Most of us have at least a cousin or two. But Natasha Kline grew up with a whopping 12 cousins who’d all spend summers at her house in the L.A. suburb of Fontana, camping out in her room and creating quite a bit of chaos for the shy, introverted young girl. Little did Kline know that those wild, crowded summers would one day serve as inspiration for her very own animated show Primos (the Spanish word for "cousins") which premieres on July 25th on The Disney Channel.
Primos centers around 10-year-old Tater Ramirez Humphrey (Myrna Velasco), an awkward girl who hopes to reinvent herself by the time school starts in the fall. But when the entire dozen of noisy primos come to stay with her, Tater’s chance of finding some time for introspection seems to fall by the wayside. Luckily, Tater is an optimist and a dreamer, so she isn’t about to give up on her goals anytime soon. The show is fun, relatable, and features a big family that brings the very real (but not often seen in TV) experience of mixing L.A.’s multitude of cultures to light.
Kline says that ever since she was four or five she knew she wanted to tell stories through animation.
“After watching Nicktoons on Nickelodeon, I wanted to make my own show about my family and show all the different kinds of diversity that a family could showcase,” says Kline, whose own family is multicultural.
But getting to the place where a studio like Disney lets you make your own show is a long road. Kline spent 15 years working as a designer and storyboard artist for various animated shows where she was fortunate to learn from some of the best.
“My first job was on South Park and it was interesting to see Trey's [Parker], writing process throughout my tenure on the show. I worked there for six and a half years,” she says.
Kline explained that Parker often began crafting an episode by first writing a joke that would serve as a set piece somewhere in the show.
“It could be like five pages of script that just showcases a part of the episode and where the episode is going to go. And then eventually we see the other parts of the script trickle in because that piece could be any part of the plot. It could be the thing that instigates the whole episode. It could be the thing that ends the episode or it could be in the middle in act two. It was always interesting for me to see how the other pieces of the puzzle come together into that full story,” she says.
Kline’s next job was on the Dreamworks animated show Home. “I worked with Thurop Van Orman. It was really fun because he gave me an opportunity to be a storyboard director,” she says.
Because the show followed the storyboards very closely, it gave Kline the opportunity to really learn how to put the episodes together in a more linear way.
“I was like, ‘Okay, great! Now I can finally get into the craft of writing!’ And Thurop was very helpful in showing me what the different parts of the script are and he showed me books like Save the Cat. He gave me worksheets and things to fill out to show what the different plot devices are and how a story should flow. So, he was very helpful during that period of my career to help me craft my storytelling voice,” she says.
Kline’s next job was on the Disney show Big City Greens, where she kept honing her writing skills and was building up the courage to create her own show.
“By the time that I pitched Primos I had all these ideas about writing and about how to develop characters. When I actually sat down to write my pitch bible, it only took like two or three days because I had been sitting on this idea for so long – literally since I was a kid – and I finally felt ready, like I had the tools to know what these characters are and I finally had developed the voice to be able to write them, too. So, it all just kind of flowed out of me really fast,” she says.
As fun as the process of creating Primos has been, it’s had its challenges too.
“For some reason, writing is the most psychologically torturous part of the process, just looking at the blank page. It’s the place where things grow and things are just crackling with creativity, but at the same time, it's like the most doubtful stage too, I think, because you're literally making something out of nothing,” she says.
But when the writing gets hard, Kline relies on her protagonist Tater to help make the story come alive. Tater is inspired by Kline’s own childhood, but to star in a TV show, Tater has to be a little bit extra.
“Tater has always been in my heart. In essence, she is me, but I was very shy and very nerdy and I had my face in a book or I was just sketching on a piece of paper. Tater’s personality is bigger than mine when I was as a kid because that part is aspirational. I always wanted to be that kid who just demanded attention and who would walk into the room and everybody would notice. Tater has this creative fire and wants to create something – which I definitely had – but she's different than me because she actually expresses it,” she says.
Though there’s a strong connection between Kline and Tater, she really hopes that Tater’s ability to express herself will resonate with young girls, and maybe even be a type of role model.
“I always wanted a female character like that when I was a kid. I wanted to see a girl character who wanted something and even if she failed at getting it, she could still kind of bounce back and create her own world,” says Kline.
Kline has found success drawing on her experiences from childhood, so she recommends that writers working on their own TV pilots also reach into the treasure trove of their own personal experiences.
“Write from something that's true for you and something that's authentic because I feel like if something is relatable to you, it'll be relatable to thousands of people – especially if you're writing for comedy. The best funny bits come from truth and from real life, I think,” she says.
Read More: Writer-director Sydney Freeland Breaks Down the Authenticity of ‘Reservation Dogs’
Primos premiers on July 25 on The Disney Channel and will stream on Disney+ the next day.