Interview: Matthew A. Cherry

A conversation with the creator of the new animated series Young Love.

In 2020, the film Hair Love won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It was written and directed by Matthew A. Cherry.

Plot summary: A father tries to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.

Here is that Oscar-winning short film.

Cut to 2023 and that short film has evolved into the 12-episode TV series Young Love airing on Max.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Cherry. Here are some excerpts:

At some points, Young Love feels more like a live action family sitcom than what we typically see in animation. So what were your TV inspirations for this show?

Shows like Fresh Prince and Insecure were big references in different ways. Also Black-ish because of the multi-generational thing, and you’ve got three generations of family living in the same space. Insecure really was a good bar for the tone of the comedy. I’m not the biggest fan of broad comedy. We wanted things to feel a little drier, more situational, so Insecure was a reference for that. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air just makes you feel good when you watch it. Shows like that back in the day, you got medicine with the candy, but also, it was just fun.

I’m so glad that you picked up that it felt like more like a live action show because that’s really how we look at it. I think the thing about Hair Love that was really cool — and gave us a lot of confidence to try to do a show in the space — is that it was really simple. It’s just a dad trying to figure out how to do his daughter’s hair, and you learn the touching reason why. Outside of the fantasy sequences, it could have been a live action thing. Trying to expand animation into a world where it could be a little bit more grounded and situational really was something that we tried to push hard for.

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You’re from Chicago, so how accurately did you try to portray the city in this?

I’m from the northwest side of Chicago, but basically the rest of my family is from the West Side, so the house that they live in [in the show] is a remixed version of like my grandmother’s two-flat on the West Side. The different locations, the way the schools look — our art director, Ed Lee, and our supervising director Mark Davis were going onto Google Maps and traveling down different neighborhoods. If Angela works in a salon, it was probably on Madison Street. Let’s make sure that street looks similar to the different businesses on Madison. If they’re on this particular street in Chicago on the West Side, let’s see what these other two-flats are looking like around them, and what type of people are in that different neighborhood. It was a very extensive process to make sure that the styling of it felt specific to Chicago. It’s hard though because a lot of our actors aren’t from there. You want to get all the slang and super specific things in there that you can. We weren’t able to do as many as we would have liked. But I hope people really see the love and care that we put into trying to represent Chicago in a positive light because it gets such a negative light in mainstream media.

Here is a trailer for Young Love:

Cherry has an interesting background. He works in movies, television, animation, and live-action. Plus, he played football in the NFL.

The TV series looks terrific!

To read the rest of the Hollywood Reporter article, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters and filmmakers, go here.