Interview: Lucy Heavens & Nic Smal tease nutty new adventures in KIFF Season 2

Back in 2023, Disney debuted Kiff, the animated series about the titular squirrel and her best bunny bestie Barry as they navigate school, relationships and their eccentric and surreal community in Table Town. It was a smash hit garnering nominations for Outstanding Children’s or Young Teen Animated Series and Original Song for a Children’s or Young Teen Program for the 2025 Children’s and Family Emmy Awards. After two recent specials, Kiff Season 2 arrives this weekend with new episodes on Disney Channel. We had the chance to chat with creators and producers Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal about what kinds of new nutty adventures fans can expect in the new season.

Taimur Dar: I make it no secret how much I adore Kiff which is a testament to how much it can appeal to both children and adults. There’s a moment in one of my favorite episodes, “Fun Uncle Pat” where you see the Uncle Pat sitting on a bed lamenting about the state of his life that definitely resonated for you. What’s the secret to making a show enjoyable to both kids and adults?

Lucy Heavens: We really write Kiff to delight ourselves and we have very present inner children. [Laughs]. We’re writing for ourselves at our ages now and we’re writing for ourselves when we were kids. We’re writing for ourselves all the time.  

Nic Smal: All the stories are coming from a place of truth or real experience. The example you gave, “Fun Uncle Pat,” that came out of a true story in in the writers’ room. It’s relatable to think about someone you always see a certain way being fun. For Kiff, she always knows Fun Uncle Pat but he’s a real person who’s going through his ups and downs in life. For a kid to see that and go on a journey as he’s having a moment of searching is real life. We always try to tap into that truth and reality of life.  

Taimur Dar: There are so many talented people involved in the show but I have to highlight H. Michael Croner, the voice of Barry and countless other characters. For Kiff Season 2, he’s taken over voice directing duties from Sam Riegel. How did that development happen?

Lucy Heavens: H. came on when Sam got too busy with Critical Role and all his other projects. Obviously, we love Sam but it was a very easy transition because of how well H. already knew the show and understands what we’re angling for.

Nic Smal: H. will always read the script through a few times before coming into a record with a firm understanding of that episode. When he stepped in as a voice director, he would come with very interesting outlooks and suggestions for some of the performances. Being a great actor himself, he will be able to get that out of other voice actors. Not only that, when he reads with them, he’s able to read as Barry which is just so delightful to hear a scene recording with Kimiko [Glenn] because you’re hearing Barry and Kiff in the moment together. So it was a no-brainer. He’s absolutely killing it as a voice director.  

Lucy Heavens: He’s so funny as Barry and he’s such a powerhouse when it comes to other characters when we need to have filled in. He makes it easy and hilarious. We love him. 

Taimur Dar: As you mentioned, Croner voices numerous other characters including action movie star mailbox Chubbles Wubbington. The “Blooper Quest” episode raised so many questions for me including the fact that he has a refined British. I’m delighted he gets his own episode in the new season. I have to know the development of Chubbles and if there’s more to come for him in Kiff Season 2?

[Laughter]

Nic Smal: Yes, you are going to learn a lot more about Chubbles. He’s one of our favorite characters. We just love whenever there’s a movie, it’s always Chubbles taking the lead role

Lucy Heavens: Chubbles Wubbington is a national treasure!

Nic Smal: We do actually go into who Chubbles is as a character.

Lucy Heavens: And his own history as an actor, the way he started versus his post getting ripped phase. Now he’s in a new and even more exciting phase of his career. It’s based on that idea like a Russell Crowe you see [them] in movies with different accents and you don’t know how they sound. We wanted that to be surprising. It’s so fun to us to take a character, the more absurd the better, and make them human.  

Nic Smal: What I love is that not once does anyone question or go, “That’s a mailbox.” We’ve got witches, trolls, and talking animals. This is a mailbox that’s alive. It’s just part of the world. That’s what I love about Chubbles.

Lucy Heavens: He represents the freedom that we have created for ourselves to play within this show.

Taimur: On that subject, I love how fantastic and surreal Kiff gets with the characters and world, but you still ground it in some sense of reality. What are the rules you have in place for the show you don’t break? 

Lucy Heavens: There are some stories that come up that we feel aren’t right for Kiff or Table Town. We try to maintain a grounded tone. For us and our sensibility, everything is funnier that way. It is the situations that are absurd and crazy characters [like] a mailbox who’s an actor. [It’s] grounded in terms of performances and storyboarding style, for example we don’t do “awooga.” There’s kind of stretchy but not too stretchy. We keep it in a space that we feel there’s something to relate to despite the absurdity of the situation.   

Nic Smal: We all have an episode that is wildly absurd and don’t think about it too long [because] it doesn’t make sense but it does do something very unexpected and wild. And then we have an episode where they stay at home and play a board game. We like to play that balance. In terms of rules that we keep quite strict, it’s more in the characters of what they would and wouldn’t say. We definitely don’t lean into sarcasm. Maybe every now and then if it’s in that character’s personality. But overall, we try to stay away from it especially in Kiff and Barry.  

Lucy Heavens: We are quite precious of what the characters wouldn’t do and say. That’s a mark of any show I enjoy watching when the character is consistent. We try to do that despite the absurd conditions.

Taimur Dar: Like you said, Kiff is a very positive character but she’s not a complete goody two-shoes. For instance, an episode in the new season where she and her friends buy a ticket for a boring movie so they end up sneaking into another theater. Perhaps not the best behavior, but I think completely within her character. How do you writer positive characters who aren’t boring?  

Lucy Heavens: We try to make her real. I think the vast majority of kids are good kids. Kiff makes plenty of mistakes and messes up all the time. Often it’s because of her positive attitude that she makes a mess. There are times when she questions whether she’s doing the right thing or not. And other times she’s like any other kid, “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s a victimless crime!”

Nic Smal: To use the term “boring” with a character that’s positive and has a positive outlook depends on the situation that the character is in. Also the balance between the other characters that are surrounding that character. We never find that personality has the potential to be boring because who she surrounds herself with and the situations they find themselves in are so much fun and enjoyable. It never feels boring to us.

Taimur Dar: Like a lot of people, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy were formative to me growing up so I loved the Kiff: Lore of the Ring Light special. What was the genesis of this special?  

Lucy Heavens: It was a bit roundabout. I think Nic had hit upon the idea of a ring light.

Nic Smal: We were talking about doing stories that are familiar and examples of well-known stories like A Christmas Carol. And we were thinking about how satisfying it is to see the characters you know and love taking on the characters you know from other stories. We’ve seen The Simpsons do it. When I think about when I was a kid like Robin Hood: Men in Tights or National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon, they were the funniest things I had ever seen.  

Lucy Heavens: And we had learned about these things through watching The Simpsons or Animaniacs first.

Nic Smal: We were chatting about a big epic journey and the ring light came up and it all just came into place. It’s a ring that they need to destroy and there was this moment that just landed. It’s Lord of the Rings. They’ve got to destroy this ancient ring light. We spoke about it for a bit. Kent Osborne watched the trilogy over a weekend. He was texting, “Helen is Gollum and Principal Secretary is Gandalf.” He was sending us pictures of scenes and it all came into place. It was so much fun to make.  

Lucy Heavens: It felt so perfect throughout. [We asked], “Did we make Kiff just so we could do a Lord of the Rings parody?”

Taimur Dar: Anything you can tease for Kiff Season 2 like new characters?

Nic Smal: There are new characters coming into the picture. There are going to be some stories that introduce some characters in depth a little more like some of the school friends.

Lucy Heavens: There’s a certain scallywag coming our way who’s an antagonist.

Nic Smal: We keep discovering new people in Table Town. The world feels so alive and real to us that we start telling stories and going to new locations and someone will come up as a side character and we fall in love with them. We have so many characters because of that. I don’t think it’s going to slow down. We got plenty to meet. 

Lucy Heavens: We feel we’ve stepped it up. The songs in Season 1 were so good. The songs in Season 2 I’m so excited about. Nic has written all of these original songs. 

Nic Smal: You got a little taste of it with “Lore of the Ring Light.”

Lucy Heavens: We’re very excited about some story experiments. We think people will love it and can’t wait for people to tune in.

Nic Smal: We go deeper into Table Town. You’re going to see parts of their world that you’ve never seen before which are so magical.

Lucy Heavens: We’re excited for people to find out where Trollie comes from.

Nic Smal: We’re going back to Trollie’s hometown!

Kiff Season 2 premieres on Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney XD On Demand on Saturday, March 15, at 10:00 a.m. EDT/PDT with two episodes, followed by new episodes weekly on Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. EDT/PDT.