'Swapped' Director Nathan Greno on Building an Empathy-Driven Animated World

Debuting tomorrow, May 1 on Netflix, Skydance Animation’s new 3DCG comedy, Swapped, follows two natural enemies who swap bodies and must navigate each other’s worlds. Directed by Nathan Greno (Tangled), the film, which was formerly known as Pookoo, stars Michael B. Jordan and Juno Temple; Cedric the Entertainer, Tracy Morgan, Justina Machado, Ambika Mod, and Lolly Adefope also star. The story is scripted by John Whittington (The Lego Batman Movie) and writing partners Christian Magalhães and Robert Snow (DuckTales, WondLa). John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Mary Ellen Bauder Andrews serve as producers. 

In the film, two sworn enemies - a tiny woodland creature named Ollie (voiced by Jordan) and a regal bird named Ivy (voiced by Temple) - are forced to walk in each other’s “feathers and fur” as they embark together on a wild journey of survival. Greno spoke with AWN about the film’s long development, its focus on empathy, and the creative decisions behind its distinctive design.

But first, enjoy the trailer:

Dan Sarto: We met back in 2019 at the studio. I popped into your office for like 30 seconds after being introduced to you as the director on a new yet untitled film. And here we are seven years later.

Nathan Greno: I actually do remember, because when you popped on screen, I was like, “Oh, I'm not great with dates, and sometimes I forget names, but I remember… hey, we know each other.”

DS: Pleased to say I thoroughly enjoyed your film. From the production design to the story and character designs… the acting… nicely done! And I know you’ve been on this film for a very, very long time.

NG: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been a long time.

DS: I know it took a while, but you’ve made a really smart, great-looking, well-told film, so I have to congratulate you.

NG: Thank you. It's a team sport, but I really appreciate you saying that.

DS: There are certain things I look for, like the pacing. Does the third act fall apart? How are the scenes composed? Am I distracted? Is there too much going on? And your film felt so organic and deliberate. I had to say that up front.

NG: Good, good!

DS: So, tell me about the genesis of the film. I know it took years to develop, went through a name change, studio management changes, but you just kept grinding it out. How did this all start?

NG: It was a long road, and now that we're here, I gotta say, it was completely worth it. From the very beginning, the idea was always to tell a story about empathy. Now, the original pitch was a story about teenagers from different walks of life who got superpowers and learned to empathize with one another, which is not what the movie’s about.

Honestly, I didn't really even know what I was signing up for when I said I wanted to pitch a movie about empathy. Because the trick is, if you do it the right way, there’s no black and white. There is no good guy, there is no bad guy. And while there are bad people in our world, and we do have a villain in the movie, to truly do it right - a story about gaining perspective - there has to be somebody in a bubble who steps outside of their bubble.

We've seen it so many times, where you step outside your bubble and go, “Oh, I was wrong about these things.” And it's usually a human that transforms into an animal, and the human’s usually, “Oh, I was wrong!”

It's been done. It's been done well. But it's been done so many times. So, we were really challenging ourselves, from screening to screening, to figure out, “How do you make both sides have a point?” Because that's really what life is. It’s about nuance. I've talked to people in both [U.S.] political parties, where they say, “You know who needs this? The other side.” And I always go, “I think both sides need this.”

It's a movie for everyone, honestly - a reflection of our world in a fun way. And that’s where bringing these animals and these plant-to-animal hybrids into the mix was part of it.

DS: What inspired the incredible designs? Too much animation today looks the same. Your film does not. What inspired this amalgam of plant and animal? How long did it take to arrive at that idea, that look? And what role did nature play in that inspiration?

NG: What we tried to do from the very beginning, if you're gonna tell a story about empathy, is to create the other side. That was one of the big things right away. So, we decided to just have animals in this world, like I said, because we've seen the version of the human becoming the animal.

What we tried to do is play with the idea of, “Okay, so it's nature, and it's gonna be creatures transforming into other creatures.” That felt very fresh and different. But to create our own species, that was something else. Not to get ahead of where this movie goes, as there are a lot of twists, but there’s a lot of perspective that's gained by creating your own creatures.

We all look at ourselves - or I'll say I do - as I'm the little guy in this world just trying to figure it out. I’ve got my mortgage, and I'm trying to get by, get my movies made. And I think everyone sees themselves as a version of that. Growing up in Wisconsin, I can tell you that's definitely the case with my family.

So, the idea that you'd come into this world in your bubble as the smallest creature - the perspective of the protagonist is the same as the audience. You come into this world, and you kind of learn about the world through the protagonist, and your understanding is at the same level. And you’re like, what is a Pookoo? What is their understanding? They're giving you their perspective.

Now, again, to create the other, we shot the movie focusing on nature, looking at many animal documentaries, and really made the film feel like you're one of these small creatures. You feel very small, very vulnerable in this world. That was the goal.

With all these other creatures in the world, how in the world can this tiny little creature have anything to do with these walking redwood trees that are very much plant? So, we created a spectrum of plant to animal creatures.

But this is not The Jungle Book. Language was a big one for us too. The species do not understand one another. We haven’t seen this before. We come into this world where we don't even speak the same languages, and we look so different. Everything about us is different from one another. All of that was purposely done to create the other, so that you are very much in the perspective of the Pookoo.

As you go through the movie with Ollie, you're gaining perspective. You literally are transforming - you’re gaining new eyes and a new perspective on how you see the world. We were constantly trying to find a way to tell this story of empathy in a way that felt real, grounded, and emotionally true.

DS: Aside from how long it took to arrive at that story, as you mentioned, your original pitch is not even close to what the film became. How long until you hit on your final designs?

NG: We had such a great team when it came to designs. We really worked those designs quite hard, honestly, to get them to something that felt unique. It took a while.

My original pitch was about these four teenagers that couldn't be more different from one another. They have superpowers, and they're gaining empathy for one another, which is not what our actual movie's about. Our movie's about empathy.

But what happened was, we were doing all this heavy, heavy research on empathy - walking a mile in someone else's shoes. This was before we even had a story worked out. And the research kept speaking to a different kind of film. We would try to incorporate that into what we had, and we ended up with this sort of Frankenstein monster of a thing. So, I walk into John Lasseter's office one day, and I said, “I have something to bring up. I think we're doing the movie wrong.”

And he says, “Okay, why?”

And so, I pitched it out, and I said, “Here's what the research is speaking to. It feels like it should be about transformation. We're researching how with empathy, even if you don’t have language, you could still connect with one another. What if we played with that idea? We're not doing any of this stuff that the research is saying.”

And John said, “Okay, I agree with all these points. What do you want to do?”

And I said, “I want to blow it up.”

And to John's credit, he's like, “Okay, let's do it.” In talking to our small crew at the time, someone brought up that we’d already seen humans transform into animals. And to give John credit, he said, “What if there are no humans?” And that got us on this path to doing something very different and unique.

DS: The film is so beautifully framed. The production design - you move from very intimate, small scale to scenes with very big, grand environments. I never felt distracted, I never felt anything was out of place. Everything felt so natural, and it belonged in that world. Tell me a little bit about how you figured out how to lay the film out and shoot it.

NG: Again, like me coming from this small town in Wisconsin, that’s very much my journey - going from a place that feels very intimate, very quaint in some ways, and very comfortable.

I have to give it to Noelle Triaureau, our production designer, who really dug into this whole idea of how we can use cameras. We looked at research on how animals see differently, how they communicate differently. We brought in experts on animal behavior. We really just kept going back to the research - how can we use this amazing giant pile of research that we had to tell the story in a unique way?

It was very hard early on as we put up screenings because it's story artists doing drawings and they just didn't have the tools to sell things yet. All that frosting, I’ll say, came later - that was such a great part of the production design - that came after we figured out the story. All the design elements in our world came from a tremendous amount of research on animals and wildlife.

DS: After watching your film, what do you hope audiences take away?

NG: Well, I think we live in a world right now where there is a lack of empathy. And I’ve wanted to make a movie about empathy for six or seven years now. And here we are. I think we still need that movie.

We need these kinds of things in the world that reinforce the idea of looking outside our bubbles. We get our news from social media that speaks to us, that is in line with how we feel, so that's where we go to check news. You even do that in life. You tend to hang out with the people that speak to you the way you want to hear things. That's comfortable. That’s being human.

But to challenge yourself - this is something that I need just as much as anybody else. I'm not sitting here on my high horse. The idea of expanding how we see each other - that everything is not just good or bad, it's not always as simple as black and white - I think we all, deep down, want the same thing in this world.

We want our families to feel safe. We want to live in a world that's safe.

How we get there is debatable between different groups of people, but I’ll say that deep down, we have more in common than we realize. And if you just take a moment to try to see things from someone else's perspective and realize that connectivity is what makes us strong - when we can connect with each other, we’re stronger together - that’s what the film says.

DS: Absolutely. I also have to ask you really quickly - when you first came up with Ivy, Violet, and Lily, were they always going to be voiced by Brits? It was just such brilliant casting.

NG: You know, each species is not meant to represent any one group of people. We were just looking for ways to make each species a little different from one another. We were trying to constantly surprise the audience.

So that idea came up because we wanted to cast Juno Temple. She was so great as Ivy, and we had Michael B. Jordan playing Ollie. And as we started talking about how there were going to be more birds in the film, we thought, “Well, why would Ivy have an accent and the others not have an accent? Can we use that?” When we hit on that, it honestly came from wanting to cast Juno.

DS: Well, it’s animation, and good, funny voices are always great to have. And I’ll be honest; this is the first thing I’ve ever really liked Tracy Morgan in. So, congratulations on that too.

NG: That’s fantastic. I really love Tracy. This was a chance for him to show some range that he's very capable of. And he did it on the spot, by the way. There was no warm-up. He didn’t have time to think about it. It was a new idea that came into the movie when he went into the recording session. He was always going to play the character he plays, but he was able to give it that little bit of extra range.

DS: Well, he did. He never plays that type of character, which I think made his performance that much better. Congratulations on the film and on its release.

NG: Thank you. I really appreciate that. It means a lot.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.