Interview with ‘Elemental’ screenwriters.

At first glance, Elemental seems like an expected twist on the usual Pixar formula: “What if [insert abstract concept here] had feelings?”

Upon further inspection, however, the film (now playing in theaters everywhere) stands as a poignant allegory for immigration, xenophobia, racial bigotry, inter-generational expectations, cultural assimilation, and the immeasurable power of love.

Helmed by longtime Pixar veteran Peter Sohn (you may know him as the voice of Emile in Ratatouille, or else director of The Good Dinosaur), the infectiously charming animated title revolves around a budding romance between Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), anthropomorphic embodiments of fire and water living in a bustling metropolis known as Element City.

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The duo can’t exactly publicize their relationship because…well, fire and water don’t mix, of course. That longstanding and antiquated belief is suddenly challenged once our protagonists join forces to prevent the city from shutting down the local shop Ember’s parents, Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi), built from the ground up after arriving in Element City with a newborn daughter and a dream.

I recently caught up two of the project’s main writers — John Hoberg and Kat Likkel (a married couple known for their work on My Name is Early and Black-ish) — over Zoom to learn more about how the film’s steamy screenplay came together.

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^{***WARNING! The following contains spoilers for Elemental!***}

How did you first become attached to the project?

HOBERG: There’s another writer, Brenda [Hsueh], who’s on the project, too. She started before us and then she left. Kat and I had gone to the Austin Film Festival and we were gonna be on a panel there.

Right before we showed up, we got a call from our manager, saying, ‘Pixar wants … to have breakfast with you guys. Would you be interested?’ And we were like, ‘Okay, that sounds great.’ We kind of assumed, like a lot of Hollywood meetings, you’ll have a meet-and-greet and that’ll be the end of it. We sat down with the two people from Pixar and they had a pile of our previous scripts.

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LIKKEL: They basically had a dossier.

HOBERG: It was like, ‘Oh, wow — they’re kind of serious.’ They were talking to us and said, ‘Look, we’ve had our eye on you for a little while. There may or may not be something coming up. We might call you in a week, or it could be years. So we’ll see what happens.’ But we were really excited by it. They told us we’d have to move to San Francisco and we were like, ‘Yeah, we’re game. It’s on our wishlist.’

And luckily, something came up two weeks later and we got a call. They said, ‘Come on up’ and basically told us, ‘We can’t tell you anything about the project. You have to sign non-disclosures and you’re gonna have lunch with the director.’ It was like a special operation. A car showed up, they put us on a plane, we had lunch with Pete. We still didn’t know what it was about and then we were home by 4 ‘o clock that afternoon and we were like, ‘We’ve gotta work with this guy.’

LIKKEL: He was great. It was an amazing meeting and like [John] said, we had no idea what the project was. But we all just really connected. It was a fantastic meeting, but we still came home mystified [laughs].

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JOHN: Looking back, he was asking us all the questions he needed to know to start conversations about the core art and everything in the movie. But we just didn’t know. So that’s how we came along and then we found out, ‘Yeah, they would like to hire you.’ We’re like, ‘Let’s do this.’ We moved up January 2020, worked in person for a few months.

LIKKEL: Three months, I think it was.

JOHN: And then a week after Tom Hanks got COVID, we all fled back home [laughs] and worked on this thing from Zoom.

KAT: People at Pixar were like, ‘One of our directors came back from Italy with this really funny cold that everybody is catching.’ I think 24 hours after that, everybody was packed up and sent home. Pixar is so technologically proficient that within 48 hours, all of the story artists had all the equipment they needed to do all the animation from their homes.

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It’s crazy to think you’ve been working on it for that long…

HOBERG: I remember when we got the job, there were a couple other job possibilities out there and we were like, ‘Look, guys, this may be a three month thing. We’ll probably be back in April, so let’s put a pin in it.’

And then flash forward to three years later [laughs] and we’re just finishing up the work. It was something else. The longest job we ever had was My Name is Earl for four years and that was a hundred episodes of television. This was almost as long as that, so it was really something.

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You mentioned Brenda earlier. How much of the narrative bones were present in her draft of the script when you came on board?

HOBERG: It’s funny because they have the ‘iterative’ process where you’re making the movie again and again and again. You’re doing it all with hand drawn storyboard poses, but then they use voice actors and all of this. They had two or three versions [before we were hired] and it was different, but in that, there’s Wade and Ember — and there were a couple sequences that are still there because they were so good.

That where you come in and you’re like, ‘Okay, these things are working. How do we work around them?’ But the movie changed a lot, came back, changed again. It was picking up all these different things along the way. At one point, our very first version, it was almost like Chinatown. There was a villain and a water problem and it turned into this whole thing.

LIKKEL: I think at one point, Wade’s mom was evil and had this plan to flood Fire Town. It’s really crazy because with this iterative process, you write the script; you’re working with the storyboard artists; and you’re writing the script over and over again; and then they do … a really rough animation of it, but they show it to everybody.

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They show it to the entire studio — from the janitorial staff all the way up to the big head people and the Disney execs also. Everybody gets to give their notes and from the notes, they’re like, ‘Okay, this is popping. This works, this works, people hate that.’ And so, you gradually just start cherry-picking and creating your story from all the things that are working.

HOBERG: One of the things that they were struggling with when we came in [was the fact that] it sort of felt like two movies. There was a love story and then there was a second half that became something different. And then with Pete and the story team, we found the ending. That last 25-30 minutes of that movie are the same as it was on that fourth version that we did. Everything from this dam breaking, all the way to the very end. As a group, we found that, and that was the big triumph of that version. Everyone’s like, ‘Great! We got the ending. Now, let’s make it all lead to the ending as best we can.’

I think Apollo 13 is one of the greatest movies about making a movie that exists. You have all these plans and it immediately goes haywire. At some point, you have all these parts on a table and you’re like, ‘We gotta make this out of this.’ That’s kind of what you try to do a little bit. Can you use these parts to make this new movie of the things you already love?

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How did you go about finding the voices of Ember and Wade?

LIKKEL: A lot of this has to do with Pete Sohn. I can’t say it’s based on his life, but he’s infused so much of himself and his own family’s story into it. [As well as] his relationship with his own wife into it. They’re two very different people. Pete grew up in a Korean family who owned a series of small shops in New York City. So he grew up like Ember and then he married somebody who was not Korean, which was a huge deal in his family. This isn’t a biography of him by any means, but it is infused very much with his own story and his family’s own immigration story.

That was one of the great things to talk about when we were all working on the idea. Everybody got to talk about their own immigration stories. My family is second generation America. Pete is first generation. Some of the story artists had come over from Korea or China or France — a lot of different countries — to work at Pixar and talking about their experiences of coming to the US and what it’s like trying to assimilate. What’s weird, what’s foreign to you, how people react to you. All of those things played into this movie.

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HOBERG: Pete really knew he wanted Ember to be strong [and] fiery… embodying these elements of fire, so-to-speak. So one of the things we were really all trying to find is we didn’t do a story where someone stands on the rooftop and sings a song longing about what they really wish they wanted. It’s a great trope, but it felt like we don’t want to start that way. We want to start with someone who’s very confident in what they want. Because I think that’s true to Pete’s experience. ‘I knew I wanted to do this thing that I was expected to do,’ and then find a way for her to uncover in herself [that] sometimes what you think you want is actually not what you want.

Once we started discovering that, we really started discovering Wade and that Wade was someone who goes with the flow, so-to-speak. He never really stood up, even when he had issues with his father. He never really went against it to solve those things. And if you watch the movie, there are little ways in which Ember affects him. Even when there’s this dam breaking and he’s putting sandbags and he actually puts his arm against the water for the first time, it’s really the first time you see him pushing back against something — all the way to the point where this is somebody who has learned from what happened with his dad that he shows up at the end to go against what he probably wouldn’t have before and take a chance.

Was it super difficult to come up with all of the element puns throughout the movie?

LIKKEL: Some of it came from us, some of it came from Pete, some of it would come from the story artists. They would show you a sketch that had a product with a funny name on it. Give John and I license to do puns and we’ll take it too far.

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HOBERG: We were kind of unleashed too because working in half-hour network sitcom, you are shunned if you make a pun. If you make a pun, the room will boo. So when we first got to Pixar, they were making puns and we were like, ‘Are we doing this?!’ And once we jumped in, we’re like, ‘Okay, screw it. We’re all in. Let’s just go for it.’ But it so fun because the story artists have such free reign and are such a part of every bit … They’re allowed to sway and try something out and it’s one of the secrets of Pixar. So they might come back with something you never would have thought of.

Is there a joke or scene you’re most proud of?

HOBERG: I really love the scene where Wade comes back at the retirement party. [Speaking of] story artists, there’s a story artist named Anna Benedict who was a huge part of the movie. You just mine your own personal experience to find these moments and Kat and I were talking at one point about how when we were dating when we were younger, we literally had a very logical discussion about why we should break up. We were listing [all the reasons] and it got to this point where we’re like, ‘Okay, it makes complete sense. We shouldn’t be together.’ And then one of us was like, ‘But I don’t want to break up.’ And we didn’t.

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Anna was like, ‘Instead of Wade showing up saying, ‘I love you. Here are all the [reasons we should stay together],’ he shows up with all the reasons it shouldn’t work.’ Immediately, we’re all like, ‘I love that’ and that’s where Kat and I dove in. That’s one of my favorite scenes for that reason. It’s funny, but it’s really heartfelt.

LIKKEL: He’s being a romantic hero, but in the best sort of Wade goofy way. That soft and mushy watery way he’s got.

HOBERG: It gave us a chance to write a Richard Curtis scene, which has been our dream forever … And honestly, the end scene where they find Ember in the hearth and that back and forth with the dad… that came out of that early version and it stuck. Pete, Kat, and I really worked on that when it first came through and I think we’re all really proud of that because it just feels honest.

Conversely, what would you say was the most difficult scene to crack?

HOBERG: I think the water problem was really tough. It was way more elaborate early on. You need a handcuff to bring two people together for a romantic story and that just got really complicated. It’s like, ‘Okay, they’re detectives, but they’re doing this outside of the city.’ So that got a little wonky.

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LIKKEL: You also run into the risk of it becoming technical and boring. You should see some of the drafts where you’re trying to explain this and you’re like, ‘I just spent three paragraphs trying to explain [something]’ and we would have to rip it up and start all over again. We finally decided people don’t need tons of explanation. I don’t need to explain the brownian motion of water. People will get it.

HOBERG: In one of those versions where it was Chinatown, it was so complicated where there was a dam and a well and all these windmills that pumped water. Wade’s evil mom did this villain thing where she laid out [her plan] to Ember. And I remember Andrew Stanton had seen it and he just wrote a note, ‘So.Much.Talking.’ And he was 100 percent right.

LIKKEL: At least he didn’t yell it at us. But it was in all caps.

HOBERG: It was the right note. It was interesting because then we started leaning into… I think we, as the group of filmmakers, all just loved Ember and Wade and their relationship. You’ll notice that [the final version] really is weighed towards them and them talking. I think that’s where we felt like, ‘Okay, that’s where we want to be.’

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Did the script change much once casting began?

HOBERG: We did make a lot of adjustments for Leah and Mamoudou just to play to their strengths. But the scenes didn’t change as much as rhythms. That’s one of our favorite things that Kat and I have learned over the years with writing half-hour, is you just key into, ‘What is the rhythm of an actor?’

You might do a draft of something and then an actual cast member comes in and then you find their rhythms. It’s really fun to do because Mamoudou can just play things just like he does and Leah has such an incredible strength and voice that we could suddenly lean into stuff. Both of them can play what’s below the surface of what they’re saying really well, so you can pull back on what you’re saying in places.

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I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of this world. Is there potential for a sequel? Are you pitching ideas?

HOBERG: We’re not in any discussions, but we’re also no longer working there. Once you’re done as a writer, you move on. But I sure hope so. I would love to see more of them.

LIKKEL: At one point, you were gonna see an ending that took place maybe a year later where Wade and Ember were coming home to visit everybody back in Fire Town and Water Town and they came back with a steam baby. We were like, ‘What kind of baby would they have?’ And we were like, ‘It’d be steam!’ So we all had a lot of fun for a long time and I was really pushing for it. ‘Come on, Pete. We gotta have a steam baby!’ We had fun with him drawing some pictures of it, but ultimately, we were like, ‘No steam baby for Kat,’ even though I loved it.

Did you get to see the film premiere at Cannes?

LIKKEL: Yeah, we did. That was an amazing experience. It was so much fun and it really was overwhelming. And what a weird place Cannes is [laughs]. But we had a blast. It was really amazing to be there in that audience.

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HOBERG: The reaction was so big. It was so exciting for us to see. We worked on it for three years [but] Pete worked on it for five and a half/six years, maybe. Both of his parents died through the course of it. It was such a love letter to his family and there was a six-minute standing ovation for him. Just to see six years of his life put into this and watching him get a chance to feel that love in that room was really special.

LIKKEL: He is such a lovely, sweet man. He’s not egotistical and he’s very giving. He was incredibly giving to me and John. But just to see him at that moment, with that standing ovation going on for him and knowing how much he put it into, was a wonderful moment.

HOBERG: My favorite Cannes detail is they don’t let you have bottled water in the auditorium, so everybody was so thirsty because it was a hotter than normal day. And so, someone gave us the tip of, ‘Just go into the bathroom and drink from the sink.’ There was a line to get into the bathroom and you see all these French movie stars leaning under the sink, drinking from the faucets.

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LIKKEL: I’m in the sink, drinking from the faucet and there’s the Palme d’Or winner next to me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Elemental is now playing in theaters everywhere.