Clone High is officially back for Season 2 as new episodes of the animated series will be making their debut with the Max streaming service beginning on May 23rd, and we got the chance to speak with two of the minds behind this new take on the classic show! Clone High always felt like more of a cult hit when it first premiered on MTV over 20 years ago at this point, but fans of the series have been keeping the love alive. It was felt to such an extent over the years that now Clone High is actually able to pick up from that 20 year old cliffhanger!
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But things have changed over the last 20 years both behind the scenes and in Clone High itself. Clone High‘s new series is being treated as a Season 2 of the original run with MTV, but at the same time is also a new entry point for fans curious about what the franchise has to offer. This was a tough tightrope for those behind Clone High‘s new episodes to walk, and ComicBook.com got to dig into a little bit of how things were put together for this revival.
We got to sit down for a few minutes with Clone High co-showrunners Erica Rivinoja and Erik Durbin in anticipation of Clone High’s new episodes on Max, and they opened up about bringing the series back after 20 years, changes made for the new take, new characters, and most importantly, keeping the spirit of the original Clone High season alive.
Read on for our interview with Clone High co-showrunners Erica Rivinoja and Erik Durbin (which has been edited for clarity and in respect for some spoilers for future episodes), and let us know all of your thoughts about the new Clone High in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!
Coming Back for Season 2
NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK.COM: I am so excited to speak with the two of you because I didn’t really think Clone High Season 2 would actually ever happen. It always felt like a smaller hit and it’s been so many years. So I just want to know what it felt like to actually get in there and start working on these new episodes. Was there a goal in mind that the team had to accomplish with this revival?
ERICA RIVINOJA: Because I was a staff writer on the original one 20 years ago, for me it was just a job that I never thought I would have again, ever. So it was really exciting. Because I loved those characters, just to be able to explore life with those characters again, but also be able to add new ones and to put them in new experiences that they hadn’t done. It was really fun for me to be able to have the same job but different, make it different and better.
Erik, you came in with [Clone High’s] revival show, so as someone coming in with fresh eyes, how did that feel?
ERIK DURBIN: Having fresh eyes hopefully was a good thing. They, Erica had been working on the revival for at least a couple of years. Who knows how long you were actually thinking on it before you… Maybe even three years. I don’t know.
RIVINOJA: I think it was three years, yeah. But then Erik came in and his fresh eyes were so good because I’d just been in this three-year slog and then he came in and was like, “This works, that doesn’t.” It was so helpful. He just breathed new life into this whole thing and it was fantastic.
DURBIN: I honestly thought about this a lot of when a doctor takes the oath of “Do no harm.” I was like, “Don’t break it. Don’t break this wonderful thing.” Not that anyone would, because there’s so many great, wonderful people involved, but I just want to be additive and to come in a place where there’s so much that’s already sort of put in place, right? And such a lovely way to infuse something in it and to add something to it without doing something to hurt it. It was like, “Oh, maybe this is what doctors feel like sometimes.”
RIVINOJA: I think that’s how we all felt, just reviving it though. Another doctor thing though is people love the first one so much, so how do we take what they loved about it, but also update it, make it funny for what we want to see right now? How do we add new characters? So we’re worrying about that.
DURBIN: Not breaking it. Yeah.
RIVINOJA: Yeah. About not breaking it.
Making Changes for Season 2
So speaking along those lines actually, things have changed since the original Clone High was around. It’s tackled head on in the premiere, too with the absence of Gandhi, changes to certain lingos and certain styles, and more. So what was that process like in trying to figure out the balance in what was changed for [the Clone High revival] versus what you wanted to keep the same and still capture that Clone High voice?
RIVINOJA: It’s a constant debate and thing that we’re working on. We obviously want to make the fans of the original one happy with treats and characters and references and stuff, but there’s hopefully a whole new set of fans. So we don’t want to alienate the new set of fans with just having a bunch of inside jokes. So it’s always a balancing act about, “Well, what do we do to reference the old one? How do we do new ones?” I think that we just sort of landed on, “Well, what makes us laugh right now? What do we want to see these characters do? What is it that is in the zeitgeist? What are these genres that we want to play with right now?” So I hope we did it well.
That felt like a big thing from the premiere. Making sure that you say in the text of the series that, “Hey, things are changing.”
RIVINOJA: Yes. It’s also been our experience since those 20 years ago, things have changed a lot for the better. We’re doing a lot better job than we did just with casting and representation and stuff. So everything’s always changing. So that’s what we were trying to hit in that pilot episode.
Picking the New Clones
Clone High’s first season introduced all sorts of distinct historical figures already, so what was the process of figuring out, “Okay, let’s introduce Frida Kahlo and Confucius” and then making them funny?
DURBIN: I wasn’t there for the beginning of the genesis of that situation. So for me, what I love about the idea of historical figures as teenagers, generally speaking, the specificity of who they are and the representation on a broader scale of being…I love that that’s added to it, but also showing how people, no matter how amazing they ended up becoming in history, that when they were teenagers, they were fuck-ups.
They had problems, they couldn’t get relationships right. You’re not born the Harriet Tubman that we came to know, or you’re not born the Confucius we came to know, or the Abe Lincoln or the [Joan of Arc]. You become that. It gives everyone hope in a way. To me it’s like, okay, there’s hope for everyone. If these guys could be this kind of messed up and confused in high school and then go on to become the people, to have the DNA inside them that we know they have.
RIVINOJA: Yeah, that’s really what we were developing. It’s the same with the original one. Who would we want to see during their awkward years in high school? That’s sort of how we arrived at these characters. And with Topher Bus, Christopher Columbus, we just wanted to shit on Christopher Columbus.
DURBIN: Yeah.
RIVINOJA: That’s it. Just play with his legacy a little bit.
Introducing Christa Miller’s New Character
Yeah, that’s the stuff I dig. Representation’s a big deal in this new Clone High. Christa Miller, who was Cleopatra in the original version, now she’s this new character, Candide [Sampson]. So I was hoping to get some of your insight on developing this new character for Christa Miller’s return since she was such a notable part of the original series. It’s not like you could have not brought her back for this new one.
RIVINOJA: Correct. We knew that we had to cast Cleopatra with a person of color, and we were excited to do that. Especially when we found Mitra Jouhari, she’s just comic genius. But Christa was so funny and so integral to the show and just really wanted to be involved. And so we wanted to make sure that she could still be around. So we decided Principal Scudworth thinks that he’s the boss of everything, so wouldn’t it be funny for him to have a boss? Then she just brought this evil wonder to it and it was so funny to us. We loved developing that character.
New Genres Explored in Season 2
One of the things I did want to touch on was we got a musical episode! Season one had the raisin rock opera, so was it like, “Okay, we had a musical episode the first season, we have to do some kind of musical in season two?”
RIVINOJA: Honestly, we just really love musicals because we’re dorks and we just really wanted to do a musical episode. We weren’t even trying to replicate anything. We were just like, “Oh, this would be fun to do a musical episode.” But we wanted to do a lot more of the genre episodes this time around because there are so many more genres of these high school and [Young Adult] things. So that was really a lot more driving a lot of the stories with this. We did [a] horror one and the musical one, and then there’s like a post-apocalyptic, Hunger Games-y kind of one and stuff. So we really liked doing those genre ones.
DURBIN: But yeah, that’s what I love coming in is each one of these felt like its own its genre, a little universe in itself and created a fun experience that was just specific to the episode, while connecting the story and the through line, while having it feel like the series was evolving.
RIVINOJA: And the drama, the relationship drama.
DURBIN: The drama.
Second Chances
Digging into that even further, part of Clone High‘s appeal in Season One was that it out right at the time as we started to get all these MTV shows that were very heavy-handed with teens with their problems being their entire universe. This is all they care about. Speaking to that and the genres you’ve touched on, was there something in particular that you were able to hit with these new episodes that you wanted to do back then but never could?
RIVINOJA: Yes. The thing that has been consistent throughout time. That’s right, I’m saying consistent throughout time, is that when you are in high school, it is the most important time ever for that person. People in high school take high school very seriously. It seems all encompassing. It seems like that is your entire world and it always will be. It’s the feelings and everything are so emotional in high school and it’s just really exploring that. It’s what we did in the original when we were parodying Dawson’s Creek and 90210 and all those.
Then it’s what we’re doing right now with all the other ones that are happening, Yellowjackets, Riverdale, [and more]. It’s really just that sort of, high school is important and the relationships you have in high school are so important. And there’s a bunch of jokes in there about high school relationships last forever and that sort of thing. So it’s just that’s eternal to us, I think. All of time. I said it. All of time.
Final Thoughts
As a final question, both old and new fans are watching these Clone High episodes. Is there something you’re hoping to get across to these different audiences with the new Clone High season?
RIVINOJA: I mean, think we just want to make people laugh. It’s still really just be able to laugh at themselves, at historical figures. We’re always doing that. There’s some smart historical references and then really silly poop jokes too. We want to make people laugh about everything.
DURBIN: Yeah, and like you were saying those new shows that came out with the team dramas and how time immemorial, it’s been this thing. It’s the most important time in your life, but it’s gotten even more important, it feels like now. People are much more in touch with their feelings. Kids are expressing themselves in ways maybe they’ve never had the words for or opportunity to. And this show kind of dug into that 20 years ago and now it’s even more of a thing and it’s even more of something that you can respect, but at the same time make fun of when it goes too far. It’s a fun comedy zone to navigate in a drama-comedy kind of way. Hopefully, the show 20 years ago can be a, “Okay, this is kind of a kickoff for that vibe” and we can just continue to dig into it more.
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