Interview with Invincible Fight Girl Creator and Executive Producer Juston Gordon-Montgomery

Join Swimpedia in our conversation with Invincible Fight Girl creator and executive producer Juston Gordon-Montgomery, as we discuss everything from Andy’s character and personality to Juston’s own love of wrestling and Toonami.

Invincible Fight Girl is the latest Adult Swim original, joining the Toonami lineup on Saturday, November 2nd at midnight with a double episode premiere. Originally slated for Cartoon Network, like Unicorn: Warriors Eternal and My Adventures with Superman, this series continues the trend of bringing fun American action cartoons with plot and mature themes aimed at a wider audience to the channel. Here, viewers will have the opportunity to follow Andy on her journey to becoming a pro wrestler in a world jam-packed with tons of creativity and passion for the sport. In the meantime, check out our interview with creator and executive producer Juston Gordon-Montgomery as you get hyped for the series premiere!

Swimpedia: Thank you for taking time out of your day to chat with us. I'm with Swimpedia and we've been covering Adult Swim for a number of years, primarily on Twitter. Right off the bat, congrats on your new show, we've been really excited about it here at Swimpedia. But yeah, we know when the show first got announced it was originally announced for Cartoon Network and then was shifted to Adult Swim. How far along in the process of making the show did you learn the show was going to be on Adult Swim?

Juston: Man, I think we were probably about halfway through with it. It was kind of around that time that all of the larger merger stuff was happening.

Swimpedia: Right on, and did the change from Cartoon Network to Adult Swim impact any of the final product of the show, and would it impact any future episodes of the show?

Juston: Not so much. I think that was something where internally we were hoping we would be able to kind of make some adjustments, but the leadership at the network sort of felt like that was not the direction that they wanted to go. So, it won't really impact the show, but I think sort of what works in our favor is we were already kind of dealing with a couple of mature themes, so it doesn't feel like it's so much of a departure from the other content that's on Adult Swim.

Swimpedia: I definitely would agree there. And were you and the staff fans of professional wrestling growing up, and did that have any influence or impact on the show?

Juston: Oh, for sure. I was a huge fan. A couple of the leadership on our immediate team were huge fans. We were lucky enough, and this happened completely by accident, that one of our designers was a former pro wrestler. Who, I don't think he would have a problem with me saying this–his wife was also a pro wrestler who then became an accountant.

Swimpedia: Oh, wow.

Juston: There's like, a weird, unintended, unintentional, like serendipity to that. But yeah, there were a lot of us who, at least in the sort of core creative team, really love wrestling. And then there were a lot of people who, like, they had no relationship with it. And it kind of became our challenge to be like, okay, can we bring them into the folds? Can we, you know, expose them and get them by the end of this thing to be just as crazy about it as we are.

Swipedia: Hope you got to convert a couple fans there.

Juston: Yeah!

Swimpedia: Our next question is, how did you approach the creation of Andy's character and personality?

Juston: Yeah, you know, the whole thing is sort of this way of talking about what it's like to be passionate about something, and all of the different angles that you can look at that. And so kind of a big part of that metaphor for me was, you know, in any industry, in any sport, in any thing where there's this sort of preestablished hierarchy, there's this dynamic that exists already. You've got people like Aunt P who've done it forever, who are like, “It's over, you missed it.” And then you're always going to have the young generation who, despite whatever turmoil it might be in, is coming in like, “Nope, it's not over yet. We're going to do it, we're going to do it bigger. We're going to do it better.” And so to me, she was quintessentially the spirit of that, you know, this character who the only thing she's got on her side is like hunger and naivete. And you know that that's sort of the nature of our journey, is that she's going to encounter things that will challenge her worldviews and make her complicate those things slightly. But at the end of the day, her starting point is just this sort of young, raw hunger of wanting to make a name for herself in this, you know, in this system that already exists that is like, we don't really have space for you, like the new generation.

Swimpedia: Awesome, and what would you like fans to take away from the show, and is there any specific episode you're most excited for fans to see?

Juston: Sure, I think, man, there's a couple that I really, really love…four is one of them. Seven, eight, nine, and obviously our finale are all I think some of our strongest episodes. I hope fans take away that the people who made this have a very deep love of wrestling, very deep love of anime, and I hope that their own sort of history with that media, they're able to kind of bring that to the show and experience it with those things in mind.

Swimpedia: And kind of dovetailing into the anime influence, are you a fan of Adult Swim and Toonami in general? And are there any other Adult Swim originals that you're a big fan of?

Juston: For sure, yeah, I'm definitely a huge fan. I just saw Ninja Kamui, and I thought that was so cool. And I was very much like, can I get Jason DeMarco on the phone and talk to him about how he did this.

Swimpedia: Please do!

Juston: I haven't tried because I'm like, too scared, and I'm like, he's probably a great guy, but, yeah, I mean, that's the stuff that raised me, you know, even down to Goku defeating Frieza, and us being like, okay, are we finally going to see what happens next? And then the reruns just restart at the top of the saga. And we're like, what the hell, like, the stuff that happens after that, show us! So, yeah, I was raised on Toonami.

Swimpedia: Yeah, that's awesome. And how did you develop Invincible Fight Girl’s colorful and unique art style?

Juston: Yeah, a lot of that kind of came from different conversations with myself and the art team, of trying to figure out, like, how do you represent the way that wrestling felt to us, at least especially as kids, when we were watching it, and it felt to us like this, very colorful, exciting, larger-than-life world. And so for us, we wanted to try to find an art style that sort of encapsulated that. At the same time, we weren't, you know, even though we're very obviously anime influenced, we weren't interested in particularly just taking an anime style. Personally, I sort of feel like there's so many incredible artists who have done so much work to sort of arrive at those different versions of that art style as like an end point of constantly iterating. It didn't feel right for us to just take it, you know. And so for us, there was a challenge within that of, well, we have our own sort of history in the West of animation style. How do you take that and then apply some of these lessons and these sort of vibes that we get when we watch anime to that, and how do we make these designs more fit for, like a shonen style of storytelling? So it was a lot of different conversations, kind of surrounding all of those things that eventually brought us to it.

Swimpedia: Yes, thank you for keeping the Western action cartoon alive!

Juston: Yeah!

Swimpedia: And one last question. Let's say you run into Tony Khan, the head of All Elite Wrestling, what's one wrestler you would love to cameo in the next season?

Juston: Oh my God, I'll be honest. We're at a point with the show where we hope that it's embraced, and so ideally people, like wrestlers, just hit us up and are like, “Hey, can we be a voice?” Um, so yeah, I'm not gonna say any names, because my hope is that you know, they see it and appreciate it and like it enough that maybe we start getting some phone calls and then we start getting to write some pretty cool characters who actually have wrestlers as voice actors.

Swimpedia: I don't think you'll have a problem with getting wrestlers interested at all. Thank you for your time Juston, really looking forward to watching the rest of the show and best of luck.

Juston: Thank you, appreciate it.