The director and star discuss the new hybrid live-action / 3DCG film, based on the hit DreamWorks Animation preschool series, that features Gabby, her grandma Gigi (Gloria Estefan), and the adorable Gabby Cats heading to Cat Francisco, only to lose the dollhouse and lock horns with eccentric cat lady Vera (Kristin Wiig); in theaters September 26.
During a test screening for the highly anticipated Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, Ryan Crego feared he'd blown it as a director.
“Gabby has a very low moment in the film, and she's sitting on a bookshelf and she's crying,” explains Crego. “We've never seen Gabby cry in the TV series. It's a single tear, but it feels so big. And a little girl in the audience was crying. And I was sitting in the test screening going, ‘Oh my God, I'm done for. This is it. They're taking this movie away from me now.’ The girl’s mom said, ‘Do you want to leave?’ And she said, ‘No, I want to cry with Gabby.’”
He continues, “After that I was like, ‘It's perfect. Let's not touch it. This is amazing. Kids are feeling for her. They're feeling with her.’ And of course, at the end of the movie, not to give spoilers, but it all works out.”
Based on the DreamWorks preschool series by Jennifer Twomey and Traci Paige Johnson, the upcoming film follows Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner, reprising her role from the series) as she heads out on a road trip with her Grandma Gigi (four-time Grammy Award winner Gloria Estefan) to the urban wonderland of Cat Francisco. But when Gabby’s dollhouse, her most prized possession, ends up in the hands of an eccentric cat lady named Vera (Oscar nominee Kristen Wiig), Gabby sets off on an adventure through the real world to get the Gabby Cats back together and save the dollhouse before it’s too late.
Directed by Crego (executive producer of Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh, I Heart Arlo), the film is produced by Steven Schweickart (How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, Kung Fu Panda 4), executive produced by Twomey and Johnson, and releases in theaters on Friday, September 26.
The all-star voice cast includes Saturday Night Live comedians Ego Nwodim, Kyle Mooney, and Melissa Villaseñor, as well as Emmy nominee Thomas Lennon (Reno 911!, American Dad!), Jason Mantzoukas (Invincible, Big Mouth), and Fortune Feimster (Fortune Feimster: Crushing It, Velma). The award-winning Gabby’s Dollhouse series voice cast reprises their roles as Pandy Paws (Logan Bailey), CatRat (Donovan Patton), Cakey (Juliet Donenfeld), DJ Catnip (Eduardo Franco), Baby Box (Maggie Lowe), Kitty Fairy (Tara Strong) and more.
Check out the trailer:
… and some fun clips!
While the TV series primarily took place in the cat-ified comforts of Gabby’s bedroom, the film ushers Gabby, the dollhouse cats, and young fans of the series into a bigger world with bigger feelings, and both Kraner and Crego believe it's for kids’ benefit.
“Not only is it Gabby's biggest adventure in terms of her being outside of her room, it's also her biggest adventure in terms of the emotional range she goes through and that there's actual serious conflict,” notes Kraner. “There’s been some conflict in the show, too. But Gabby is usually the voice of reason who's always together and positive. I think it was really important that we showed her feelings of doubt and hesitation and even fear and showed that she can also overcome that. It was important to show that Gabby is also human and has big feelings.”
Crego, very familiar with meshing cartoon characters and real-world problems with Arlo the Alligator Boy, adds, “I love fantasy and magic, so I’ve always leaned into animated films and it’s an honor to tell stories that are positive, bring good things into the world, and making people feel a lot of things. My own son has watched me make this movie for the last couple of years and has gotten to go to the screenings. It’s really been his first movie and to hear him talk about it has been cool. The movie is going to be challenging in some ways, complex in others, but we all know we’re going to come out on the other end in a ray of glitter and sunshine.”
The Gabby’s Dollhouse series, which released in 2021, has received four Annie Awards nominations and, this year, won the Best in Class: Preschool Kidscreen Award. Gabby’s Dollhouse won viewers over with its tiny surprise boxes, cat-tastic crafts, sprinkle-rific adventures and purrfect examples of what it means to be a true friend. For Kraner, who has spent nearly six years of her acting career on the DreamWorks production, the movie feels like a nice way to transition the Gabby character into a new stage of life.
“I’ve grown up with Gabby, too,” says Kraner. “She came at a good time during my very formative years. I was going through puberty and getting older. When I’d be getting a little angsty, having those weekly recording sessions where I was being this positive role model, working through solutions and loving unicorns was so helpful for me and it helped keep that part of me alive. Gabby was my mentor in a lot of ways. When you repeat something so much and you embrace that character so much, it gets ingrained in you. But Gabby has also grown up, and it felt really good, as myself, to have Gabby catch up with me in this movie. At the end of the movie, she even has a different outfit that's a bit more mature.”
Gabby’s maturity was something Crego wanted to make sure came through in the 3DCG character design. Though the animated Gabby in the TV series has mostly maintained the same look for the last few years, feature film Gabby needed to not look like a preschool version of Kraner’s teenage self.
“That was 100% like one of the most challenging things to get right,” says Crego. “In the show, they've basically got sticker faces, so you can't turn them to get a profile. Our movie had to have more geometry on these characters. That was my initial reason for wanting to push them. But, at the same time, I didn’t want the kids to see the billboard for the movie and go, ‘Hey that kind of looks like Gabby.’ And we didn’t want her character to look like a babydoll. It took a while, but we got to a place where our characters feel very tangible, tactile, and cuddly. I’m happy with where they ended up.”
Producer Schweickart added, “Laila is a 17-year-old girl. We couldn't infantilize her, even when she shrank down into her CG self. She needed to be a reasonable representation of who Gabby is at this stage of life.”
That representation also extended to the costume designs.
“These characters are dolls, so we wanted the clothes to look like they were sewn by Grandma Gigi,” notes Schweickart. “They're supposed to be tactile and something that would make you believe you could pull these characters off the shelf and play with them in the dollhouse. Ryan really wanted this world to be believable, even Cat Francisco. There are some small cat ears on the bridge and in the clouds, but we didn't want to create this world that was so cartoony that kids wouldn't believe this was an actual place.”
For as colorful, glittery and cat-tastic as Gabby’s world is – both inside and outside the dollhouse – everything had to be grounded so that when kids start feeling those big emotions and then see Gabby overcome her big feelings, they truly believe her and trust that they too can overcome emotional and physical challenges.
“I have her own voice in my head, telling me, ‘You haven't figured it out… yet!’” says Kraner of her animated character. “I'll have those moments where I'm hanging out with my friends and, if something happens, this Gabby voice takes over me and I’ll be like, ‘Guys, we can do this! Let's keep trying!’ I think it’s great. It's so important to learn those skills and I had a lot of shows that showed me that as a kid, from Cat in the Hat to Wild Kratts and Sesame Street. The fact that I get to be that voice now for kids is really cool. I don't think it's ever going to fully settle in for me, but she'll always be a part of me. I'm never going to lose Gabby.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
