Based on the popular and award-winning Dark Horse Comics graphic novels created and written by Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance) and illustrated by Gabriel Bá, the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy follows the “children” of Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), a billionaire industrialist who adopts seven of the 43 infants inexplicably born on the same day in 1989 to random women who showed no signs of pregnancy the day before. While they’ve been prepared to save the world, things are never that easy, and now that the impending apocalypse is very real, Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Vanya (Ellen Page) and Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) must get over their own family drama, if they have any chance of stopping global destruction.

At the Los Angeles press day to promote the new series, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with showrunner Steve Blackman and comic creator Gerard Way about adapting this bizarre world for TV, making some of the more surreal aspects of the story work, balancing the subversive with the whimsical, shooting the dance sequences, all of the Easter eggs, recording songs for the series, ending the season on a cliffhanger, action figures, the masks worn by Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige), and how they approached the changes they made.

the-umbrella-academy-image-20
Image via Netflix

Collider: I’ve watched the full season and absolutely loved it! The show is just so much bizarre fun.

GERARD WAY:  Oh, cool!

STEVE BLACKMAN:  That’s great!

Gerard, were you nervous, at all, about having this turned into a TV series? When you wrote this, did you think it was something that would likely not be able to be made?

WAY:  I wasn’t sure. I believe in the medium of comics so much, that I set out to make a really great comic, and that was it. But I’m a visual thinker, so I could also see this stuff, visually, not beyond a comic, but as moving images. So, I was extremely nervous. I still am. It’s really strange. It’s still happening. I wasn’t sure if they would be able to capture it, and they did. It’s just surreal, and really weird. I remember being at the table read in Toronto, and that was the first time that it really clicked for me. I wasn’t on set yet. It was the day before going on set, and they all did the read of the script together, and I was like, “This is crazy!” There were all of these people that cared about these characters and who could be spending a good part of their lives playing these characters.

Was there anyone that most surprised you because they were not what you expected for a particular character, or was there anyone that you felt was exactly what you thought a character was?

WAY:  The way they handled Luther, at first, I wasn’t sure if it was gonna work. First of all, I just didn’t know if Luther was gonna work, period. Then, Steve [Blackman] pitched me on his idea for how to have it make a little bit more sense, and I really liked the idea, but it’s different than the comic, so there’s some trepidation. But then, when I saw it in action, and I saw it on the page and in person, and he was wearing clothes, because in the comic he doesn’t wear clothes, it all worked with the character, so well. I thought it was a big improvement over the source.

the-umbrella-academy-image-17
Image via Netflix

Steve, at what point did you realize that you actually could bring all of the craziness of this story to life?

BLACKMAN:  I knew that I could because I make TV for a living, but it was a very tricky subject matter. With Pogo, I said to the network, “Yeah, I can do that.” And then, I was like, “How the fuck am I gonna do that?” It was a really tricky thing, but I don’t have to do him, I just have to find people who can do him really well. I realized that Weta, who’d done Planet of the Apes, had not done TV, at the time, so I phoned them and said, “How would you like to just do one amazing monkey for this?” And they said, “Well, we don’t do TV.” And I said, “Please do TV.” And they did, and they made this incredible. That wasn’t an actor. We had an actor on set, doing the eyeline and the lines, but he’s been completely removed. That’s a fully CG-animated monkey, and it was one of the big challenges. It was hard to do. You forget really early on that it’s a monkey and you realize that he’s like Alfred from the Batman series. He’s somebody that you care about, and the kids adore him. He’s a beautiful character.

This is a story with a lot of fantastical elements, but it’s also deeply human. What was it about this story that most deeply spoke to you?

BLACKMAN:  Well, that’s it. I had come off of Fargo for three years, and I did Altered Carbon for Netflix, and they said to me, “We have this graphic novel.” As much as I love comics, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that, but they said, “Just look at this one,” and I loved the dysfunctional family of it all. I love the idea of this dysfunctional family show with a body count. That was my tagline. It seemed important to me to show that, powers aside, how they would relate to each other? How did they survive being raised by a father like this? They come back, after years apart, like The Big Chill, and find themselves in a house together. That just spoke to me. I loved it, and I wanted to really lean into finding the subversive, fun and whimsical parts of it. It’s truly what I love about writing, so that was great. I fell in love with it, instantly.

the-umbrella-academy-image-19
Image via Netflix

And among all of these people getting murdered, and assassins, and fight sequences, there’s dancing. That’s my kind of weird! I love that! What were those dance sequences like to shoot?

BLACKMAN:  It was really hard to do. I told the DP, “I need you to hang about a thousand Christmas lights on a rake. Can you do that for me?” And he was like, “Okay.” So, they figured out how to do it on a huge crane and lower them in. I said, “I want them to lower in and pull out afterwards, and make it feel beautiful and surreal, and have it be less about seeing a dream sequence.” They figured out how to do it. Technically, it was very tricky. We were in a huge park at night, and we couldn’t lock people off, so there were homeless people just walking through the sequence, but we made it work. The two of them really love each other, in real life. Emmy [Raver-Lampman] and Tom [Hopper] are just great together. They learned that dance from Ellen Page’s wife, who was the choreographer. Emma Portner taught them that dance, and they did this great, beautiful dance together. It took them 12 hours of dancing, that night. And then, for “I Think You’re Alone Now,” they just had great moves. I gave them all moves and they said, “No, don’t give us moves. We’ve got our own moves!” I was like, “All right, let me see your moves.” To their credit, they had great moves, all of them.

Who wouldn’t want to dance to that song?

WAY:  It’s a great song!

BLACKMAN:  Yeah, and a whole generation won’t know that song. We may know that song, but a new generation is like, “That’s a great new song!” It’s a remake. Tiffany’s version is a remake of another song, just like “Hazy Shade” is not The Bangles, it’s Simon and Garfunkel.

WAY:  And I had never heard the Simon and Garfunkel one. I had only heard The Bangles.

BLACKMAN:  I love that!

the-umbrella-academy-image-12
Image via Netflix

Gerard, what was your reaction, the first time you walked onto the set for the Academy?

WAY:  That was really impressive. We walked in and it was just unbelievable. We couldn’t believe that we were standing inside.

BLACKMAN:  I was totally nervous. I was worried that they wouldn’t like the stuff.

WAY:  Gabriel and I were just standing there, looking around like, “I can’t believe this!” I was really impressed by the glass doors with the umbrellas on them. It was just so nice. There are all kinds of crazy details.

BLACKMAN:  Plus, there are tons of Easter eggs in all of the scenes. The fans will find lots of stuff. If you really care about the show and you’re a big fan, you’ll find stuff, all over the place.

Gerard, you didn’t want to do a cameo in the series, but you do have songs in the show? give a cameo in it, but you have a song.

WAY:  Yes.

BLACKMAN:  He was offered a cameo.

What made you decide to do the songs?

WAY:  It was just a conversation between Steve and I. He wanted to know if I would lend a song to it, and Netflix was interested in that, too, and we just made it happen. I got to do two covers for the show, one is The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” which appears in Episode 5, and then “Hazy Shade of Winter,” which is the trailer song, and it’s used again later. I got to do those with Ray Toro, who played guitar in My Chemical Romance. That was a lot of fun.

BLACKMAN:  We couldn’t imagine not having him do a song for us, and he was kind enough to do it for us. We had to have him singing in the show. It’s his show, so we had to have him singing in it.

the-umbrella-academy-image-2
Image via Netflix

How were the specific songs chosen?

WAY:  Steve really wanted “Happy Together.” I love that song, so that was cool. For the second one, we had discussions back and forth, and we both liked “Hazy Shade.”

BLACKMAN:  It just felt right. The words felt right, and it had a vibe to it. It felt good for both of us. Then, Gerard did it all by himself, with his team. We definitely wanted music to be a character on the show, and we wanted a break with the norm of having just 20 seconds. We play certain songs the whole way through. That just brings so much mood and energy sometimes to these scenes.

Gerard, why was it important to you to let everybody know where you wanted to take the story in the future, and share those story points with them, before the series started shooting?

WAY:  That way, they could plan for things, should we get to do this again and again.

BLACKMAN:  It was very helpful.

WAY:  I thought it would inform the characters, and the writers who write these characters. They could be like, “All right, later on, this character is gonna feel this way about this character.” It allowed them to plan it out a little bit better, by letting them know, and I had no issue with letting them know. It actually felt good to write the document because it has all been in my head for 12 years. I was like, “Let me just get this out,” and I did.

BLACKMAN:  I’m a big believer in planting things, early on, and having the viewer go, “Aha, I remember that from somewhere else.” Knowing where Gerard and Gabriel [Bá] are driving to, is very helpful for me, as I do my spin on it, in my own creative style. I know where their heads are going to be, down the road.

the-umbrella-academy-image-16
Image via Netflix

Have you thought about how many seasons you see this as?

BLACKMAN:  I know Gerard has eight volumes in his mind, so whether that translates to eight seasons, I don’t know. We combine certain seasons, and bits and pieces. It would be lovely to have four of five years of this show. That would be wonderful.

You end this season on a big cliffhanger, but it seems pretty wide open, as far as where it could go next. Have you started to have conversations about what Season 2 would look like?

BLACKMAN:  Yeah, we have, and it’s great. I’d love to tell you, but it’s great. We wanted to give the audience, and people who binge the show, an ending where you’re like, “Oh, my god, I’ve gotta wait now?!” Yes, you have to wait, but it’s a worthy cliffhanger. Where are they? What happened to them? That’s the kind of cliffhanger we wanted.

Where are the action figures for the characters? Do they live somewhere, while you’re not shooting?

BLACKMAN:  I think someone is making them. I thought we heard that.

WAY:  Oh, I didn’t know that. Are you guys making action figures?

BLACKMAN:  I think Dark Horse is. It has nothing to do with me, but I believe Dark Horse is making them.

WAY:  You’re talking about the ones from the show, though.

BLACKMAN:  They’re in the office, on my desk. I think there’s only one set, and I have that set. But yeah, they’re doing more figures, which I think will be great.

the-umbrella-academy-image-9
Image via Netflix

Is that the same with the masks that Hazel and Cha-Cha wear? Where are they at now?

BLACKMAN:  Right now, the masks are sitting in my office, but they’re going on display. Whenever we go around, they send the masks from place to place to place. They’re really wonderful masks. They were very expensive and very tricky to make, but I thought they did a great job. They were sketched by Gabriel.

How hard was it to design something like that, where you had to also put them on people who would be acting and doing stunts in them?

BLACKMAN:  That was a learning curve. They’re like motorcycle helmets with padding inside. At first, Mary J. was like, “I can’t see or hear anything.” We had to take some of the padding out. And then, Emmy was doing one of the stunts and kicked one of them in the face, which broke the nose off, which was a whole thing. But we eventually refined them, so that you could hear and see. We made it work, but they’re big, heavy masks.

When I spoke to Robert Sheehan, he told me that there was quite an evolution to the Vietnam storyline and the romance there. Were there a lot of story changes made, throughout the season?

BLACKMAN:  Yeah, things change. Part of it was discussions with Gerard, and part of it was just talking to Netflix and the actors. Gerard is very collaborative and I’m very collaborative, and I wanted the actors to have a voice in it, too. We talked endlessly about different ways that we could do that storyline. Inevitably, we came back with the idea [that you see now]. Robert is a really good actor, and even though he plays a bit of the clown in the show, you realize there are so many more layers to him. He has great depth, and your heart breaks for Klaus.

Was it hard to figure out exactly where you wanted to end things, this season, without knowing if you’d get to keep telling the story?

BLACKMAN:  No, I wanted to end where Gerard ended the comics for Volume One. I wanted to go to the apocalypse. I modified the ending because, hopefully, we’ll have a second season. I wanted to have a cliffhanger that was worthy of a Netflix show, and that people would really want to come back to.

The Umbrella Academy is now available to stream on Netflix.

umbrella-academy-poster
Image via Netflix