When I come up with ideas, they'll just start from a very primal,
"I just want to see this cute thing on screen,"
and then I'll find the meaning and the metaphor and the themes
to justify why it should be that.
But really, it just came from a place of "Oh, they're so cute,"
and "Wouldn't it be awesome if they were gigantic?"
I'm excited.
-What's the panda's name again? -RONA LIU: Tenzin.
And then the girl was the older one, right?
Didn't realize they'd be so small.
Real red pandas are really cute.
And I think that's the main reason why I was drawn to making a story about them.
It's got kind of a belly sometimes.
They're very tubular and they have very long, fluffy tails,
more pointed snouts.
The tail's about 18 inches.
Oh.
They feel a little cat-like, kind of raccoon, kind of bear.
Maybe a little splash of monkey or something.
Look at it. Aw!
LINDSEY COLLINS: They're totally solitary.
They don't really communicate with one another.
They're kind of like teenagers.
-I like the long... -That one's like an old one.
SHI: I found a lot of parallels
between red pandas and Mei and her story.
Like, red pandas are very attached to their mom.
They sleep all day.
They eat bamboo, but they're not supposed to eat bamboo,
bamboo doesn't give them enough nutrients.
So I imagine it's just like a lazy teenager,
just eating chips and sleeping all day.
They're native to China.
And then also, it's like red and white.
It's like Chinese, but also like the colors of the Canadian flag, too.
So it felt like the perfect animal
to tell this story about this Chinese-Canadian teenage girl.
I'm Meilin Lee.
And ever since I turned 13, I've been doing my own thing.
Making my own moves, 24/7, 365.
Turning Red is about Mei,
a Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto in 2002.
It's very specific.
It's a mother-daughter story.
At its most base level, this film is about growing up
and figuring out who you are and embracing that.
MING: Mei-Mei...
MEI: Coming!
SHI: Everything changes for Mei when she wakes up one morning
and discovers she's a giant, eight-foot-tall furry red panda,
and she realizes "Oh, I can control this transformation.
"If I just stay completely calm and even for the rest of my life,
"I will stay human and it'll be A-okay."
Yes.
But that's not how life works.
Oh, crap.
(EXCLAIMING)
Mom!
So the red panda is basically a metaphor for magical puberty.
Just seeing how this girl
who thought she had everything under control,
suddenly big and hairy and smelly,
an emotional wreck. (LAUGHS)
4*TOWN forever?
COLLINS: This panda is incredibly cute.
It's also true to that time in a girl's life.
In some ways, it's the worst time.
You're not a kid, and you're not an adult.
This poor girl, she's looking in a mirror
and seeing that she's got hair everywhere and she stinks,
and she's big and doesn't fit through the doorway.
FEINBERG: Panda Mei is only half in control.
She's having a great time, but then she's like "Auughhh."
And like, I don't know,
that feels very much like what my teenager years were like.
Ah OOGa!
LIU: It's bodily, it's emotional.
It's all about, "Can I embrace this? Can I grow into it?
"Can I still love who I am
"knowing that I've become someone that I'm not used to?"
SHI: It's all going according to plan. COLLINS: This is about right.
LIU: It's the first time in my career
where all of the key leadership on the show are women,
and I feel like that sets a very different vibe.
It's completely amazing
to have this all-women leadership team.
I have spent the entirety of my career in meetings
where I was one of very few women.
Now sitting there and making plans and it's all women in the room
has been this really crazy thing and very different for me.
Everything's different about this film.
I don't know how to answer that question without starting with Domee.
-She's a good girl. Just like I was. -(ALL LAUGHING)
I first heard of Domee
through seeing one of her ten-second animation clips.
I was in college, and it was something that she posted on her blog.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
It was this dancing, twerking hamster to a K-pop song.
"Who is this girl?
"She's probably going to be a really funny director one day."
When I first started this movie,
I was really determined to make something different.
We're going to be spending four or five years of our life on this,
we've got to go big.
I'm Domee Shi, the director of Red,
and ever since we started making this movie,
we've been breaking convention and making people laugh 24/7, 365.
Ah, legally, it's nine-to-five, 261.
Whoo!
SHI: On this show, we wear what we want,
say what we want,
and we will not hesitate to do spontaneous cartwheels
if we feel so moved.
Domee is a force of nature.
She is a first-time feature director.
It's been a while since I've worked with a first-time director before,
and I'm loving it.
In conclusion, welcome to Red!
(ALL CHEERING)
SHI: Lights? Pitch.
Did that actually change anything? Yes, it did.
-So, welcome, everyone. -Just ignore the camera, everyone.
-It's not there. -Don't look right here. (LAUGHS)
SHI: Making the film, it's just been like a long marathon.
But in the first couple of years, it was mostly me,
and Julia, our screenwriter,
head of story, Rosie Sullivan,
the story team, and then Nick, our editor.
And we were just working on the reels.
Yeah, it feels like you're part of a pirate ship.
Because you're all kind of just working and sweating for these drawings,
and you're all aiming to make the director react or respond.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I started working with her, and pretty quickly,
I felt like this woman is really impressive.
Also, incredibly clear in her vision.
SHI: And then ta-da, and like,
imagine it to look like a comic book background.
Thank you, Margaret. Great work.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
She is so unique in how she thinks about movies,
how she communicates her vision,
her humor, her tone.
I just thought I'd get this in front of you to see if it lives within our world.
-Is that what we're looking for? -Yes. Yes. Sorry.
(ALL LAUGHING)
I feel like I have to be more of a director now for the camera.
The crew slowly grew bigger and bigger.
To give you a general sense of the BG buildings.
This reminds me of Toronto a lot, a lot of these old buildings.
And then last year, it just exploded.
And that was during the pandemic. (CHUCKLES)
It just so happens that
the busiest time on the show was when we were all working from home.
FEINBERG: Hi, Frankie. Hi, bubba.
It may not be obvious, I don't know,
but making films is a huge team effort,
and so, the more you can collaborate with the people around you,
the better the movie is going to be.
As we were leaving to walk out the door for getting sent home,
Domee said, "Well, maybe I could do like a coffee time or something
"just so we can keep in touch with the crew.
And we all went, "Oh, what a great idea."
And in the beginning, it really was
kind of this awesome thing of just being able to see
more than like three people in your life.
And also getting to hear from the director weekly is pretty cool.
...Mei's struggle throughout act two...
Even if sometimes it's just a little update,
it felt like some kind of connection.
We are starting with a couple of nominations from our dailies team.
I've been really surprised
because we routinely get a hundred and something people coming to it.
(SINGING A BAD RENDITION OF HAPPY BIRTHDAY)
Oh! Thank you!
Exceptionally bad and so out of key. But I really love it.
Here's to a better 2021.
FEINBERG: We're coming together in some of the best way you can do during a pandemic
with a giant movie crew, so it's been pretty cool.
(PLAYING FESTIVE MUSIC)
FEINBERG: My job is Visual Effects Supervisor on the film.
First woman in 20 years at Pixar to have that job.
For almost 15 years, I was a lighting DP,
and so most of my career at Pixar has been about lighting,
thinking about how to make the most beautiful movie possible,
how to make a great experience for the lighting team...
A little bit of this, even though that would catch the light.
How to engage with the director,
how to coordinate with other departments, how to do groundbreaking stuff.
And now I'm in this new role,
overseeing heavily tech and some of the creative,
and I am now in the leadership group of running the movie.
(BABY BABBLING)
And then at the same time, I became a mother for the first time.
I have twins, a boy and a girl.
Ah!
I don't know that I ever thought I was going to have kids.
You know, there's days where it feels completely overwhelming, I would say.
CHILD: Yay! FEINBERG: Yay!
But I also am now a year and a half into being a mother.
And I'm two years into this position.
I love both things dearly, and it's hard to imagine not having them now.
And I got married to my amazing wife.
-Hello. -PAIGE: Hello.
You guys, it's Mommy!
Hi, guys.
FEINBERG: Paige is a battalion chief for the Alameda County Fire Department.
She's the highest ranking woman of that department,
which I'm neverendingly proud about.
She would not love that I'm bragging about her, but I love to brag about her.
It's one of my favorite topics.
Are you gonna be able to jump into the end credit?
We're moving it up to 2:30, I think.
This is Lindsey Collins. She is the producer of Turning Red.
The producer is the one orchestrating this giant circus.
-The ringmaster? -She is the ringmaster.
When people are going "Auggghhh" Lindsey is like, "Okay, let's make a plan.
"Let's figure out how to make this happen."
So in the race to get this done,
we're probably just going to be working on top of each other, which is great.
Lindsey is so smart, I think she's always like a million steps ahead,
so that I can worry about what's happening in the present.
I'm really good at working within boxes and limitations
and she was really good about drawing them out for me
to be crazy and push up against.
Just to draw the storyline together maybe a little bit clearer...
I feel like I learned so much just by watching her and working with her
and I see it as the partner to the director.
So that includes being a creative partner, but also managing the crew
and surrounding her with all the right people.
LIU: You're in every meeting,
you always offer ways to move story along
and you help production through, not just by managing it,
but also just from an emotional, creative side as well.
-You do. -Thank you, Rona.
I kind of like it when...
COLLINS: This is Rona Liu.
She's the production designer of Turning Red.
The production designer is the first person brought on the show
after the producer and director.
You know, we're talking about the values being super, super crunched.
COLLINS: And that's basically because from the very beginning,
their job is to figure out what the movie is going to look like.
And that is everything from characters to sets to color to tone and style.
LIU: My role is to collaborate closely with the director,
and make sure that her vision translates
throughout all of the department and onto the screen.
EMMA ON COMPUTER: Welcome, everyone.
Today, we're going to kick it off
with Athena and the panda costume shaping.
For her tail,
the lighter part can take on some of that red.
I know I'm providing information that other people need to get their work done.
Let's tone the two sides where there is the star and the heart.
I feel like that's the most important part of my job, is to just make sure
that everybody else feels good about the work that they're doing.
Okay.
SHI: Good job, everyone. Thank you.
-Thank you. Bye. -Thanks.
LIU: Being pregnant while we're in the crunch of things
definitely made me have to just trust my team a lot more.
It's the first time in my life
where I was comfortable telling my manager, Sophia,
I need to take some time to nap.
So that does make sense.
Hey, Rona, where are we?
We're in the living room area.
This is the entrance to our house.
This is our kitty.
And this is my soon-to-be-husband.
-We're getting Zoom-married on Friday. -Mmm-hmm.
We've been engaged for so long, we figured now's a good time to do it.
-Yeah. -(BOTH LAUGHING)
LIU: Being able to step away,
touch base with a loved one and to say, "Hey, how's your day going?"
and just being really connected in both of our lives for the first time,
that's been really comforting.
I'm an only child,
and my dad had to go away to work a lot.
So a lot of the time, it was just me and my mom.
We'd go on Chinese bus tours.
Like she'd pick the locations.
And she would take us to Atlanta,
or Halifax,
Prince Edward Island.
Maybe not like, upfront, the most exciting places,
but we would spend a good ton of time just together on the bus talking.
It was good at first,
but like everybody, you grow up and you change
and you want to have your own friends and your own life,
and it's kind of just about how that transition happens.
I love the lighting.
I love everything in this sequence.
Great work, you guys.
(SCHOOL BELL RINGS)
It's been a long time since I was 13.
But I just remember it being a lot of highs and lows.
It's such a turbulent time in a person's life,
especially a girl's, I think.
Small things can feel super, super important,
and you could love something one day and hate it the other.
MEI: I didn't even like 4*TOWN last year,
but now they're literally the greatest thing
that's ever happened to me.
This film is very personal to me in that
it was very much inspired by my own life growing up in Toronto
and being the only child of my overprotective mom and dad. (LAUGHS)
We are about to hop onto a Zoom call with my parents
and they are going to dig through all of the artwork and things
that I've ever created in my life.
They've collected all of it.
Yeah, everything. Everything.
It's my parents!
Hi!
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING MANDARIN)
How's it going? Is it weird having a whole camera crew in the house?
SHI: They live in Toronto, Canada.
Still in the same house that I grew up in,
pretty much looks exactly the same every time I go back.
Yeah. And then you replied as Santa Claus.
-Why would Santa Claus ever say that? -(BOTH LAUGHING)
She wrote a table of contents, a foreword.
Can you read some of your foreword?
So my dad would be like my art tutor,
but my mom would encourage my writing.
(SHI'S FATHER SPEAKING)
Aw, the Wi-Fi sucks.
He's saying nice things about me, and I can't hear it.
He's never this generous with his praise. Come on!
(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING)
Yeah. Why is it... It's so big.
In the living room,
there's like an ever-growing shrine dedicated to me.
It looks like they really love me
and that I'm dead or something. (CHUCKLES)
Yeah, I remember the judge.
I heard you guys collected all of my sketchbooks.
Let's look through them together.
-Pokémon. -Yeah, Pokémon.
That's middle school.
And then high school is when I started drawing a lot of beautiful people.
It's boys. If there's boys, then it's close to high school.
-(SHI'S MOTHER SPEAKING) -Oh, my God. (LAUGHS)
This is so embarrassing.
There was this fan art contest that I entered,
where it's like draw Draco's children.
Okay, maybe we can look at another sketchbook.
(LAUGHS)
Mmm. Devon.
Ugh! May I remind you what real men look like?
4*TOWN!
SHI: There's just so much comedy in female adolescence
that I don't see a lot of, and I just can't wait to show people
just how weird girls can be,
because I was totally that as a teen
and a young adult and now. (LAUGHS)
I love how Mei is just a confident dork,
(LAUGHS) and she's unapologetic about it.
I feel like she was the girl that I wanted to be.
There's so many elements of me in Mei.
Spunky, loud, doesn't care what anyone thinks.
I accept and embrace all labels.
Even though I was a total nerd.
I was so oblivious to that, and I think that helped me.
LIU: She herself never questions who she is,
and I think she fights what is expected of her.
But deep down, she always knew who she was,
and she was always so accepting of herself.
I remember being that at some point, and then, you know, hitting that age
and then suddenly turning very, very shy when I got acne. And then I was
very aware of my body and all that stuff, and that's what I wanted to explore,
with Mei turning into a red panda.
She's this girl that has her life together,
and then all of a sudden, magical puberty hits.
It's going to be okay.
No, it's not! Will you just get out?
Excuse me?
Are you serious?
SHI: For Mei, I really wanted her to sound unique.
I wanted her to feel like a real girl.
Oh, my gosh, that was the best thing ever.
SHI: And so we found Rosalie Chiang.
It's like you feel bad about turning her down because she's your mom.
She just had this really great voice.
There was just like a charming imperfection to it.
LIU: For Mei, it was important to design her the way that we saw ourselves.
Her face is round, her ankles are thick.
We definitely embraced her chunky cute.
It's kind of our design aesthetic for our characters and for our sets.
We were looking at each other's faces and were like, "We got moles.
"She should have moles."
-Then you're like, "Rona, you have..." -"You have funny lips."
"You have that dip in your lip. Let's put that in.
BOTH: "Hey, Rona, you have really patchy eyebrows."
When that part of myself gets celebrated and the director's like,
"Hey, I like that. Let's put it in our main character,"
you're like, "Hey, why did I hate that for so long?"
Jin. Jin! It's happening!
What are you doing?
COLLINS: For me, this story is so much my day-to-day life.
I hate to admit, I'm much more the mom
than the main character because I actually have three kids who are teens.
I am surrounded by teenagers and hormones and puberty at work.
And then I go home, and I am equally, if not more,
surrounded by puberty and hormones at home.
Are you guys going to walk the dog?
Will you take them together or are you gonna take them separate?
Bye. Thank you.
They've been very well-behaved.
(LAUGHS) It does not normally go that smoothly.
MEI: The number one rule in my family? Honor your parents.
They're the supreme beings who gave you life...
The least you can do in return is...
every single thing they ask.
I think both of us probably grew up under a lot of pressure
-to, you know, make our parents proud. -Yeah.
I had that pressure on myself.
Like, I was very high-strung.
I was really into good grades.
I was into the image of the perfect girl.
I never ask for anything.
My whole life I've been her perfect little Mei-Mei. Temple duties, grades...
-Violin! -Tap dancing.
Yeah. We've been so good.
If they don't trust us anyway, then what's the point?
SHI: Mei's struggle in this film is
she's torn between being her mom's good little daughter,
and embracing her wild inner beast.
That is the universal struggle that a lot of kids go through,
especially, I think, immigrant kids, there's definitely more of this obligation
to carry on your family's legacy and make sure that their sacrifices
in coming to a new country aren't in vain. But also, you're in a new country,
you're experiencing all of this crazy, awesome stuff
that maybe your parents didn't get to grow up with.
You're caught between two worlds,
and that's kind of what I wanted to explore in Mei
and also, like, literally caught between being like a human girl and a panda.
LIU: I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 10,
and my mom is very much in her Eastern roots.
And when I came here, you know,
I was the good little Chinese girl that I knew how to be,
and then as I get more and more exposed to the Western culture
and what it means to be an American teenager,
my mom and I started to butt heads.
I had to discover how to bridge the gap
between being a dutiful daughter,
faithful to myself, and a good friend.
In eighth grade, I met my best friend, Aya Alaadel.
She really taught me
-that girls can burp the alphabet. -(BURPING)
Girls can want to play video games.
If you trip and you fall on your face, you can learn to laugh at yourself.
You don't have to be embarrassed for your decisions,
for your mistakes, for who you are.
She really opened my eyes to all of that.
This is Bao.
-This is... -Your first baby.
-Our first baby. -Our first.
Our first baby.
Rona designed this cute little nose for him.
Used our own noses.
-You look like your mother. -(LAUGHS)
SHI: I had this short film that I was developing, that became Bao,
and Rona was one of the first people that I roped into the story.
I was like, "Dang, she can really paint and she has really good taste
"and she seems really cool."
"I really need an art person to like take this to the next level."
To be honest, I will follow you to the ends of the Earth.
I think Domee is just a brilliant, brilliant mind.
I just feel like we click and we can be so open
in communicating with each other.
We're different enough in certain areas of our tastes
that we can collaborate and create something even better together
than if we worked on something separately.
Hey, Bart. Hey, Lisa.
LIU: In the movie, Mei and her family own and take care of a family temple.
We took several trips
to different historic temples around California
that were built by early Chinese settlers
just to get a feeling of what these grassroots temples are like.
SHI: I also spent time living behind a temple with my grandma in China,
and I just remember it being just a really lovely memory.
I'd make candles, and we would sell them to visitors of the temples.
And I'd learned how to pray properly with my grandma.
When we got to building the set of the temple and dressing it,
it was really cool seeing those details that we saw at the temples
kind of pop up in the background.
Like, there's just a bottle of vegetable oil.
Like, cleaning supplies tucked away in the corner.
They've been around since the Gold Rush era.
All these immigrants who came with so little
were able to cobble together a little piece of home.
That kind of felt like the immigrant spirit.
That kind of felt like me and Rona,
and how we, in our art,
we are inspired by Eastern and Western stuff.
Should we try to match their face shapes? You know, like a bell shape?
I remember you saying, "Rona, this is not a Chinese film.
"This is a coming of age film,
"but it just happens to be about a Chinese girl."
We need to really tap into the mind of a 13-year-old growing up in 2002,
growing up in Toronto.
-What did we like when we were 13. -Yeah.
And we liked Sailor Moon. We liked anime.
The fandoms are what got me really into anime.
I was drawing fan art passionately. I had a secret sketchbook.
You join an online community, you draw fan art,
and other people would comment on it,
and that would encourage you to draw more, produce more.
And that's kind of just what encouraged me to keep drawing.
I think, as a kid, it was such an escape.
I know I'm Asian, but I'm in a very white school.
It kind of was nice to be connected to that Asian side of myself.
I didn't have a boyfriend,
so then it's nice to read about boyfriends.
Yeah, and a lot of them are drawn and written by women too.
There was a lot of stories told from a girl's point of view,
and they're the heroes,
they save the day or they change the hearts of all the boys
-and make them fall for her. -(BOTH LAUGH)
This is my house. This is my boyfriend, Darren.
My many game consoles.
I've been using these to de-stress over quarantine.
This is this awesome Miyazaki art book I got
about the Ghibli Museum.
I got this rug over quarantine.
Diane really likes this rug.
Where's Diane? Diane?
Don't be scared, don't be scared.
Don't be scared. Come over here.
I got you!
She'll come out, she's shy.
I think I'm craving even more speed
as she poofs into a panda and shoots forward.
We're paying homage to anime throughout the entire movie.
You can see it in the expressions and the acting,
the starry eyes in Mei
when she sees a boy that she really, really loves.
Uh, Mei?
Why are you staring at Carter Murphy-Mayhew?
We definitely have a lot of expertise on the movie
about being 13-year-old girls, for sure.
There is definitely a lived experience there
that we get to bring to the movie-making,
maybe in a different way
than I would have been able to, say on a movie like WALL•E. (LAUGHS)
That scene with Mei going under the bed,
and all of a sudden she's sort of gripped by things,
and she's drawing these sexy pictures and the conflict there
and "Why did I draw those things?"
I mean, I wasn't under my bed drawing things,
but when I was 11, I had a little wooden clothes pin,
and I had this mad crush on this woman that was older than me,
but I did not know that I was gay at the time.
And I remember drawing her name
on the clothes pin and then flipping it over.
And she played a sport so I put her number down,
and that sat on my desk and I would look at it sometimes.
You know, these things, these silly things you do.
I definitely get what Mei is doing.
(LAUGHS)
From the side, would it look like this?
Did you know that I was like, "Oh, my God, am I ready?"
-To be a production designer? -Yeah. "Will I be good?"
We both did it on a short. But you're a first time feature...
I will be a first-time feature production designer.
I figured because I was nervous about directing for the first time
that you would be nervous about production designing,
but I naively thought,
"How much harder could it be directing a feature?"
I was really scared, honestly, at the beginning.
I mean, you know, Domee was intimidating, right?
I mean, she's... Seriously, you were, like, super talented and...
I'm gonna be a diva.
-No, I was never worried about that. -(LAUGHS)
It was good, too,
because you also made me, kind of having done this for a while,
you questioned things that I hadn't questioned in a while.
So I started in May of '97 at Pixar on A Bug's Life.
I had worked in traditional animation,
but at the time, CG animation was a completely different ball game.
I just remember I would have this notepad and I would just write down questions.
I was like, "Is the render farm a zoo?
"What's a cookie? Can I have a cookie?"
They're like, "No. You cannot." A cookie is not a cookie.
It was kind of like, "Here we go, welcome to my questions."
Danielle was definitely somebody that I sought out,
as she would not judge you and give you a nice, clear and concise answer.
When we export act three,
is there a way to do one that just has music...
One of the things I love most about Pixar
is that I'm still asking questions
with the same amount of freedom and safety as I did on the first day I got here.
It's just a philosophy that I've kept.
It's something I encourage other people to do as they're starting on something.
If you don't know,
you're probably not the only one in the room who doesn't know, so ask.
We basically started these this morning.
So be gentle.
A little bit before I was asked to be the DP on WALL•E,
I thought, "I don't know if I could ever be a DP,
"maybe like in 10 or 15 years."
MAN: Wow, that's great.
This one we lit in five minutes. (LAUGHS)
And then Andrew Stanton asked me to be the DP on WALL•E,
and I was terrified because I didn't think I knew how to do that at all.
COLLINS: I think we both credit Andrew to a big degree, frankly.
We both had this encouragement neither one of us would have asked for
until he kind of said, "No, I want you to come do this."
It was an amazing experience.
It was also, half the time, terrifying
of just trying to figure out how to hang on to who I was
and make it through,
even though a lot of times I felt like I didn't know what I was doing.
But what we then decided to do
is some look stuff that's sort of like,
"How do we get out of the Pixar look? How do we get into some new thing?"
We were trying to push the boundaries of style
in both storytelling, in the camera,
the look of things,
using some hand-drawn elements,
but then you sprinkle in Asian art influences.
It's been so interesting to take those pieces
and figure out how you can apply them to a 3D computer-animated film.
For me, I really wanted to be a VFX supervisor
that was making sure that people had the room
to bring their very best.
Not telling people what to do
but making space for them to shine.
And I have to say, honestly, a lot of that has started with Rona
because she is the most collaborative production designer
I have ever worked with, far and away.
I think it's made a huge difference to the movie
and to people's enjoyment of making the movie.
And this is the trust and the confidence I gain.
(BOTH LAUGH)
This isn't just our first concert.
This is our first step into womanhood.
And we have to do it together.
SHI: Mei's friends are Miriam, Abby, and Priya.
And they're her dork squad.
They accept her no matter what.
Red panda or no panda.
I always saw that as a metaphor for when I found my squad.
4*TOWN, here we come!
I love that Mei has these key friendships.
I very much am that person myself.
I always was the kid who had two or three best friends.
Those kind of quirky, dorky people who made you laugh,
equally insecure about what was going on.
And in high school, we'd get invited to the party
and we'd be like, "Okay, cool."
And then we drive over to the party and we'd sit outside for a minute,
and then we were like, "Let's go get a cake."
Then we'd eat a cake, like a whole cake, in the car, and then go home.
It was about friends that listen to that moment
when you were like, "I'm not comfortable going in.
"I'm not confident enough to do this,
"and all I really want to do is go hang out with you guys."
SHI: Hi. Sorry I'm late.
Figuring out how to be comfortable in the room
and finding my voice took a while.
When I first started, I was definitely more nervous.
I was one of the few women in the story department.
What helped a lot for me
was a female story artists support group
called the Story Artistas,
led by Mary Coleman, and Nicole Grindle.
They were like, "I want you guys to get comfortable,"
like, stating out loud what your goals are.
And I think there was one lunch where I meekly said out loud,
"I want to be a director." Oh!
Cool. Yeah, really feeling that anger.
She's like launching herself up, "Sorry, I'm not..."
You could play Ming a little bit more in slo-mo as well.
-Yeah. -Otherwise it's looking good.
Anyone else have thoughts? Notes?
Mei-Mei, there you are.
-Hey, Mom... -You're ten minutes late.
What happened? Are you hurt? Are you hungry?
-Um... -Ming is a force to be reckoned with.
She's just a sweet innocent child.
How dare you take advantage of her!
When Sandra Oh became the voice of Ming,
it just felt like her character was starting to flesh out.
I knew you were trouble.
SHI: Sandra's so funny, but she also has so much range.
She added that missing piece to the puzzle of Ming.
I have a double-jointed elbow! Look! I can make a perfect circle!
That was great.
I think in terms of design,
you wanted her to have the really powerful shoulders
with these thin eyebrows,
kind of like Chinese ladies from like the '60s,
-with the qipao and stuff. -I wanted traditional Chinese
-mixed with Working Girl. -LIU: Yeah.
We definitely couldn't have written Ming without input from Lindsey
and other moms on the show.
I came at it purely from the point of view of the oppressed teenage daughter.
So it was really helpful hearing that other side.
You don't know everything, you're making it up as you go along.
What I love about Ming is that she's not one sided, cookie cutter character
and certainly not as a mom.
And as a mom myself, I can appreciate those moments.
Hey, Sloane?
So will you remind me before we sit down to dinner to RSVP for your...
-Fall festival? -COLLINS: Yeah.
You're having conversations that you are like,
"Is this even the right conversation to be having?
"Am I supposed to be playing more of a mom role?
"I don't even know what that is."
You're talking about heartbreak and dating and insecurity and body image.
I know how I feel about all those things,
yet I don't know what I'm supposed to say about any of them.
I don't know if I'm supposed to pretend I don't have those issues
or if I'm supposed to say I had all of them.
We always joke that your poor oldest kid is like the first pancake.
You're like "Oof.
"Sorry, dude, I'm pretty sure we're messing this up."
The third one we should be good.
She's gonna have nothing to complain about
You guys...
The RSVP thing is closed.
Mom!
-Okay. -BOY: Is it too late?
Yeah, apparently. But that's okay.
BOY: Ready? GIRL: Yeah.
In a way, parenting overwhelms me much more than my job does.
And I think it's just because I feel like the stakes are so much higher.
(GIRL SINGING INDISTINCTLY)
Every choice you make as a parent
has equal chances of being this great memory
and a success in your relationship with them,
or alternatively, this huge disaster
that they will talk about for the rest of their lives
as the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to them.
(SINGING CONTINUES)
FEINBERG: Okay. Who wants to get dressed? GIRL: Me!
(EXCLAIMING)
FEINBERG: We both have worked very hard at our careers,
and we are late mommies.
And so I think both of us have a huge amount of regard
for how important our work and career is,
and so we try to protect that for one another.
On Fridays, Paige is here with the kids. We don't have the nanny.
And, you know, I sort of have this like,
any spare moment I have I should be running out to help,
and she has zero expectation of that.
That's made it so much more doable
to be able to balance the two things.
Not that it's always easy or something but it, that makes a huge difference.
Boy, you guys really destroyed the house this morning.
You know, it's really amazing those kids right now,
they're almost 17 months.
Maybe you can hear Jack crying in the other room.
That's a little heartbreaking because I want to go run and help.
It is a massive luxury to be able to see my kids
as much as I have during this last year-plus.
I never ever would have been able to see them as much.
I would have been racing home from work just to catch them going to bed.
Sometimes I get to catch them for dinner. I always get to put them to bed.
You know, it's not like you can ever get that time back.
Yeah, I think it's working really well.
-MAN: Okay. -Final!
(ALL CLAPPING)
SHI: I think it took until screening six for us to finally have an ending.
And that, I think, was because it took a long time for me
to process my own relationship with my mother,
and just trying to figure out how to be a good daughter for them.
I also don't know what the solution is in real life.
Is it about being true to yourself, or is it about honoring your parents?
I don't know.
It's some messy mix of both. There's no clear answer.
LIU: Before I was a mom,
it just didn't occur to me how hard it would be.
I don't know how people do it, and I don't even know how I'm doing it right now.
My mom has been such a huge supporter of what I want to do,
and she just always believed that I know what's best.
That gave me so much freedom to be the artist that I am today.
WOMAN: Happy baby.
LIU: Growing up, my parents separated,
and striving for perfection came from this feeling of like,
I just want to be good enough to keep my dad and my mom.
And maybe...
Maybe if I was a perfect little girl, my parents would be together.
Yeah.
And... Hmm!
It worked out in the best possible way for me.
I feel like it made me ambitious.
Ever since I had a baby, my worth,
who I am, is no longer so much tied to others.
I just feel like I am a whole being
and I'm solid.
FEINBERG: I think anyone being able to tell kids as they're
growing up and going through this sort of chaos,
of emotion or feeling out of control
or "Do my parents love me?"
or "Can I be who I want to be and they'll still love me?"
or "Who am I and what do the other kids want me to be?"
We need art in general,
especially things that go on a screen that kids can see
that tell them that it is okay.
And I think it's also for parents, it's okay to see all of that craziness,
and that's a natural part of life you've got to wade through
to form who you really are.
Meilin says she's not like her mom, and that's okay.
And then she realizes, "I am my own person.
"I want to embrace this thing
"that every other member of my family has tried to lock away."
COLLINS: When she becomes this red panda,
it at first glance, represents everything she doesn't want to be,
her being different and standing out and feeling like she can't control herself
or the situation the way she used to be able to.
You can't go through life and become the amazing person you're supposed to become
if things don't conspire to rock that sense of stability.
When you say to embrace the red panda,
I think that represents being okay with that part of yourself.
It's okay not to be in control all the time.
It's okay to be messy. It's okay to be loud.
It's okay to be noticed.
If you don't accept it, it's a curse.
And then if you embrace it, then it's a gift that keeps on giving.
I mean, for Mei, once she embraced it, her whole life opened up to her.
FEINBERG: The last year-plus with the pandemic
has been unlike anything any of us have experienced.
It's been incredibly difficult, it's been very stressful,
and for me, this is the funniest movie I've ever worked on,
and so, if even at just that level people get to have some laughs,
I think that would be amazing.
But it also has this much deeper thing
of really being able to reach out and say, "It's okay."
If you're confused and feeling crazy and you don't know who you are
and you might let your parents or yourself down,
that's a natural part of growing up.
And if that could be what we provide for,
I think even one kid out there, that would be really amazing.
-(BABY COOS) -(LAUGHS)
SHI: Come on. Good Cornflake.
Darren made a quiche yesterday.
Look, your quiche is on camera.
So cool. I like how you guys designed it.
-In there? -WOMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: When these dogs come in here and start snoring so loudly,
to the point where they're like... (SNORES)
WOMAN: Do you, Rona, take Dylan to be your lawfully wedded spouse?
I do.
Congratulations, you may kiss.
Good boy. Got it?
Great job.
(SINGING) Final!