'Praise Petey' animators talk show's successes, favorite moments

LOS ANGELES -- If you've watched even one episode of Freeform's "Praise Petey," you've seen that it's quite a unique adult animated series. The story centers around Petra, or Petey, a New York City "it" girl whose deceased father left her his strange cult in a small town called New Utopia. Her mission is to turn New Utopia around.

The wild premise made even its animators excited to work on this project.
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Art director Amanda Lake told On The Red Carpet, "It was just... the most exciting thing to be asked to work on something like this."

Lake said the creators had some things sketched out from when they pitched the idea, but told her she had free rein to create the world of New Utopia.

"They were like, 'you can change it, you can adapt, like whatever you want to do.' So I did exactly what I wanted to do and sent it to them and they were like, 'great!'"

"Amanda really helped with guiding us in the right direction," character designer Annalise Hollosy said. "Once we had those core characters established, we were really able to figure out, 'okay, like how do we stylize these for the rest of the show?' And especially, like, the background characters like that became such a huge part because it's a cult and there's so many people!"



Production on "Praise Petey" was done remotely, but Lake tried to make the process as collaborative as possible. She said they had a team meeting every morning as a check-in.

"It was just like, this is a place where we can ask each other questions we can make sure we're all on the same page about stuff and just like see everybody's faces every morning to like remind you that you're not alone," Lake said. "If you're struggling with something we have a whole team here we can help each other out. So that was the really important part of it and they think you know that that has helped a lot."
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While all the characters are near and dear to their hearts, background supervisor Kati Prescott revealed a couple that stand out.

"We have some favorites, like human Shih Tzu. And the fact that we got Alfred Molina to be the voice for it, I'm still not over that!," Prescott said. "And then the sweet baby angel pharmacist in episode three. Still love him and just want to protect him, he's just so wonderful."

"It was really great and especially like having so much support among the team and really feeling like we all were there for the same reasons and we like really loved the show," Hollosy said.

"I mean just a treat it's been really nice to see it's so well received," Prescott said.



"Praise Petey" airs Friday nights at 10pm EST/ 9pm CST on Freeform.

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Freeform and this ABC station.