From the Jim Henson Company comes Disney+‘s first original talk show:  Earth to Ned.

Earth to Ned features Ned, an alien commander charged with the invasion of Earth, and his lieutenant, Cornelius.  Earth is saved from subjugation, however, when Ned discovers and subsequently falls in love with television and begins broadcasting a talk show from the bridge of his ship, beaming in celebrities for discussions on anything from social media to the great Rula Lenska.

At a recent virtual press junket, executive producers Brian Henson, Vince Raisa, Joseph Freed, and Allison Berkley gave us some insight as to the genesis of Ned and his talk show, along with bringing joy to this COVID era through puppetry.

Press conference highlights:

On influences from Jim Henson: 

Henson:  “We went into this knowing we weren’t going to do cynical, we weren’t going to do sarcastic, we weren’t going to do interviews that were ‘too cool for school’ the way a lot of late-night TV goes.  Right from the beginning, we were trying to create a character who only was enthusiastic about people and loves people and wants to be loved by people.  And I guess in that sense, that’s a character choice that is very similar to choices that my Dad would have made back in the 70s.”

On giving life to Ned:

Henson:  “Ned is a further development of Pilot from Farscape and Pilot was a further development of Richfield from Dinosaurs.  So it started basically on Dinosaurs, this idea of making a really big animatronic puppet which allows you to do more inside the faces and stuff.  But the only way you can do it is if you can come up with a reason why the character can never move, because now it has so much structure underneath it and people underneath it that it can’t, like, walk around and stuff like that.  So all three of those characters…we had to come up with a justification of why they just never move.  I think we are still reserving the right to explain why Ned never moves, so we all have our theories, but we haven’t committed to anything yet on the show.

“Working in that size, allows you to do more expressiveness, and that was so effective on Farscape…There’s one puppeteer inside working the head and shoulders, three puppeteers working the arms, because there’s four arms, there’s two puppeteers working the face remotely through computer and motor controls, and that’s the same way we did Pilot.

“For every production we do, there’s something we promise we know how to do that we have not a clue if we really can do it.  On this one, it was…traditionally in our company, we basically said ‘if you have more than two puppeteers on a puppet, it can’t improvise’…at that point, you have to be strictly script-bound so that you can rehearse and rehearse and rehearse.  And definitely, six puppeteers on one character improvising?  I think we said to Disney ‘YES, IT’S GOING TO BE FANTASTIC OF COURSE WE’VE DONE IT BEFORE.’  We didn’t know how–it was really hard for the first couple weeks for the performers, and then once they jelled, it worked really well.

“But we also, as executive producers, helped the puppeteers a little, because we said ‘he’s going to be a little bit all over the place’ ’cause it’s unscripted and improvised, so we have to make it part of his personality.  So we made it a part of Ned’s personality, that he’s the kind of guy that you would never give him a glass of wine on a stemmed glass because he would accidentally knock it off and smash it.”

On developing the show’s concept:  

Freed:  “We wanted to do an aftershow [for Creature Shop Challenge] hosted by a creature.  Then, when Creature Shop Challenge ultimately never went to a second season, we never let go of the idea.”

Henson:  “No, we loved it.  And it was always Ned.  Which has never happened to me, where a lead character always keeps his name all the way to production.  In fact, we were going to call the show–we tried to call the show ‘Ned Talks’…but the TED Talks people were not happy about that.”

On making Earth to Ned a show for the whole family:

Henson: “We set out to make a show to entertain ourselves, which is probably the best way to do some things, so you’re making choices that you think are funny.  We were one of the early shows ordered by Disney+, way before Disney+ was Disney+, and they wanted us to be in the tone of a Late-Night talk show.  They wanted us to be quite adult.  And then as we got closer and closer they were like ‘but wait a minute, we’re Disney’ and we said ‘no no, it’s ok.  We can be pretty adult but never be inappropriate…and then, because Ned is such an idiot–he makes such ignorant mistakes and stuff like that, and is such a narcissistic, self-centered, and flawed character, that we knew that his characterization was going to be very appealing to children, regardless of what he was talking about.  So it allowed the actual content of the dialogue to really be designed for us.”

On filming the field segments with Cornelius:

Freed:  “I’ll tell you, on the first shoot, I came back and grabbed Vince and was like ‘I don’t know if I know how to do this…”  This was part of a learning curve–not only how to just plain out shoot it, how to execute it and make it look right, but how can you explore a topic with real people?  Because for the most part…when Cornelius talks to the owner of a cemetery, that really is the owner of a cemetery.  It’s not an actor.  There’s a pet episode where he goes to a dog groomer–it’s a real dog groomer.  And so trying to figure out how to make their interaction make sense, follow a little story, be fun…I would say that the field pieces were among the most challenging parts of the show and something that just got better and better the more we did them.”

On Rula Lenska

Henson:  “That was Paul, who is the lead performer on Ned, and he started doing it in the rehearsals.  He started doing it even before we started shooting the show because it’s a hard thing to lip synch.  So he was using her name over and over and over to start learning to work the mouth.  And then I think Paul himself was obsessed with Rula Lenska so I think it’s totally authentic because I think it is real.  I think Paul Rugg has the feelings about Rula Lenska that Ned does.

“And he just went with it.  I think the first time he did it in the middle of an interview, he asked us if that was alright, and we were all like ‘I don’t know…’  The first time he did it we were like ‘pretty sure we’re going to cut that.’  And then we all had a talk and said ‘you know what–it’s a runner.’  It runs right through the series.”

On the sudden influx of puppet-celebrity talk shows: 

Henson:  “Well we started working on ours first.  No, it’s interesting.  It’s obviously something that my father found early, doing appearances on The Sonny and Cher Show, I’m talking in the 60s now, because initially the muppets were always just puppets.  He was a variety act:  He would go on The Ed Sullivan Show and stuff like that and then he went on a show called The Jimmy Dean Show where Ralph the dog was working with Jimmy Dean…so it sort of comes from that.  Interestingly, my Dad dropped any…he had a talk segment of The Muppet Show in season one.  In season one, Kermit would talk to the guests, and in the end he dropped it because Kermit wasn’t able to push guests hard enough for it to be exciting.

“And I think my Dad learned from Sesame Street, ‘oh my gosh, it’s great when I have the Muppets interacting with a celebrity.’  It really really works because it exposes the celebrity in a more genuine way than a regular interview would.  Because they allow themselves to be vulnerable around puppets much more than they do around other people.  So they open up more, and you get to really appreciate them.

“But those were the variety days, and variety shows might potentially be skirting with an idea of a comeback and it would be really nice because often celebrities are really well-trained singers and dancers and it would be so nice to see them be able to do all those things.  But right now, with variety not around, Talk is really where you can see celebrities interacting with puppets.  So it’s not surprising that we all kind of made the same choice.”

On developing Ned’s character:

Henson:  “We knew a lot about his personality.  There was lot of stuff Paul really had to do.  He absolutely adores mankind.  The fact that you have to feel from his personality that he’s fresh out of the closet.  Like, he’s been in a closet his whole life because he had to be a military general because his Dad is the Admiral, and it was the last place this guy should have been.  He’s had a life of mental suffering because that’s just not where he belonged, and then he started watching television and then he started meeting celebrities and he just came out.

“So there was a lot about his personality that we knew, which is why, yes, he’s an adult, but he’s also very ignorant and immature in many many ways and it’s because up until a few months ago, the poor guy was stuck being being a general running a ship that was blowing up planets which was the absolute last place he should have been.”

On new episodes:

Henson: “Unfortunately, it’s not a COVID friendly production.    Hopefully we’ll see a little bit of Ned doing a Zoom-type appearance maybe, at some point, but it’ll be from here up.  There’s four puppeteers within two feet of each other under Ned, so we’re going to have to wait a little (and under Cornelius there’s two puppeteers that are two feet apart) until we can work under close proximity.”

[Recently on Twitter, producer Scott Stenholm noted there are more episodes already filmed that will air eventually.]

We shot 20 episodes before quarantine so at the very least there are 10 additional episodes coming in the foreseeable future 👽

— Scott Stenholm (@ScottStenholm) September 22, 2020

On goals for Earth to Ned:

Raisa:  “I am very glad that it’s coming out in a time that feels a little bit darker in the real world and it’s a joyous show.  And that just happened by accident, and I’m grateful that it’s coming out now because it is a fun show and it’s positive and it’s delightful.”

Henson:  “I want people to laugh at themselves.  That’s what is really, to me, what we were really trying to do:  Laugh at themselves, laugh at mankind.  That’s what I hope.  Maybe if this show can, just a little, get inside people’s skins so that they’re not as hard on themselves and they’re not as hard on other people…as Vince said, it’s dark times right now, but a lot of it is how hard people are on themselves and on other people.  How unforgiving people are both to themselves and to other people.  And I hope, coming out of this, they can catch that thing that we’re trying to do in Earth to Ned, that you can always laugh…and that laughter is so healing.”

Earth to Ned is currently streaming exclusively on Disney+.

In case you’ve missed it, here’s the series trailer:

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