“So You Think You Can Dance” winner Jeanine Mason didn’t think an animated series would present much of a workout challenge.
But when she got into the voiceover booth for “WondLa,” a new AppleTV+ series, “I was sweating and jumping and truly labored,” she says. “I was literally bouncing the entire time.”
Based on a series of books, “WondLa” follows Mason’s character, Eva, a teenage girl who has been raised in a state-of-the-art bunker by a robot named Muthr. On her 16th birthday, Eva is forced onto the surface of a planet called Orbona. There, she tries to connect with other humans and find her place in the world.
A host of creatures become friends with Eva and Muthr when they break into a new world in “WondLa.”
While Mason was aware of the books by Tony DiTerlizzi, she didn’t know how the characters would look or where the animated series might go. “They kept it a secret as it unfolded,” she says. “The amazing thing about getting to do an animated series is it takes so long to make and it’s wildly collaborative – more so than on-camera stuff. It’s pieced together over time; when they didn’t know what would happen, we would figure it out together sometimes.”
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Teri Hatcher, who voices Muthr, says producers and directors were very specific about what they wanted from her performance. “I think she has this germ of emotion that grows in her,” she says. “I found that very charming and a little bit complicated to play.”
