Autism Awareness Month: Pablo – Interview with Head Writer Andrew Brenner
April is a very important time of year for many autistic individuals and their families as it is also known as Autism Awareness Month. We are celebrating and raising awareness with a series of interviews with producers, writers and directors who have created animated content around this subject.
As both a writer for Skwigly and a proud autistic person myself, I want to thank everyone involved who has made it possible to share these amazing behind the scenes stories and what they have learned on productions that have become important to them. Here I speak with Andrew Brenner, the head writer on pre-school show Pablo; a series that follows the adventures of a five year old autistic boy and his imaginary animal friends.
Pablo
Before you were a creator and writer for some of the most iconic animated television shows for children, I read on your website that you worked with autistic children as well as students with special needs. Now that you’ve written for shows like Pablo and Punky, did this past experience make a lasting impact on you as a writer?
I think it probably did, but I don’t think I realised that for a long time. I was still in school when I went and helped out in schools for children with different disabilities. So I was working with a variety of children. I can’t even remember how long I would go in for, but it was for a short period of time. But I found it very interesting and I remember in particular a couple of the children there, one of whom was down syndrome. And so I had a sense of connecting with people with different kinds of abilities and disabilities and a lot of the children there, some of them had physical disabilities as well.
And then the autism connection came up really when I left school. I was having a year off, and I was doing performance and music and things like that and I needed some work. A friend of my Mum’s ran a very small school for autistic children, where they worked one-to-one and had a video library and wanted someone to record sessions and organise it. The way that they worked, a bit like what we’re doing, where you record something in order to kind of reflect on it and make notes. And then eventually it led to making little films which are kind of like case histories of the work they were doing there that they would show and discuss with other professionals. I was learning a lot about the way they saw autism at the time, which became very different later, but it really interested me and a lot of the kids really inspired me because of their way of relating to things.
I really liked the atmosphere in that school so that stayed with me, but I didn’t come back to it until all these years later when Pablo came up; which came after Punky. They came, they appeared and I engaged with them and found them interesting and I learned a lot on Pablo in a different way than I did on Punky because the way I worked on Punky was very different.
One series you wrote for, as you said, was Punky. When you wrote that, what obstacles were there to write this character and to represent disability for a broad audience? What did you take away from that, for when you were writing for Pablo, which was about seven years later?
Not that the seven or eight years sounds like a bigger gap than I think it is, but maybe you’re right. I don’t remember between the two jobs. When I worked on Punky I did a lot of research, I looked at a lot of vlogs. So there were a number of teenagers and young adults with Down Syndrome who were making vlogs about themselves and their experiences. There were a lot of videos that parents had put up of younger kids on YouTube and things. And then there were blogs about younger kids and I was kind of looking at all that material.
But I also had a memory of working with children with down syndrome and I didn’t feel it was as difficult for me to get into something of their perspective. I mean, it may have been, I’m sure there’s aspects of it that I missed out on, because now having worked on Pablo, I’d be really interested in working with down syndrome writers and collaborating because I think that is a better way to do it. And in fact, I’m thinking about doing that on a future project. But at the time, I hadn’t thought about that and really, when I met Aimee Richardson (who voiced it), when I went to a recording session and met her, I started to realise the potential and she gave feedback and influence the stories and had ideas which we used. And she was keeping a diary herself, which she wanted to share with me about the experience of recording the show and things.
So I feel like in hindsight, a much more collaborative process would have worked. But at the time, it wasn’t like that. I did research and worked rather more independently, because when I listened to the vlogs, and even when I talked to Aimee, I could identify with the things they were attached, I could get it. And so I wrote from that feeling that I was in tune with the character in a sense.
Punky
You were the head writer for Thomas the Tank Engine – what it was like to take that responsibility for such a globally recognised brand?
Well, it was interesting. I had worked on Thomas, writing comics, years and years before. So before I’d written any television, I wrote comics for a while. A lot of the things I wrote were TV spin-offs and preschool titles. And so I worked on Thomas originally when the first series had come out. I adapted all of those stories into comic form and then when we ran out of stories, I wrote original stories and by the time the third series came out, they started using some of those original stories in the TV series. So my first work for television wasn’t really credited, because they just used the stories from the comics without crediting. It was a bit frustrating.
So it took a while for me to come back to Thomas. I had been asked to do it and I had not wanted to because I still thought about what hadn’t been right. But when I came back onto Thomas, and I looked at what was happening with it, I had a very strong feeling about what that show was like, and how I originally connected to it. And so it was very interesting to me. I was trying to reconnect to Thomas to the way that I saw the show and what they had gone away from that at that stage. And with Thomas, it has kind of been through so many different variations. It was a big responsibility.
But I felt like we were on the same track in terms of what we were trying to do. We were trying to bring it back to the spirit of the earlier series with more energy, but with the same story world and being maybe more true to the Reverend Awdry’s version of it without being too strict about that, but nevertheless, going back to the roots of what had made that show popular in the first place.
The reason I mentioned Thomas the Tank Engine is because with certain autism groups, they’ve done research, with Thomas having a huge connection with children on the autistic spectrum. Why do you think it has such a special appeal?
I don’t know if I have a simple explanation for that. I mean, it’s obvious that they like the train thing, I connect with the train thing as well. Like I had a train set as a kid, I was always fascinated by trains, and I loved all of that. At the same time I connect with autistic adults and kids and the adults I’ve worked with; I felt like I’ve got really good connection with the people I’ve collaborated with. When I came back on to do Thomas as a series, there was already a strong awareness of these fans and their influence, because they’re very active online and they look very carefully at whatever is done with Thomas. They’re an influential fan group and at that time, they were kind of saying we need to take this into account more; we need to collaborate with these people. And also, they know more about the series than anyone.
I know that there’s that connection with a number of different kinds of shows. Thomas, in particular seems to connect almost exclusively with a really large group of boys who stay with the show. I think the difference is that the autistic fans stay with the show and they stay loyal to it and it remains an important part of the really serious diehard fans. It remains an important part of their life, you know, as they as they become young adults and they look at it really critically and engage in the process of the filmmaking and storytelling at a level of detail. I understand the appeal of train and track systems and the structure of a railway and all of that so I like that as well. And I think that probably is part of it. That there’s a system that things work along with very definite rules and you can see that the fans are very clear about what those rules are and they notice deviance from them.
They also notice if you go off character and change how someone behaves. There’s an expectation that the characters will not change in that kind of way. So when you have a series that’s run to hundreds of episodes and you have writers who’ve come with different points of view, there’s been a lot of inconsistency and those writers have wanted that consistency and that’s probably a part of what it is. Thomas represents a very ordered and consistent world which appeals to a certain kind of autistic person. There’s a large fan base who love it.
They had easy-to-read expressions and soft colours as well. They are distinct, but not loud. For example, James is red, Gordon is blue; but they’re not really bright and overwhelming. Like you said, there was a formula to it as well. It was interesting to hear your perspective on that.
I think the thing about the faces is very interesting. And I’ve heard that talked about before and the way that they did that, where they had different set faces that they put on, but because it wasn’t animated, those faces were static and clear. It was a different way of approaching it. And there’s something about those model worlds. I mean, for me, there was that in the original series, it was the appeal of the model world that was really strong, because it felt like what you would have when you play, you know, felt like your toys.
Thomas the Tank Engine
After all your work on Thomas and Punky, how did you become the head writer on Pablo? And what was it about the show that appealed to you in particular?
I got approached to work on Pablo. I got sent the show idea and asked if I was interested, and I was, because I was interested in autism anyway and thought there had never been an autistic character portrayed in children’s animation that I knew of. I felt like that would be a really interesting thing to try to do, so I wanted to do it straightaway. I guess it was related to the fact that I already had known autistic children from before and had been interested by all of that, but it probably was related to the fact that Punky had been so interesting.
One of the interesting things for me about Pablo is that some of the voice actors are also on the autistic spectrum themselves, as well as writers on the show. What was it like to collaborate on the episodes?
I ended up collaborating on it probably more than on anything I’ve ever done before and that was because of the way the show developed. I’ve had a number of experiences in the past where I was the only writer on a series – so when I wrote Maisie, I was the only writer. When I wrote my own series Humf, I was the only writer. The very first thing I wrote for television was Caribou Kitchen, which was another original series of mine and I wrote all of that. So I kind of started with frequently being the only writer, sometime after that I was part of teams. When you’re writing on a team, you’re usually writing on your own. I didn’t collaborate a lot.
But when I started work on Pablo, I did the same thing at the beginning that I had done on Punky, which was to try to do some research to understand what Pablo as a character might be experiencing from himself, you know, his point of view. It wasn’t like Punky, because I don’t want to assume something about Pablo’s point of view as an autistic child, when I don’t share that experience. I really wanted to know what that experience feels like from his point of view, and to write it truthfully.
So I started to do a lot of research, and I didn’t want to write from a parent’s point of view; there were a lot of parents who had written about their children. I didn’t want to write from a professional point of view because I felt that was like an outside perspective, like an analysis of what they think is going on or somebody’s thinking. So I looked for autobiographical material, but not that much that was written about pre-school experience. A lot of it was written about being a bit older, like there would be a little bit about preschool, and then it would go into older things. So I just continued like that. After a while, I came across things which were about autistic self advocacy, and people defining things for themselves. I felt like the only way to do this really is to collaborate and put a team together – whether they’re writers or not. To find people who had stories that they wanted to tell and to work with them; bringing my experience of writing children’s television together with their experiences and stories of autistic experience.
As a head writer, I look at their story, send some notes, make some suggestions, get another draft and so on. They were new writers, so they didn’t have a lot of experience, but they wanted to be writers and they knew a little bit about that process. Some of them were really talented and some of them were already into pre-school television. One of them was a big Thomas fan, so he liked a lot of pre-school television and he had a pre-school storytelling style. Some of the other writers had an older sensibility, because the things they were into were like, Marvel superheroes or whatever, something different, which brings with it a different sensibility. Some of the humour, I would say, “That’s too old. I think these kids are really little.” And then there were other people who I co-wrote with where we would talk about story ideas, about experiences; and then slowly find what could turn into a story and shape it and write it together.
Sumita Majumdar and I wrote a huge number of scripts together, because that collaboration worked particularly well. And then there were some people who really didn’t want to write, but were happy to kind of talk about the show and the characters and the stories and come up with ideas for stories. I would get work with them or work with the ideas that they put forward and then I would write the script based on what their suggestions were. So there were kind of three ways of working. And it was great. It was really exciting. And the stories were different to the stories that you would get on other shows.
How did the concepts develop for the animal friends that Pablo has, and what was the decisions behind that?
Before I came on board, Grainne McGuinness had already developed the idea for Pablo and she had already created the animal characters. At that time, they weren’t called the Book Animals; they were just these animal characters and she had given those names. In the script, the very first scripts that she showed me, Pablo had drawn the animals and they were autistic like him, but he was going to help them solve their problems and when I looked at that, I kind of turned the thing about who was helping who around a bit. I thought, ‘if Pablo’s drawing these characters, he’s drawing them to help him solve his problems. So he’s going into this world where they’re all going to help him in some way.’ And then that gradually developed into this sense that they had different approaches, different ideas and strategies about what would be helpful. He would go for help and then there would be an exploration – sometimes one character’s strategy would be helpful, and sometimes it wouldn’t. And sometimes it would be someone else’s strategy or understanding that would be helpful between them. They would work through these things. Sometimes it wasn’t always problems. I felt that was really important that it was also things that they enjoyed, adventures that would come from pursuing something that interests you or excites you.
The idea that these characters had different traits, which were considered autistic traits, were already there and that changed a little bit. The first two people that I started working with were Rosie King, who was the youngest writer that we had at that time, and Donna Williams, who was the oldest writer that we had, in Australia. Donna was a huge influence on the first series and at the beginning of the show, because she had written a lot about autism from her own perspective and she’d written her own autobiographies first and the first question that came up, which actually came from both of them was for most autistic people, it wouldn’t be an animal that would be their first friend. It would probably be some object; they would relate to objects more than animals. That was part of the how the show developed and Donna then said “If they came from a book, like if Pablo was interested in animals and he read about them in books, they could be friends that come from books.” So they became the Book Animals.
One of Rosie’s early stories was about shoes. Choosing what shoes to wear and feeling sad for the ones that would be left behind, and that they would feel sad because they weren’t taken out for the day. So there was the aspect of having relationships to things around them as children and that became part of the way that Pablo related to things- which seems to be quite common across a lot of people.
How much research on autism did you do for the show? And what were your favourite findings that you used for an episode?
I like reading the writing of various autistic people, especially talking about their personal experiences and some of them who’ve gone into academia. I know a lot of people who are very creative as well.
I did a lot of research and it continues to be interesting to me – it’s just so varied. When it comes down to specific stories, the process of writing was a process of research because they weren’t my stories. At the very beginning, I was trying to create some stories, and I did do the odd one in later episodes on my own, because something had naturally come from the process and I thought there’s a story to tell here and I knew what I wanted to tell.
But a lot of the time these are not my stories. I’m helping to tell them so I’m shaping stories with the people who are bringing these ideas. Every time you collaborate with someone, that’s research because someone’s telling you something about themselves through whatever story they tell. I think that’s true with everybody. You don’t tell the story for no reason. They tell it for some reason and so there’s something in there that you can learn.
Pablo and Cousin Ze
In the second season, Constantine came on and wrote some episodes and he brought in this new character, Cousin Ze, and he wrote about singing The Wheels On The Bus and how the song was alive, because the wheels have to stop and not go around all day long otherwise the bus would never let anyone on or off and I just thought it was very funny story. It was a very fresh vision and he had a really strong sense of what he wanted to do. He’s a really strong storyteller.
The supermarket story was such an exciting story to write and discover. That way of talking about the experience of being in a place which is so intense and is really difficult. But there was a way of telling that story, which was also really fun and funny and a lot of it was about the impulse to take these things off the shelf, because they’re calling you and we know that people are designing products to call you all the time. But for someone like Pablo, that could be a really intense impulse and to me, writing about it from that and learning about that experience and how that can affect characters.
Between collaborating with the other writers and the research, what did you learn from writing for Pablo? How do you feel that will impact your writing career moving forward?
One of the strongest things, I think, is to do with this relationship to objects, but it’s about a different way of relating to the world in a sense. Where a number of people have spoken about it quite explicitly, including Donna Williams, where every aspect of the world has life to it. So I think young children really relate to that and these connections to toys is part of that. As adults we’re socialised out of that, so that kind of relationship, that’s really influenced me a lot. It’s made me think about how we live, the social structures that we have and what they impose on us, as opposed to the way we might be if we accepted more variation. I know it influences my writing in general because it opens up questions about other aspects of what it’s like to be human.
Through a lot of the stories, the autistic writers focus on slightly different aspects of things, which is another perspective; and having another perspective widens your view of things. I feel I’ve learned a lot from sharing these other perspectives and trying to enter into these other ways of looking at things.
Pablo has given a platform for creative autistic people to get a voice in the industry and has acted like a ladder for them into television. How do you feel representation and opportunities have grown in the writers’ room to include people from different backgrounds and disabilities?
Well, I would say there’s a moment right now of people really looking at the lack of diversity historically. Every now and then something will have been represented, but a lot of times, it’s not really come from a proper collaboration. Sometimes it has come from a genuine wish to open up and to be more diverse, but now it’s much more active. They are looking at diversity in front of and behind the screen. I do think Pablo stood out for taking a big step forward in the way that project was handled; the vast majority of the voice cast is autistic. All the key or all the autistic characters are definitely autistic in terms of voice, and then the writing team, apart from myself, were all autistic. I was just working with people to help them with their stories.
[Working like this] has given me an opportunity to do more mentoring work, and people who worked on Pablo have already realised other opportunities. Because of that, they’ve been able to go on and do different things.
You get confidence from working on things and that shift of confidence from actually achieving things can affect whatever you do next. That’s true for everybody, but it’s much harder if you’re disabled, because a lot of the time people assume that you’re not and there’s so much ableism. So a lot of people have lost confidence and to be given opportunities is to regain confidence and hopefully they can help people achieve things.
Andrew Brenner, Head Writer on Pablo (Credit: Photo by Andrew Brenner)
What are you working on next, or what you hope to work on next?
Well I’ve just written a first draft of a children’s novel. That’s an interesting new venture for me.
We’re developing an older version of Pablo at the moment. We’re working on a version which is where he’s in primary school. We’ve got a pilot script in hand and some ideas. It’s still in development. The possibilities with Pablo of making him older and exploring that character and developing all of that is still very much being thought about and explored. There’s a possibility of doing a stage show of the pre-school version.
Also, I’m working on the development of a number of other shows. I’ve been doing that and a bit more serious writing, but my novel has kind of taken centre for a while.
I’m trying to make a documentary about Donna Williams, who was one of the first autistic people to write a bestseller autobiography; and she wanted to find a way to tell this story in film.