AppleTV+ - Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock : Let’s talk with Matt Fusfeld and Alex Cuthbertson (Showrunner and Executive Producer)

By Mulder, Los Angeles, 19 january 2022

Jim Henson created the original series Fraggle Rock with the ambitious goal of inspiring world peace. This wonderfully inventive program was designed to entertain while encouraging an understanding and embracing of diversity. Premiering in 1983, the series starred the Fraggles, a fun-loving group of furry subterranean cave dwellers, as well as the Doozers, their diminutive industrious neighbors, and the oafish Gorgs who grow the radishes they love. The original series produced four seasons, 96 total episodes, dozens of accolades and awards, and 100 original songs that feature a unique and memorable mix of music genres, from folk, blues, and gospel to country and rock. Through the fun adventures of the Fraggle gang – Red, Gobo, Wembley, Boober, Mokey and Uncle Travelling Matt – the iconic show has continued to capture the hearts of children and adults alike from all around the world.

Q :  Hello Matt and First of all congratulations for this excellent new series which finds intact all the charm of the Fraggle Rock universe which was one of my favorite series in the eighties 80's.. What memories do you have of the original series ?

Alex Cuthbertson : i think first of all the biggest thing that we sort of remember and love from the original are the characters I think because the characters were so well defined you know Wembley's inability to make a decision Mokey’s spiritualism that can take her all sorts of places including folly but also grace Boober's pessimism but with so many different dimensions to that Gobo's leadership but also his insecurity and Red's incredible energy but sometimes the blind spot that comes along with that all of the amazing parts of these characters and also the trappings within i think make for such an opportunity to keep telling stories with them and so I think that we felt like they had absolutely not exhausted the stories they could tell with those characters in the original so we were excited to be able to inherit them and keep them going.

Q :  In a few words, can you talk to about the main plot of this series ?

Matt Fusfeld :  i mean i think that the main point of the series is  just to show how much we're all interconnected and we're all in this together you know the Fraggles exist with the doozers who exist with the gorgs who exist with doc they're all affecting each other and all these ways that they don't even quite realize and  if we can just learn as a society to sort of recognize and appreciate that we'll all be in a better place you know Jim Henson famously created Fraggle Rock to end all wars and to promote world peace so that is still kind of the main theme of this show and maybe needed more so now than ever.

Q :  You managed to find intact all the DNA of Fraggle rock and we watch with a real pleasure these 13 episodes. How did you capture all the essence of this cult series ?

Alex Cuthbertson : i think you know one way which we were so fortunate to have was that we had so many of the original creative forces from the original on this team Dave Goelz,  Karen Prell were both back on not only as performers but on as producers as well Jocelyn Stevenson one of the series original writers was in the writers room with us and then you have John Tartaglia who is you know the puppet captain, the performer of Gobo and countless other characters he was in the writers room as well and he is this walking encyclopedia of Fraggle knowledge he knows more about the show and the universe than anybody so we were surrounded by not just information from the original but love for the original so i think we were constantly sort of swimming in those waters and everyone had a desire to push it into new places and to bring it into this you know into a new audience but the soul was always there and i think we were really fortunate to have that kind of grounding influence.

Q :  What were the main difficulties you met when designing this excellent series ?

Matt Fusfeld : you know practically speaking it's difficult we did so much water this season and puppets getting wet is not deal um there was a lot of there was a lot of wetsuits and a lot of double puppets who could get wet but that doing that stuff practically was a challenge more than we realized when we initially  wrote it but i mean the crew there's always there's such passion and love for it no one was ever everyone was always excited when there was a water scene and someone had to get in the wetsuit and get in the tank so it was a challenge but everybody kind of rose to the occasion with so much love and passion.

Q :  How did you share your work on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock ?

Alex Cuthbertson : how do we share our work yeah. Well, I mean it was all incredibly collaborative tell me i'm sorry tell me if I’m answering the question but it was incredibly collaborative as far as the writing team was concerned, we had an amazing writer's room where we all came up with the storylines together and then we'd all support each other's work so a particular writer would go off write a script bring it back and then everybody would contribute to that and help make it better as far as the design of the show all early designs were shared with the entire creative team everyone had input so and then when it comes to the performing you watch the performers on set they're helping each other they're coming up with new ideas for how to hide their bodies for how to manipulate a certain trick so it really is this incredibly collaborative sort of magic trick of everyone working together to create this illusion of the puppets in Fraggle Rock.

Q :  What are your three favorite characters and why ?

Matt Fusfeld :  i mean the original characters are just so great and timeless their foibles are just so relevant and so human so we had a lot of fun i think playing with Mokey and being spiritual but also sometimes a little silly and just to the exaggerated versions of Red and Gobo and Gobo's friendship with Wembley and how just much they love each other and then we had fun diving into some new characters we really love some new you know there's our new version of the storyteller and Pogie and just a lot of background characters too the ink spots became a real favorite you can see those little guys in in most song numbers there's every performer every performer just out of the Jim Henson spirit brought so much to each character.

Q :  What can you tell us about the making of this series and how you were able to do with this global pandemic ?

Alex Cuthbertson : you know it was it was an interesting challenge and it's obviously a challenge that's being faced by anyone making anything or doing anything so i think you know it's sort of like everything else where at first it felt really different and then it started to feel normal because you kind of get into the protocol. The production was incredibly safe and everyone did a really good job of following protocol and i think we just all kind of got used to it one thing that was really different for me and matt was running the writer's room over zoom you know i think that's something that's common right now but when we started the show over a year ago it wasn't that you know you know nearly two years ago when we started writing it wasn't that common so it was our first experience writing over zoom but again like anything else we sort of we started and it was weird and then we got used to it.

Q :  What can you tell us about your collaboration with Lisa Henson ?

Matt Fusfeld :  oh i mean Lisa Henson is just the best collaborator you know when we first met her. We just hit it off right away with her and shared this same kind of sensibility and along with Halle Stanford and John Tartaglia the main EP behind it was just such a such a collaborative dream there was so much support and so much challenging each other and trying to make each other better it really it was a dream.

Alex Cuthbertson : i would say Lisa is incredibly open-minded as a creative executive. She's really smart and has really interesting opinions and has a really obviously rich history with the franchise but is also incredibly open-minded and giving to all of her creative collaborators.

Q :  Do you have a nice anecdote to tell us ?

Matt Fusfeld : about a good anecdote.

Alex Cuthbertson :  You know, i just i remember watching when they finally really showed the first cut of the of the pilot to everyone on set all of the puppeteers sat together on the floor and they put the you know pilot up on a big screen on a wall the sound stage watching it was almost like summer camp watching everybody hug and laugh and cry and sing along um i think to me was just this lasting image of how much the show meant to everybody who worked on it and how much love went into the creation of this thing and i think that's that was a big takeaway for me.

Q :  The many songs in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock are very good and capture our attention. We watch these episodes with nostalgia and the magic of the Fraggle Rock universe is there. How have you created these great songs ?

Matt Fusfeld : We had our music executive producer Harvey Mason JR who's just so talented working alongside the rest of the team and we did this sort of one legacy song one original song from the original series reinterpreted and then one new song each episode and we thought that was just a really nice balance to have sort of nostalgia but then push it forward a little bit and we were really those songs from the original show were just so catchy and so meaningful so that was really the bar that we were trying to reach with every new song that we that we tried to do and then we had all these amazing musical guests too we had Patti Labelle, we had Daveed Diggs and Cynthia Erivo and we just really took a lot of pride in all the new and old music.

Biography : 
Matt Fusfeld and Alex Cuthbertson have been friends and collaborators since the halcyon days of the early 2000s when they met as students at Boston University and started writing embarrassingly bad sketch comedy together. Luckily this was pre-social media and all of their performances are melting into oblivion on a VHS tape in an attic somewhere. For the past fifteen years they have been working TV writing partners, getting their start on “American Dad” before moving on to “Community,” “Ben & Kate,” “New Girl,” “The Mayor” and “Single Parents.” They developed and produced pilots on overall deals before teaming up with The Jim Henson Company and AppleTV+ to develop, write, show-run and executive produce the new series “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.” Fusfeld hails from Woodstock, New York and Cuthbertson was raised in Berkeley, California. These places are not the same but for the purpose of a bio it seems like one could say, like, hey – they’re both kind of hippie towns? They have that in common?
Fusfeld is married to his college sweetheart, the costume designer Jessica Replansky, and Cuthbertson is married to their former boss, writer and “New Girl” creator Elizabeth Meriwether. They both have two young kids and Cuthbertson has one of the dumbest dogs around. Both live and raise their families in Los Angeles where they like to drink coffee and walk around.
Fusfeld and Cuthbertson have always been drawn to writing for characters who enjoy each other, and love to find comedy within the sweetness of friendship dynamics. “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock” offered an amazing opportunity to take well-defined characters who all love each other and infuse that world with a new pace and focus on organic, comedic storytelling while preserving the soul, essence and sincerity of the original series. They felt lucky to collaborate with all of the endlessly talented puppeteers, artisans, creative execs and musical geniuses who brought this series to life, and they can’t wait for a new generation to fall in love with the infectious magic of "Fraggle Rock.”

Synopsis :
A reboot of the musical and family adventures in the underground world of Fraggle Rock where furry creatures named Gobo, Red, Boober, Mokey, Wembley and Uncle Travelling Matt live.

Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock 
Directed by Jonathan A. Rosenbaum, Paul Fox, Jordan Canning, Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein
Showrunner and Executive Producer : Matt Fusfeld and Alex Cuthbertson
Produced by Ritamarie Peruggi 
Written by Alex Cuthbertson, Charley Feldman, Matt Fusfeld, Douglas Lyons, Sabrina Jalees, Maurin Mwombela, John Tartaglia  
Starring  Jennifer Bain, Brendan James Boyd, Andrew G. Cooper, DeRic Starlight, John Tartaglia , Dave Goelz  , Karen Prell, Donna Kimball, Jordan Lockhart, Kevin Clash, Frank Meschkuleit 
Cinematography : Gavin Smith
Editor : Duncan Christie, Paul Winestock, Marianna Khoury 
Production company : Henson Associates
Original network : AppleTV+
Original release  : January 21 2022
Running time : 25 minutes

We would like to thanks Matt Fusfeld and Alex Cuthbertson for answering to our questions and for this excellent season one..