It just feels so real and of the moment, and at the same time I think it’s such a universal and lasting story,” Barris said of the new Netflix film.
In celebration of Netflix’s newly released animation film, “Entergalactic,” creator and executive producer Kenya Barris sat down with ESSENCE to discuss how he and Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi first connected on this monumental project.
Barris’ daughter, who was a student at Harvard Westlake in Los Angeles, asked him if he could help get Mescudi to speak to her school’s Black Student Union. Barris asked the talented entertainer, and he quickly accepted. Upon speaking at the school, Barris noticed Mescudi’s extreme influence on everyone in attendance. “I knew Cudi’s music and I knew who he was – but he has had such an effect on the youth,” the Black-ish creator says.
It was after this event that Barris and Mescudi were determined to collaborate with each other in some form or fashion. Eventually, “Entergalactic” producer Mike Moon and Elizabeth Porter convinced the two that an animated project would be in their best interests. The film’s creators then began to bounce ideas off each other about the intersection of music and animation. It would be a track that Mescudi had recorded that would inspire Barris to contact the popular digital streaming platform.
During the months that followed the meeting of the minds, Barris and the rest of the project’s brass started the process of hiring a director, actors, etc., to create a team that would ultimately produce something really special.
“We’ve got such an amazing cast, and the most amazing in this genre ever – from Laura Harrier to Vanessa Hudgens, and Jessica, Timotheé Chalamet, Macaulay Culkin, Ty Dolla $ign, Teyana Taylor,” Barris tells ESSENCE. “I just think we’ve got an amazing group of people – it just feels so real and of the moment, and at the same time I think it’s such a universal and lasting story.”