Phil Davies, producer
Animation is a slow, laborious process. I’m way too impatient for it. I want a lunch and a life. So, after studying animation at Middlesex University, I became a producer instead. However, two guys I met there – Mark Baker and Neville Astley – stuck at it. By 2000, things had become very hand-to-mouth for them: they’d make an animated film, pitch another, then make it. So we decided to do something together and Peppa was one of our ideas.
I was shocked at how poor some children’s animation was. Not just the production values – the stories didn’t even seem to have a beginning, middle or end. A lot of it was completely incomprehensible and all the girls were either princesses or ballerinas.
So we made Peppa a four-year-old child and told the whole series from her perspective. She has a red dress because she has a slightly fiery personality. Parents tell us Peppa is too cheeky – someone in the Australian parliament said she was peddling a warped feminist agenda. But if she was a boy character no one would be saying that. Why is it that a girl has to be an anodyne, sweet, pink thing?
We’re lucky that all of us came from stable homes: we remember how the world was when we were four. Anything you could think of could be made into an episode – the first one was about jumping in muddy puddles. They all come from simple ideas: her grandparents have a pet parrot called Polly; she goes on a boat trip; she has a pen pal ... My daughter is an ice skater and we thought it would be fun to have Peppa go ice skating. I used to be a mad pilot, so aeroplanes turn up in episodes every now and again.
A friend of Mark’s, Lily Snowden-Fine, voiced Peppa. She was three or four. The recording sessions were very entertaining – I used to come in and find her hiding under the recording desk playing with dolls. We just got her to repeat short lines. Four-year-olds make wonderful mistakes and mispronounce words – my favourite line in the whole series is when Lily/Peppa says to her friend, “I think your heart’s a bit loose, you need to put a plaster on it.”
When people with young kids find out I’ve got something to do with Peppa, they get a bit starstruck. You get a small window into what it must be like to be an actor or rock star.
Mark Baker, co-creator
When Peppa came out, there were a lot of children’s characters that didn’t really have a family, or parents. Our experience was that children don’t like laughing at themselves, but do like laughing at their parents. By having a Mummy and Daddy Pig, we could get humour in without having to laugh at the child character. Animal stories are good for children because they give you licence – a pig is allowed to be messy – and animation works because it’s one step removed from reality, so children feel safe watching it.
Everything that went on around us and happened to our children would be sucked up into the stories. In some ways you feel guilty – you’re always listening out. Lily, the four-year-old who voiced Peppa, once had a rash, and was told she shouldn’t scratch it. So she walked to the front door of her house, crouched down, and scratched. Her mother said, “You said you weren’t going to do that,” and she said, “No, it’s OK, I’m doing it secretly.” That child logic – you can’t invent it.
We always hoped it would be successful, but at a certain point we got fed up and wanted to do something else. We’d go to meetings with other ideas, but they just wanted 3,000 more episodes of Peppa. It’s like Daniel Craig doing Bond again – he must fight with it, but in the end he does it.
The natural thing as an animator is to assume you’ll be broke, so it’s still surprising to go into a shop and see a product we weren’t aware was being developed. It’s odd to think there are people making a living out of Peppa who we’ve never met. We thought we might be creatively successful, but never thought we would be running a proper company, and be responsible for other people’s lives. People having their mortgages paid by our creation – that’s bizarre.
• Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience is out on DVD.
