Interview: The cast and creators of PHINEAS AND FERB are ready for more summer hijinks!

As the saying goes, “All good things come an end.” That certainly was the case for Phineas and Ferb, the beloved and smash-hit Disney animated series about two titular stepbrothers and the wacky summer adventures they get into with their family and friends, when it aired its fourth and final season back in 2015. In the decade since the series ended however, it’s just as popular, if not more so, as it was when it first aired. So fans were most ecstatic when Disney announced the acclaimed series would return with new episodes. 

Ahead of the premiere of the new season this week, The Beat had the opportunity to participate in a virtual press conference with the cast and crew including co-creators and executive producers Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh and voice actors Ashley Tisdale (Candace Flynn), Caroline Rhea (Linda Flynn-Fletcher), Vincent Martella (Phineas Flynn), David Errigo Jr. (Ferb Fletcher), Alyson Stoner (Isabella Garcia-Shapiro), and Dee Bradley Baker (Perry the Platypus/Agent P)

It’s no exaggeration to say reviving beloved shows has become the norm in the entertainment industry in recent years. For the creators of Phineas and Ferb, rather than completely reinventing the wheel, this new season will be a seamless continuation. “We really just wanted to make more of the same show,” explained Povenmire. “We didn’t try to make it feel different but wanted it to have sort of a fresh energy. Half the writers’ room are writers who were originally on the show and half the writers’ room are young writers who grew up watching the show. So the people who have had a break from the show for a while all came back with great new ideas.”

Though it first premiered in 2007, the concept for Phineas and Ferb had been percolating in the minds of the creators since the early ‘90s. In fact, at different points the characters were conceived as animals like meerkats or toucans. The breakthrough came unexpectedly during a dinner in 1993. “I had a purple crayon I just drew this big triangle. I wondered if I could make a character whose head was shaped like a triangle because I’d never seen that,” revealed Povenmire. “And I drew it and I loved it. I drew it two more times and my ex-wife said, ‘Ooh. Who is that?’ And my actual words I said to her, the first thing that I said about it was, ‘This is Phineas. This is the show that we’re gonna sell someday.’” Not too long after, he came up with designs for Perry the Platypus, Ferb, and Doofenshmirtz and started building the show around those drawings.

Marsh remarked the show stems from his frustration with the sedentary lifestyle of modern kids. “They just sit in and watch videos and play video games, and we used to go out and build things and do things and put on plays in our backyard and build go-karts and roll them down hills. A lot of stuff that we don’t advise children to do, because it’s dangerous and crazy. But we kind of wanted to have that spirit back of what we did in the summer, and that was kind of the basis for the whole show.”

With so much doom and gloom in the media, and the real world for that matter, it’s quite refreshing to have a show promoting positivity. This was a conscious effort by the creators. “We wanted it to be a super positive show, and we even made this decision to not have anybody ever be motivated by meanness [and] to never have Phineas and Ferb trying to get away with something,” said Povenmire. “It was a harder way to get comedy because a lot of the writers we would hire, they’d been on a lot of shows where the easiest place to go for comedy is to be mean or to be shocking or to be negative. And when we took those tools out of their tool chest, it was a little confusing for them. But we felt like it’ll be a more interesting show if we don’t do the easy laugh [or] if we try to make people laugh without using the easiest things in the toolbox.”

Dee Bradley Baker, the voice of Perry the Platypus, echoed similar sentiments attributing the show’s popularity to its positivity. “It’s authentically positive. It’s not inane. It’s smart. And it’s human and it’s positive, and people believe in that. They need that, they want that, and this show just delivers it so beautifully.”

Finding an actor who could genuinely convey that sense of sincere positivity was essential for the character of Phineas. Through a lengthy casting process, they finally discovered it in Vincent Martella. “Vincent was the last person cast because we had gone through a whole bunch of people and we’d try to describe the character and they would put on this positive sounding voice. But it always sounded like it was put on and therefore masking some real negativity,” said Povenmire. Vincent came in and as soon as we heard his voice next to that drawing, we were like, ‘Finally!’”  

Marsh pointed to Martella’s delivery of the now iconic line, “Yes, yes I am,” of how he perfectly captured the essence of the character. “[Everybody else made] it just sound cocky and arrogant. And Vincent made it sound like ‘Oh! Cool, you noticed, thanks!’”

Despite the original series ending back in 2015, many of the actors have continued to voice the characters in various other projects over the years including the Chibiverse shorts. “Phineas has been a huge, huge part of my life, and what’s been wonderful about this show is that it has such an incredible audience,” marveled Vincent Martella. “Phineas has never been too far away, but the first record that I ever had coming back to do new episodes of the show was definitely an emotional experience. I was really, really moved and excited because 17-18 years is a really long time to do anything or to know someone. I’ve known all these wonderful people and I’ve known this character for so long.”

For Caroline Rhea who plays the matriarch of the family, Linda Flynn-Fletcher, returning to Phineas and Ferb is different experience now that she is the mother of a teenage daughter, “Now my daughter is sixteen, and so it’s very fun playing mom talking to someone. Candace is a whole different person to me. Now I kind of know this person in three dimensions.”

Ashley Tisdale, the voice of Candace, has also become a mother and likewise conveyed how becoming a parent affected the recording process. “Obviously I’m older and I have two kids. The whole season, last season I was pregnant with my second. And all I kept thinking was, ‘I really hope this baby understands this is not real life outside!’ I could only imagine her in my womb being like, ‘What is happening out there?’”

While the majority of the original actors are reprising their characters, one of the few exceptions is David Errigo Jr. who took over the role of Ferb Fletcher in the Milo Murphy’s Law and Phineas and Ferb crossover episode. As much as he loved being part of those other projects, he expressed immense gratitude and excitement to be able to be involved in the return of proper series.

Errigo praised his co-star, Alyson Stoner, the voice of Isabella, for their ability to play such a high-pitched character for over two decades. Stoner admitted, “I get worried that every new episode, I will have forgotten how to reach the notes. Recently Dan [Povenmire] was like ‘You’ve been doing this voice for twenty years. Do you really think that your vocal cords are not stretched enough or the musculatures don’t have this memorized?’ But I do a lot of specific vocal warmups for Isabella that are different from other characters.

Martella has his own extensive process for voicing Phineas. “I studied with an opera coach to figure out different ways to utilize different warmup techniques and how to extend my range in different ways. I did my best to do as much preparation as I could do to make sure that I could not just use this voice for all the conversational things that Phineas has to do, but I sing a lot of music on the show and so I have to sing a lot as Phineas.

As fans of the show are well aware, Povenmire and Marsh respectively provide the voices of the characters Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram. While Povenmire is able to record the voice of Doofenshmirtz for two hours straight with no issues, Marsh finds voicing Monogram for more than forty-five minutes vocally taxing. In contrast to his co-stars, Errigo Jr. has it easy voicing the taciturn Ferb. He jokingly commented, “I definitely make sure that I warm up for about two and a half, three hours so that I don’t hurt myself when I come in and work for three minutes.”

The global impact of Phineas and Ferb decades later still astonishes the creators. “When we launched the show, we found out we had the first global launch of Disney TV. It premiered all over the world at the same time on the same day which was really amazing and wonderful. It really showed Disney’s support for the show,” praised Marsh. “As a result, it all kind of lit up at once. I’m shocked at how many places I have traveled around to where it is just as popular as it is here.”

The cast and crew understood firsthand the global popularity of the franchise at the D23 presentation in Brazil last November. Being surrounded by an entourage of security and seeing the international fans sing the theme song in English made them all feel like royalty.

From the beginning, Povenmire had ambitious goals for the series. “I had been on SpongeBob when it changed the demographic of Nickelodeon. I’d been on The Simpsons when it changed the demographic of Fox. I felt like that’s the high watermark that you need to shoot for. And within three months of [Phineas and Ferb] being on the air, there were already articles about how we had changed the demographic of Disney Channel. I think the success really far surpassed what we thought we were gonna get.”

There’s no denying how Phineas and Ferb has permeated into mainstream pop culture in the most unexpected ways. For instance, Povenmire cited how the famous Doofenschmirtz “nickel quote” was used by the official social media of the Democratic Party. In fact, the show was ahead of the science curve when a 2020 study found that platypuses glow the color teal under UV light, the same color as Perry the Platypus.

As for what fans can expect in the new episodes, the cast and crew remained coy. So viewers will have to tune in to see what’s to come!

The new season of Phineas and Ferb premieres Thursday, June 5, at 8 p.m. PDT/EDT on Disney Channel and Disney XD.

The first 10 episodes of the season will premiere on Disney+ in the U.S. and select international markets on Friday, June 6, with additional markets to follow later this year.