts." And I said, "Well, maybe one day it will turn up somewhere." and they did.

SW: You do the character of Sage and in the second season you appeared with Sage.

JT: Yeah, there were a lot of changes. A lot of things we wanted to do in the first season, but I always say a first season on any show is an extended pilot. You're still figuring out who the characters are, you're figuring out how the audience reacts to the characters, you're figuring out budgetary limits, all those things. So our first season was kind of a mixed bag. There's definitely some of it I'm very proud of in the first season, some I'd rather never look at again.

SW: What's your favorite from the first season?

JT: Our holiday special. I really wanted to make a holiday special that was like the olden days. I find kids holidays shows nowadays are not magical, not special, not beautiful. I thought, “What if we made a show that really was hearkened back to those specials I grew up with as a kid?” We did that and I'm very proud of that. Not only just from the story, but also from the look of it. We specifically shot it with a soft filter on, so that was my favorite.

Also, we also said one day in developing this for the second season, "What kind of message are we really giving that here are these sprite characters and we're not introducing them to Gwen?” Then we also said that Johnny doesn't get to the grove so whenever you show the grove it kind of limits the time with Johnny, so we finally said, "What if they all just coexisted?" Which is actually in my opinion a much more powerful message because then it's not that they're separated by magic so they can't see each other, it's they're actually forced now to truly live together and how they get along. That's why in this season we actually brought a lot more magic to Johnny which I think is a lot more fun for kids, too, like what is Johnny going to do when there's a huge fifty foot giant in his backyard, what is Johnny going to do when he gets turned into a mud troll.

SW: Speaking of that, what was that mud troll like for you? It's an elaborate costume.

JT: That was fun. At first it was really fun, because it wasn't real mud, it was like oatmeal mixed with chocolate, but then four hours later the oatmeal starts to congeal and so it was really kind of stiff and gross. I had back issues.

SW: You were in that for four hours?

JT: Oh, I was in it for about eight hours.

SW: Eight hours? You said you had back issues as a result?

JT: Just because what happened was I pulled muscles because at first it's this gloopy mud-like kind of thing, but oatmeal over time starts to congeal and solidify so just to move my hand at the end was like impossible. They had to take four guys to pull me out of it because it had just congealed over me. Luckily we shot it in order and it's good because I'm supposed to be miserable towards the end of that episode, (chuckling) so I didn't have to act very much toward the end of that.

In this season, being able to bring Sage out (a puppet character that John performs) was really great because I love doing him. He was stuck to his tree in the first season and he could never leave the grove so he didn't really know who Johnny was. So we really kind of expanded it and I liked it a lot. It freed us up to do a lot more interesting stories.

Some stories we actually wanted to do in the first season but we couldn't do because there was no logistical way to do what we could do now. Even just the magic, kids love magic, I love magic, so I said, "Why are we limiting ourselves?" We should be able to have them perform spells and things like that. So what if we took that kind of magic where anything's possible and apply that to a show where maybe the sprites can't always use magic to achieve things, or what if their magic goes haywire and it's about being responsible. It was neat to be able to take those things and run with them.

SW: And as of today you're nominated for an Emmy award.

JT: Oh my gosh, yes.

SW: What is the category?

JT: Well... it sounds so presumptuous, but Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series. Our set designer got nominated as well. She's unbelievable. She's one of those people who worked on a shoestring and made it look so lavish and beautiful. And our sound designer and mixer, Bob, who works tirelessly, got nominated for two categories.

SW: That’s really exciting.

JT: I got really emotional when I found out because when I was younger, that's the kind of thing you dream about. I remember when the show first came on and people would say, "You're going to win an Emmy," or "You're going to get nominated." and I used be like, "Shh... please don't say that." because that's like a dream come true, and to be honored for something that I believe in so much makes it all valid.

More from John:
The important message of "Johnny and the Sprites"
His roles on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast and Shrek

See other interviews

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in the interviews are solely those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mouse Clubhouse. Mouse Clubhouse accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed within.