The dynamic (and domestic) duo of Frog and Toad are back for a brand new season of episodes on Apple TV+ starting on May 31!
Based on the award-winning book series by Arnold Lobel, the Frog and Toad television series adapts the stories from the books into short episodes. Frog and Toad follows the two amphibians as they balance exploring and appreciating both the great outdoors and being homebodies through exciting adventures in each episode.
The series has been lauded for its attention to detail with animated illustrations that mirror the nostalgic feel of the children's picture books from the 1970s. Voice talent includes Kevin Michael Richardson as Toad and Nat Faxon as Frog alongside Ron Funches, Margaret Cho, Yvette Nicole Brown, Fortune Feimster, Cole Escola, and Tom Kenny.
Frog and Toad is executive produced by Rob Hoegee, Adrianne Lobel, Adam Lobel, Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio, and Ben Kalina. Animation is provided by Titmouse Animation.
We sat down with the showrunner Rob Hoegee (Developer of Apple TV+ Stillwater), who spoke about his excitement for the latest season, working with the long list of voice talent, and his favorite episode of season 2 (thus far!) Plus, we've got an exclusive clip for you to watch!
The Parent Watch: How did it feel knowing that there would be another season of Frog and Toad?
Rob Hoegee: Well, we were obviously thrilled to be able to have more stories to tell. There are 20 original stories in the books, five. So four books, five stories in each of them. It was always important for us to make sure that we are able to get all of them on screen. With the two seasons, we were able to pull that off. So if you're a fan of the books and you have any particular story from the Frog and Toad books, that is a favorite. We got you covered.
Continuing into Season 2, it must be very exciting with the writing staff to come up with adapting those story lines. What was the writing process like, specifically for this season?
Well, we have a continuation of what we did with the first season, and that was really figuring out the best way to spread out the the 20 book stories. Given our production order, there was going to have to be additional stories as well, which means original Frog and Toad stories, which is certainly no easy feat.
When you're streaming, they're produced often in the order they're presented. So we really had to think about, Okay, what are the original Frog and Toad stories that we're going to start with? Because maybe we want to kick off with some of the ones that everyone is the most familiar with, because that way it's meeting an old friend. Then we can start to sneak in a few original ones, bt we got to hold some of the favorite ones for a season 2, if they're the season 2. So that way, it's like we don't give you all the good ones at first. You don't want to eat your dessert for your first course, right? We got to stretch it out a little bit. We really was big picture planning, so we were figuring out where everything is going to go in order, but also really just making sure that frog and toad, it's like we don't have a whole bunch of Toad stories, not a whole bunch of Frog stories. It's really just navigating the best way to just play out everything in order.
I imagine the planning process is one of the challenges that impact the season. Given that the stories are adapted from the books, but you also have originals, do you have a favorite episode from this upcoming season?
Oh, golly. I love them all, but there's an original episode called 'Frog, Toad, and Stick.' You could probably just tell from the title that this may be a friendship triangle in the making. Yes, only a few spoilers, but Frog finds the most incredible, amazing, best as stick ever and is going to take it with him everywhere for the rest of forever. Toad gets a little jealous of the attention that Frog is giving stick and so, a hilarity ensues.
When you first started working with everybody, what was it like to get a group of really good voice actors together?
Oh, this was one of the best, most funnest part of the process. I love working with actors. First and foremost, as a writer, I get to put the words on the page. As writers, we hear the voices in our head as we're writing, but there's something special about actually getting a professional voice actor, actor person to come and now bring this character to life. Obviously, casting Frog and Toad was hugely important, getting the right people for that.
Boy, did we luck out with Nat Faxon as Frog and Kevin Michael Richardson as Toad. The cool thing about our screen adaptation is that we expanded the world with all these really fun supporting characters. That was for two reasons. One was because we needed to expand the world just to give ourselves a little bit more screen to fill, but also it was going to be a great opportunity to get the very best of the best of the best and Sirena Irwin, our casting and voice director, and I basically made a list of all of our characters and made a wishlist of all the actors that we wanted for those characters. Like, high in the sky. Wouldn't it be great it be great to get Stephen Tobolowsky to play Dragonfly? Wouldn't it be great to get Fortune Feimster on the cast to play Lizard and every single person said yes. It was like a dream come true. The caliber of voice talent on the show is truly unmatched. It really is next level.
A lot of people who are fans of the Frog and Toad books, they're so familiar because of the drawings, the illustrations of it. Bringing that from the book series into screen on screen, what was that process like, and how much of a hand did you have in deciding what it was going to look like?
That was going to be always the biggest trick, because taking a very flat, very two dimensional, although exquisitely drawn images and bringing those to life. Actually, the fact that the illustrations that Arnold Lobel did were so full of life and full of character, that was truly to our advantage, because one of the things we do in animation is called key framing, which is, in other words, you have a pose. We have a hero pose. We would take an image from the books, a gesture, the way frog would jump in the air, and use that as the model of we want to get to here. We really did have a blueprint for how these characters look, how they pose, how they act, how they move. The rest was just through the technology of animation, filling in those blanks. Now, of course, it's not like you press a button and it gets done. There is an animator that actually draws all of those in between frames. The nice thing about that is, literally every single frame is scrutinized just the same way as you would see an image in the book. We were able to really be precise in that regard.
Also in the R&D process of when we were figuring out what animation tools we were going to use, a lot of that process involves doing animation tests, where we really do. We do walk cycles, we do movement cycles to figure out: 'Okay, is that too much?' 'Is it too little?' 'Are they too stiff?' 'Are they too floppy?' Just dialing in to that whole thing is really part of the process. That's also something that evolves. You try to get it as close as you can, and then the starter pistol fires and you're off and you're in production. Then a couple of episodes in, you're like, 'We still can make this better.' Every episode is an opportunity to improve.
I'd love to know, do you think of yourself as more of Frog or Toad?
I like to say there's a little bit of Frog and Toad in all of us. That's what makes these characters so special, because you could look at it as you're I'm either a Frog or you're a Toad, but I like to see it as the duality within all of us. But I would say that if I had to pick, I'd probably say Frog, only because that's the ideal way I would wish to live my life, with that enthusiasm and joy and excitement for everything.
Frog and Toad premiere new episodes of Season 2 on Friday May 31, but you can watch an exclusive clip right here: