Debuting on Netflix with an 11-episode first season, Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight is more than just the latest adventure starring Po, the rotund titular panda martial arts master. It’s also a chance for Jack Black to return to the character he first helped bring to life over a decade ago in the initial theatrical debut. He’s not alone, however. The show pairs him with some familiar faces, such as his father, Mr. Ping, played by James Hong, along with some exciting new ones, like Rita Ora’s Wandering Blade.
During an exclusive interview with CBR ahead of the show’s premiere on Netflix on July 14, Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight Executive Producers Peter Hastings and Shaunt Nigoghossian delved into the joys of seeing Jack Black back in the role he originated. The pair also discussed expanding the scope and look of the Kung Fu Panda world and what makes Po such an enduring character.
CBR: In the previous Kung Fu Panda shows, it was Mick Wingert who took on the role of Po from Jack Black. With Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, Black is back in the role. What’s it like to see him step back into that part — was it something he instantly got back into the groove with or did it take some time for Black to rediscover that voice?
Peter Hastings: Po really is like a cartoon Jack Black, so it’s great having the original source in there to bring all his energy and everything. One of the things that’s just been fun is that every fun thing I thought about Jack Black is exactly what he’s like. He brings that to the character. He always wants to do more takes, [and] he’s having fun doing it. I feel like that energy just kind of creeps across the entire production in a positive way.
Shaunt Nigoghossian: We’ve enjoyed working with it on the art side because [Jack Black], he adds all those little Jack Black things. So normally, we would just stage someone saying a line, and maybe they do a little something. With Jack, it’s like he gives you all this little stuff that you have to figure out. It’s a lot of fun. It’s totally different when he’s on the show.
Hastings: I don’t know that he really had to warm up so much because [Po is] so close to kind of what he’s really like, and all of that energy of being relaxed like that. Doing all his Jack Black stuff is just very, very natural to him. So, maybe it took a little bit about getting back into the swing of doing the voice recording and doing the repetitive part of it, but I found him to just drop right into it without any issue. He was and always is super fun.
Just writing for him, when you hear him do it, and it’s like, you’re gonna just write to that character and write to that voice and know that he’s gonna be able to pull that off. Sometimes you’ve left a little window for him to improvise and kind of come up with his own stuff, which he always liked. Many times I said, “Cool, I think we got it,” and he’d go, “Let me do one more. Let me do one more.” Very often, that was the keeper.
It’s the perfect time to see Black back in that role, especially when he gets such a strong contrast in the cool and unimpressed Wandering Blade.
Hastings: I mean, that is a classic dynamic, you know, and [the heart of Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight] really is sort of the buddy cop dynamic that those two have. Certainly part of the goal in the development of the show was to give Po some new challenges. So they [don’t] necessarily start out with, “Here’s the greatest gigantic, most massive army, this huge physical challenge,” but a very simple one — can you get along with this person who is much different than you are?
Chasing down the pair this season is Klaus and Veruca, who actually find a very good balance of being threatening — they get some actual on-screen kills over the season — while still being silly and personable enough for younger audiences to enjoy. What’s it like finding that balance?
Hastings: You know, you can get them into the position where their humor also becomes menacing. They become unpredictable, and you don’t know how evil or how bad they are. Verruca, of course, is a little wilder and a little more dangerous. Klaus kind of keeps her in check, but not so much — part of it is really also is their physicality.
Nigoghossian: Yeah, we’ve kind of treated them like, because they’re weasels, their bodies can kind of twist and turn, and they have their tail as another appendage. So we kind of keep them sort of snake-like in their movements and everything. [It’s important] just that their characters actually have depth. I mean, things have happened to them that have made them who they are, and that’s kind of understandable in a way. So we got to go deeper than just making them villains.
This is already such an expansive, colorful world, but the art team really had to expand the setting for some new locations. What was that like to approach and explore?
Nigoghossian: Yeah, we really wanted to play with that. I mean, Kung Fu Panda has been done, right? We’ve seen three movies, we’ve seen two series, and when we started the show, it was like, how do we take this to the next place? How do we tell a different story? From where the story is, where Po’s starting out with this kind of buddy cop thing, how do we tell a story we’ve never seen before? The style that’s been set up for [Kung Fu Panda’s world] is so rad. Just from the movies, our art director Ellen Jin kind of took that, and we were like, “Okay, let’s do what does an underground cave in the middle of a desert look like? What does an actual desert look like? How do we light it? How do we know what are the cactuses? We’ve never seen a cactus in this world, what do we do with it in this style?”
It was really fun to kind of keep coming up with that. I’m not sure if I should be really talking about specific episodes of Season 1 or spoilers or whatever… but I will say that it was a fun challenge. We definitely were aware of it and made sure we did justice to the original designs while pushing it to a level you’ve never seen before.
At the core of Po’s character has always been — and continues to be — this real sense of being an elevated fan. He’s such a happy fan of this world he’s in. Why is that an important aspect to keep front and center with the character, even as he embarks on global adventures?
Hastings: That aspect of keeps him grounded, keeps him real. It’s really charming, and I think it’s one of the reasons that Po is such a successful character. He’s a lovable loser who can kick butt, and so you kind of get to play both worlds. So you have… a good-hearted, positive, well-intentioned person who can’t get a break as well as somebody who can fight really well, who you know can step up when really needs to. Ultimately, that just ends up being relatable and being charming. It’s really the core of what makes a great character.
Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight hits Netflix on July 14.