Just in time for Halloween, the fright-fest TV shows just keep coming! And that includes spooky series suited for younger audiences, too — even if Eli Roth is one of the co-creators. Sure, he’s helmed some pretty horrifically violent films over the years (Hostel and the upcoming Thanksgiving) but he’s also dabbled in kid-friendly material as well (The House with a Clock in Its Walls). More recently, he teamed up with best-selling author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) to bring a new YA series to Hulu and Peacock this week. Fright Krewe centers on a wise-cracking group of misfit teens in New Orleans who, after a few accidental missteps around the wrong part of town, get caught up in saving their city from an ancient prophecy and evil Voodoo Queen.

Millennials may think of classic series like Recess and Are You Afraid of the Dark? when watching each episode, and that’s a good thing. We recently caught up with showrunners Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco to learn more about collaborating with Roth and Frey, and how their comedic background helped fuel the fun in Fright Krewe.

Paying Voodoo the ‘Respect It Deserves’

Songco and Lewis will tell you firsthand that they are “gigantic nerds” (their words), so joining a project like Fright Krewe seems like a no-brainer. However, Lewis was a bit surprised at first. “We were working on Kipo [and the Age of Wonderbeasts] when Ben Cawood from DreamWorks approached us about doing a kids’ horror thing with Eli Roth and James Frey,” Lewis told MovieWeb. “Kristine and I are comedy writers, so we were like, ‘Us?'”

She continued:

“But then they told us it was based in New Orleans with Voodoo as a backdrop, and that’s when we got really excited. I had just come back from a trip to New Orleans, and I had gone on the graveyard tours, the vampire tours, the Voodoo tours, and I had learned that everything I thought I knew about Voodoo was very wrong. And I was like, ‘This is exciting. And this is an opportunity, we have an opportunity to do something kind of unique and cool, and really pay Voodoo the respect it deserves.”

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“Anytime we get to tell a story that is set in a supernatural backdrop, but is essentially about growing up, or very human, relatable themes, even if you don’t have superpowers, we love telling those kinds of stories,” Songco added, while also detailing how they went about researching the supernatural material to get ready to pen the episodes of season one:

We did have to do research into Voodoo… But vampire things, vampire rules or magic rules, that came easily to us because that was just where our brains are at all the time. And it was just about picking into like, ‘OK, what are our vampire rules for this world? Can’t walk out in the daylight. We’re not going by the Twilight route — that kind of thing.

Ever heard of a Rougarou? That’s just one of the mythical beasts Lewis and Songco had to do an “immense deep dive” into. “It was really important to us to have consultants that were actively practicing and who could also talk about it from an educational context,” said Lewis. “We had multiple consultants helping us, making sure that we were able to, like we said, be respectful and portray Voodoo in the most accurate light we possibly could, with obviously including supernatural elements.”

Lewis also noted some literary influences that helped shape their vision for Fright Krewe, including Anne Rice. “I used to read the Christopher Pike books and get super spooked and then just love it,” said Lewis. “RL Stein books, you just read and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m spooked out, but I gotta keep going!'”

Collaborating with Eli Roth and James Frey
DreamWorks Animation

Eli Roth and James Frey have certainly made a name for themselves in a variety of ways over the years. It’s a seemingly unlikely duo that certainly meshed well with Songco and Lewis. “They were really, really wonderful partners,” Lewis told us. “They were very supportive of what we were trying to do, and they were right there with us lockstep whenever we needed to say, ‘We really want to push for this thing.’ They were right behind us being like, ‘Yeah, let’s push, let’s do it.'”

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She added:

A story we tell that we think perfectly sums it up: We’re wimps, and having Eli at the other end of the spectrum, Kristine and I really knew we were doing a good job if we picked something and Eli was like, ‘Might be a little dark for this.’ We were like, ‘Yeah! OK, we did an OK job. Great!’

Songco also confirmed that Roth voices a character in the series — watch out for the “Necromancer” in at least one of the episodes. “That was such a fun record to have to be like, ‘Alright Eli, you’re getting choked by a corpse.’ And he’s like, ‘I got it, I know exactly what that sounds like. Hang on.'”

Aside from the Necromancer, Fright Krewe is rich in diverse young characters, including one who holds a particularly special place in Songco’s heart. “Missy, for me, is a character that just means a lot because it’s the first time that there’s been a Filipino character on a show that I’ve gotten to write for,” said Songco. “And she just has my heart in that way. But they’re all our children.”

From DreamWorks Animation, Fright Krewe is now streaming on Peacock and Hulu.