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Seth Kearsley was the Producer and Director for all 42 episodes of Mummies Alive!Seth has granted us this interview, and has allowed us to put it on our web pages.Brenna and Brittany: Could you tell us a little about yourself?Seth Kearsley: Well, I'm fairly new to the business. I've been working in animation for four years now and have worked on a lot of fun shows. I started off on a show for MTV called THE MAXX which was an adaptation of a comic book by the same name. After MAXX I went to work on one of my favorite shows and one of the reasons I wanted to get into animation in the first place, THE SIMPSONS. I spent a year on the SIMPSONS before moving on to Disney TV animation. While at Disney I worked on Timon and Pumbaa, Nightmare Ned and in Development. While I was working at Disney the possibility of directing my own series came up and it was something that I just couldn't pass up. So I went to DIC towork on Mummies Alive.B & B: Could you give us a bit of history as to how the show came to be?S.K.: Well the show had already been sold by the time I came into the pictureso my involvement with the show was more to take what was sold and turn itinto the best cartoon possible with the help of all the artists on the staffand working in collaboration with the toy designers at Hasbro.B & B: The writing for the show is so imaginative! There are so manyhumorous quips and puns and sight gags. And the cartooning was so well drawn. Obviously you had a lot of talented people around you.S.K.: Yeah, we didn't have the huge budget that some other shows have but wewere lucky enough to find people that were interested by the show enough towork on it. Our story editors were some of the best in the business and hadworked on a lot of hit shows before mummies like X-men and Gargoyles just toname a few.I can take the credit/blame for some of the worst/best puns in the show. Inever wanted us to take the show too seriously so I would constantly throwthings in to kind of make fun of our own show or there would be things thatthe characters were doing that I couldn't believe we were making them do so Iwould have Ja-Kal say something like "I can't believe I let them talk me intodoing this" Or there were lines that I didn't like ......like I was never thatcrazy about "Let's kick tut". So to have some fun with it I was always havingthem say things like "Move Your TUTS!" or "I fell and hurt my TUT" or "YourTUT is mine Scarab". I mean if you're going to substitute TUT for Butt why nottake as much advantage of it as possible.We were also lucky enough to have a lot of great artists on the crew. We hada pretty young crew of artists....most of us under 25 and we all talked a lotabout what our favorite shows were growing up and how we wanted to make a showthat kids today would say in 15 or 20 years that they ran home from schooleveryday to watch it or they got up early every morning to watch it. Some ofour favorite shows were shows like THUNDERCATS, SILVERHAWKS, and VOLTRON and Ithink you can really see some of those influences come through in the show.B & B: We have also had many good comments from fans about the music for the show. How was that put together?S.K.: John Campbell was the composer and we both agreed pretty early on thatsince the show has such a lush visual look that the music should be just asrich. We were both a little bored with the music typically done for cartoonsand wanted to treat the music for MUMMIES more like a feature. The moredramatic the music is the more fans would get sucked into the show.B & B: But above all, the voices for the characters really make the show. We are really curious as to how you selected the voice actors, and what it was like during your recording sessions.S.K.: Well in selecting the voices there were quite a few people to please.It's one of the most important parts of the show and everyone wants to makesure that there isn't a voice in the show that they don't like. We (theExecutive Producers and myself) listened to what seemed like hundreds ofdifferent voices for all the main characters. There were some that we knewwere right the first time we heard them and others that we went back and forthon for weeks. It's hard to get that many people to agree.As for the recording sessions, all the voices were recorded inVancouver (except Nefer-Tina, who was recorded here in LA) and with theschedule we had I didn't get to go to many recordings. I went up for thefirst two episodes and then would listen to the tapes of the recordingsessions after that and if I had any comments I would have them re-record aline here or there. Occasionally we would have to re-record a whole characterif the person that was used didn't quite sound right and there were times whenI listened in on parts of sessions over the phone. I wish the schedule wouldhave allowed for me to have been at all the recordings because it sounds likethey had a lot of fun......maybe next time.B & B: How long did this take for all 42 episodes?S.K.: Forever. No it just seemed like it sometimes. I think I started inlate September of '96 and finished the last episode mid November '97. Oncethings got going we were doing two episodes a week. Which means that eachweek we would start design on two episodes. Then the next week we would startto work on the color for those two and start the design on the next two. Soby the time we were sending the first episodes overseas to be animated we wereat some point of production on 26 episodes at the same time. Then for aperiod of about 2 months we were doing 3 episodes a week. It can get a littlecrazy at times.B & B: Did you have any favorite characters?S.K.: It's hard to say.....I went back and forth on this depending on theepisode we were working on at the time. I think if I had to settle on one ofthe mummies I would have to say Ja-Kal. I felt like we gave him a lot ofdepth with his longing for his family. I wish that we could have touched onit more so everytime we did have it in an episode I tried to play it up asmuch as possible.Ammut was also one of my favorites but just because he was the one maincharacter that I designed solely on my own. All the other characters wentthrough endless redesigns before they were finally signed off on but Ammut wassigned off on with the first drawings I did of him. At the Wrap party for theshow my Associate Producer had a doll made of Ammut and gave it to me....itwas really pretty cool.B & B: Do you have a favorite episode?S.K.: Well on this one I'm completely biased.....I wrote MY DAD THE HERO so it'sone of my favorites. I made a lot of fun of the show in that episode withthings like Ja-Kal forgetting an animal saying and Nefer-Tina telling him "Wenever have understood your little sayings we just humor you because we knowhow much you love to hear your own voice". Also I got to make fun of our"LET'S KICK TUT" catch phrase by having Scarab blast them through the dockbefore Armon can finish the line and say "I've always hated that line".I also liked this one because I got to touch on a very real subject. Cartoonsare full of orphans. You see one parent but you never see the other and it'snever really explained why there isn't another parent. For example, Belle inBeauty and the Beast, Ariel in Little Mermaid, Jasmine in Aladdin. You neverhear what happened to the other parent. I was glad to be able to bringPresley's Dad into the show and make it clear that Presley's parents were nolonger together because they had grown apart and that his Dad was kind of abum at the beginning but turns out to be a good guy. I also liked the factthat I got to share a little more about Nefer-Tina and what made her disguiseherself as a Charioteer in ancient Egypt. B & B: Did you help develop any of the other episodes?S.K.: I wrote the premises for 10 other episodes, including: Family Feud Parts 1-3, Who's Who, Honey I Shrunk the Mummies, A Dark and Shrieky Night, Pepped With Good Intention, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Huxley, True Believer, and Show Me the Mummies. With some of them I just called the story editors and gavethem the basic idea and with others I wrote out detailed premises. Some of these I ended up liking and some others didn't quite come out the way I hadintended or the thing that I thought was funny ended up not being that funny after all was said and done......but you live and you learn. WHO'S WHO Ithink turned out to be one of our funniest episodes. I had a lot of funworking on that one and playing with the whole mind swap idea as far as Icould push it. I ended up re-boarding about half of the show myself on theplane to and from Japan when I went over there to see one of the studios thatwas doing the work.B & B: Were there any of the episodes you did not like?S.K.: There were a few that I didn't like....some that I couldn't stand, butwhen you're doing that many that fast they can't all be pearls.B & B: The last episode, Show Me the Mummies, was a great summary of thewhole series. We especially liked the flashback clips to previous episodes.S.K.: A lot of people don't like that episode because it's just a compilationof the other episodes. We worked it so we actually had new animation anddeveloped a better story around it than the usual compilation show whereeveryone just sits around and says "Remember the time when....."The name of the radio station KKIM was named after one of the productioncoordinators on the show, Kim Smith. It was called KDIC but we had to changeit for legal reason.This was the last episode that we did and the last line at the end is kind ofmy goodbye. It's a little mooshy but hey I was short on sleep.B & B: Mummies Alive was produced by DIC. So how is it that Disney is coming out with Home Videos of some of the Mummies Alive episodes?S.K.: DIC was owned by ABC when Disney bought ABC. I don't know exactly howit all came about since I was just making the show and wasn't really involvedin the sales of the show.With Disney at least involved on that level it doesn't seem to hard to imaginethat if Disney knew there was this much interest in the show that they mightwant to have DIC do a second season for them to put on ABC Saturday mornings.They don't have an action adventure show and since MUMMIES has been doing wellin the ratings............. Who knows........B & B: So what does the future hold for Seth Kearsley?S.K.: I am now working on a prime time show for UPN based on Dilbert the comic strip. To keep myself busy until Dilbert starts I've beenpicking up freelance work on a lot of other shows. I've also sold a show of my own: Thor: God of Thunder. It's based on the Nordic myths and will probably be on the air in '99. It will be similar to MUMMIES in some ways because allthe characters in the show and a lot of the storylines will be pulled directlyout of the Nordic Mythology. THOR was Designed to look like Fabio who will begiving his voice to the show as well as being a partner in the show.B & B: Wow! You are definitely keeping yourself busy. Would you still be available for a second season of Mummies Alive if it comes to be?S.K.: Nothing could keep me away from doing a second season. This was thekind of show that I loved to watch as a kid. It was a lot of fun to do and Ihad a lot of freedom to put a lot of myself into the show. I do have a planfor the second season and have already written about 30 premises for it. Ialso want to change a few things about the show. Some minor....some major butmostly things that bothered me while I was doing the show and things that fanshave pointed out as bothering them. For example, Presley's Mom isn't verywatchful over her son and comes off a little dumb because she never clues inon what her son is up to. In the second season I want to clue her in on thewhole story. Also when I was writing thinking about the second seasonoriginally I was thinking that it would happen a year later....so Presleywould be a year older. It seems trivial but at 13 in ancient Egypt, Rapseswould have been considered a man. So when Presley turns 13 he goes from beingthe prince that the mummies have to protect to Pharaoh they have toobey.....It's a minor change that will have a major affect on the rest of theshow.B & B: Thank you, Seth, very much for taking the time and allowing us this interview with you.S.K.: It's been my pleasure. I'm just glad that there are people like youthat like the show enough to put up your own web pages to support the show. Iknow that everyone wants a second season and I've had a lot of people ask meabout a second season and I tell them all the same thing. It's up to you, thefans, to prove to the people that make the decisions that there's enoughinterest in the show to do a second season.

Seth Kearsley's own creation: Ammut What the Show

is About

and the Theme Song The Characters Show Summaries

and Ratings Interview:

Seth Kearsley

Producer/Director Behind

the

Scenes Interview:

Robby London

Executive V.P. DIC Other Neat Things,

Sounds, Images, and

Boo Boos A Wordsearch

and a Quiz Toy Info

and

Other Merchandise Why not fill out our Mummies Alive Survey?2500 Tabulated Results from our Survey Some Mummies Alive stuff is available at Amazon:

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Our New Addams Family Home PageYou can reach us by e-mail at: user="lkessler"document.write(''+user+'@'+user+'.com')The graphic on this page has been reproduced with the permission of Seth Kearsley.This interview may not be reproduced in any form in whole or in part without specific permission to do so.- my Privacy NoticeCopyright var c=1998; document.write(c);var d=new Date(); yr=d.getFullYear();if (yr!=c)document.write("-"+yr); Louis Kessler