With ‘ I Am Groot,’ director Kristen Lepore is now in her second go-around of bringing the character of Baby Groot to life in a slew of animated shorts. And to chat more about Season 2 coming to Disney+, Lepore sat down to dive into how Marvel’s only tree superhero has become the center of attention for many fans, and what went into creating the sophomore season of this hit show.
Marvel is obviously huge in the world of entertainment, and Groot is such a well-known character in that world. What were your thoughts when you first heard you landed the opportunity to write and direct ‘Baby Groot’?
I’m a comic nerd and I make really weird animated shorts mostly—so I didn’t think that they would ever want me for something. But then after a meeting with Brad (Winderbaum), they sent me the brief…They knew they wanted a show about Baby Groot, and they knew they wanted him to go on these adventures and meet some new characters and just explore the universe…plus, for us to get a deeper dive into his childhood and kind of what he was up to in between some of the ‘Guardians’ movies.
And I jumped at the chance, I was so excited. Also because a superhero who is a tree is my favorite kind of superhero, it really appealed to me. I just pitched on that and then was shocked when I got it and when they wanted my brand of weirdness for the show.
Since then, working on seasons one and two, it’s been so fun to be able to not only work with a character that’s really universal in some sense, but I feel like we can see [ourselves] in Baby Groot as that little mischievous kid. And he can relate on all levels too because he only has one line, so it doesn’t matter what language you speak, you can kind of understand him. It was super fun working with that character and just coming up with these crazy scenarios to put him in, his personality is so strong already and it shines in any situation.
How do you come up with each episode and what scenarios we see Baby Groot get into?
I think my background in shorts is probably helpful for that because it’s like, okay, you got to tell this whole story in three minutes… That’s what you have. So that exercise was really fun, just coming up with all these different scenarios for both Season 1 and 2. With our story editor, and I don’t know if our storyboard artist was involved yet, but we started brainstorming 30 different log lines for what an episode could be for each season—so out there somewhere is 60 potential episodes. I sent them up the chain and then they let us know which ones they were most excited about and we narrowed it down to five for each season.
We had some wacky ones in there and surprisingly to me, they picked some of the wackiest ones. I couldn’t believe when I pitched “Groot Gets a Nose” and it came back circled on this document. I was like, no way, I’m so excited we get to make this. They’ve been just totally awesome—everyone at Marvel and the whole crew, they’ve been super supportive of us really going there with this character and having fun, and I think audiences are enjoying that as well. It’s just something really different and comedic in the Marvel animation space.
In the world of shorts, what are the benefits of having that limited amount of time to tell the story and what are perhaps some of the challenges?
I think it definitely comes with a lot of practice and experience figuring it out. I mean even for me, I’ve been doing it for so long, and with that specific short format there were some times where we were like, oh, this one really wants to be five minutes, and so we would narrow it down. But we’d also have that in mind when we pitched the ideas. It’s like a mini three-act structure in there for all of them in a way, but once you get too many things that you’re trying to add on, you’re like, okay, that’s not going to work. So you have to be really picky and choosy.
There are also times when a lot of credit goes to our editor when you think you really need that five minutes. I think as the writer and director, you don’t want to kill your darlings, and then the editor’s kind of like, well let’s just maybe take out this. And then you watch it, and you’re like oh… you’re right, it’s better.
Do any episodes stand out to you as quintessential Baby Groot?
From Season 1, I feel like the bath episode, that one feels really quintessential Groot where he’s just playing and he’s growing all of the leaves and everything. Then in Season 2, they’re all quintessential, but the snow one comes to mind, where you kind of get a montage of him just playing. You get to see what he comes up with when he’s literally just having a snow day, and then of course, it escalates to a crazy point as is the case most of the time that Groot gets involved.
Why do you think the character of Groot has taken off so much?
I feel like it may be the fact that he is a tree or a non-human character. I feel like when it’s not a human, it becomes more relatable to everyone because you don’t have those specifics of that human trait or of that actor or whatever. There’s something about seeing an animal or a tree that’s anthropomorphized that I think we somehow can identify with more.
With Baby Groot, there’s just so many ideas. Even as we were coming up with scenarios, they just flew straight out of my childhood or out of the childhood of our story editor, Ryan. It just pulls on so many things that we’ve all gone through and we’ve all been there… I mean, for me, a suburban kid in New Jersey, I definitely chased after that ice cream truck that happens in an episode. That was super autobiographical for me. So yeah, I think he just becomes the child in all of us.
‘I Am Groot’ Season 2 is streaming exclusively on Disney+ beginning Sept. 6.
