Kevin Hart's 'Lil Kev' Showrunners Talk Bringing the Heart to the New Animated Series

To Matthew Claybrooks, comparing Kevin Hart’s Lil Kevto other Black animated TV series is more pet peeve than intellectual exercise. After working the comedy alongside fellow executive producer Michael Price and Hart for close to a decade, he’s come to understand the series as something that stands apart from any other creation in the Black animation canon.

“I love The Proud Family and I love The Boondocks,” he tells Okayplayer. “But for those series, the father is the main character of the show. On our show we have the first lead woman; she's the head of the household.”

Having debuted on March 6 on BET+, Lil Kev follows the exploits of Kevin Hart’s matriarch mother, Nancy, and 12-year-old Kevin himself as they navigate a colorful family and the hilarious — and, sometimes grim — reality of growing up in North Philadelphia in the early ‘90s. Featuring the talents of Wanda Sykes (“Nancy”), Deon Cole (“Uncle Richard, Jr.), and legendary voice actor Cree Summer (“Gerald”), and Hart himself, the show is a mix of hilarity and heartfelt moments — big on talent and ambition.

As Claybrooks alludes to, there’s a temptation to compare the series to other shows centering on Black teens and pre-teens. This one has coming-of-age elements, to be sure. But Price says that, despite that, its gritty backdrop further distinguishes it from contemporaries and Black comedies past.

“It easily could have been a much softer kind of show, because the main character is a 12-year-old kid,” Price says. “But he lives in a very rough adult real place. So we didn't want to shy away from that.”

In conversation with OKP, Claybrooks and Price don’t shy away from anything as they break down the inner workings of Lil Kev.

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Okayplayer: You guys started talking about this show in 2016. What took so long for it to come out?

Matthew Claybrooks: To this day, I don't understand it. I mean, you have a show with Kevin Hart, Wanda Sykes, Deon Cole at one point, Chris Rock was on board with a cast like that. To me, it's a slam dunk. But it needed to find the perfect home. And I think that's why it took a long time. We did different versions of this thing, super squeaky, clean network cable. What was the network that imploded, Michael?

Michael Price: Quibi.

MC: And that was a totally different shortform version of this. So we know this show like the backs of our hands because we made so many different versions of it. But when we pitched it to BET, they got us completely and we were like, “Wow, we get to make the show we really want to make, which is no holds barred, how Kevin really grew up, because if it was on network, it would've been sanitized and it would be a whole different show.” So sometimes when you wait and it doesn't work out early, it actually works out better at the end.

What was the process of depicting 1993 North Philadelphia for the show?

MC: We have an amazing animation team, Shadow Machine and Musa Brooker. They really took us through and showed us different outfits on characters, how colors looked against their skin, different things like that where we really could see, we told them we want it to be authentically that era, “so it should look like that, that building should look like that.” And Musa, our supervising director, happens to be from Philadelphia as well. So he knew how it looked growing up. I took a trip there, went around Kevin's neighborhood [to see for myself]. In fact, I told Michael when I went to Kevin's neighborhood, I thought I had every intention of walking around. But we got there and I was actually frightened to get out of the car because it was pretty brutal, at least that day. I saw a couple of drug deals going down. Then I saw Kevin's big mural on his old building. I just had so much more respect for Kevin because I saw where he came from and it was like, “Wow, we have to capture this in some kind of way.” And because of Mu and because of all that and seeing pictures and figuring it out, I think we came up with a look of the show that we all are happy with.

MP: We have an amazing team: directors Musa , Aaron, and Marie; they're all just incredible animation veterans. But our crew, most of the main animation crew, is Black. Most of the writing staff too. It's all just a chance to really, really celebrate Kevin and his neighborhood and his culture, but also the entire culture of the time and just a chance to really have these kinds of voices in a primetime animated show, which there aren't. I think probably The Boondocks, well aside from Everybody Hates Chris, is one of the last ones to do that. So it's just a huge honor to work with everyone and work with Matt to bring that vision to reality.

Where did you get the ideas for the episodes?

MP: We watched everything that Kevin has done and we read his book and when we had a chance, we spoke to him. And it all takes me back to a meeting we had many years ago, way back when we were first coming up with this. One of the other producers on the show is Jeff Khan. He was very close with Kevin and he summarized what we were sort of figuring out, okay, what's the show really going to be about? And I think that's what stuck with us forever is that, especially like Matt mentioned growing up in a very rough time, in a very rough neighborhood that Kevin Hart, the kid, and even now, Kevin Hart, the superstar now just has this incredible sense of goodwill and optimism and belief in himself. And that's what hit on what our show is about, is about this kid who lives in a very difficult place and it would be easy to sort of give into despair or to give into all the temptations of the street drugs or crime.

But his optimism and his faith in himself kind of shined through. And that became, and on top of that, he has a mom, of course, based on Kevin's real mom, although we changed a few small details here and there who loved and wanted him to succeed, but also at the same time was very much worried about keeping him safe. So that became the tug of war. That tug of war between Kevin and his mom is sort of what animates every story more or less in the show. Every story has to do with Kevin and his mom and just that feeling of a tough mom who wants to keep her son safe and a ball of energy and optimism, who wants to break out and live a great life. And that's what became the comic tension of the whole show. And that's where so many stories just came out of that central relationship.

MC: It’s just like Michael said, all of his specials, we digested that. Our writing staff took it in, read the book. He had a little documentary. I had the pleasure of going on tour a little bit. I worked with Chris Rock and we did a joint thing with 15 shows with Kevin. And I was able to spend a little bit more time with [Kevin Hart] in that way. So we wanted the show to really feel and have the true essence of who Kevin is, and what he brought to the stage because he created a lot of these characters on stage, like “Uncle Richie, Jr.” His mom. We saw an interview with Conan O'Brien where he talked about his brother. We use that information. So we did our research on Kevin, and hopefully if we get into season two, we'd love to sit down with Kevin for an hour. He's the busiest man in the world. I've never seen a busier human being, so it's hard to get his time. But he loves the show, so we're hoping to get some time and really go through what happened here, what happened there and that kind of thing.

How did you guys end up choosing Wanda Sykes to play the role of Kevin’s mother?

MC: Wanda. First off, in my opinion, Wanda is a top five comedian of all time. I think she's brilliant. I don't know how anybody doesn't think Wanda Sykes is hilarious. Her voice is so unique when you hear it. She has these few people in the world like Kevin, I mean Kevin, Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes. They just have these voices that you hear and you can remember it. It's so distinctive. And she has a forceful voice

And a mother in this neighborhood has to be forceful with her kids. And I remember at one of the places we were developing, one of their suggestions was to get let's recast Wanda because they thought her voice was too harsh and Michael and I lost our shit. We were like, what? Wanda Sykes is the best, and having her in the cast is having an extra writer because she always comes up with new jokes in the booth. So it's like, man, we got four or five jokes that we didn't have in the script just from her. So she's amazing. But yeah, they were like, her voice is too, I think the mother should sound more loving. And we're like, “That is love in the hood, keeping your kids alive.” And luckily when that went up the food chain to Kevin and Kevin was like, “No, we're keeping Wanda.” So he fought for her and we weren't going to lose Wanda. She's like, I can't think of another, I can't think of a better voice.

Why should people check out your new show? What makes it different?

MC: What makes it different than any other show? It's a family show, so we've seen family shows, but this one has the mom be the lead, be the head of household driving force for the family, I feel like that makes it unique because we've seen other adult animated shows and the wife is always kind of like, she's not driving the car. And I love Family Guy, I love The Simpsons, even The PJs, it was “Thurgood”, which is a guy type of thing. So to have a woman character, not unlike a lot of times in the inner city or in working class neighborhoods where it's a single mom, I feel like that makes us unique. I feel like we go there where it's real, it's grounded in reality even though it's silly at different times, it's grounded in reality.

I feel like it has heart. I feel like there's some episodes you could literally cry on. I think that happens. And we wanted that. I love that about Pixar where it's so funny, but it gives you an emotional tug here and there because that's what life really is. And then I think we have, like I said earlier, we have the most collection of funny people ever assembled. It's like the Super Friends or X-Men or something. Everybody is funny. And then, we have the wonderful Cree Summer who's an amazing, veteran voice actress. I think the show is unique. I don't think we've seen an adult animated black series like this. I mean there was The Cleveland Show, but this is The Cleveland Show on steroids.

MP: It’s just really, really funny. Really, really funny. And it all comes from Kevin and Wanda, their relationship. And the big four I would say of the funny characters are Kevin, Wanda, Deon’s [character] “Uncle Richard Jr.”, and Slink (Gerald Johnson) as Kevin's father. Henry is such a breakout, hilarious character. So I think it's really, really funny. But like Matt said, I think you'll feel for these characters and you'll relate to them in a way. It's not like, again, these are all great shows. It's not like Family Guy. It's not like The Simpsons where jokes are sometimes just said for the sake of being jokes. The humor feeds the relationship between the characters, the environment and the neighborhood. And it's all part of a piece.