(The first episode of the reboot will feature the Jonas Brothers.)įowler, 31, who is best known for his roles in the sitcom “Superior Donuts” and “Sorry to Bother You,” said the talents and sensibilities of the seven young cast members are heavily influencing the script.Ī 14-year-old cast member Gabrielle Green, for example, brought in a Beyoncé impression that the writers couldn’t resist, Fowler said. The musical guests in the first season included TLC, Brandy, Aaliyah and Usher. The original “All That” featured hip-hop and R&B artists at a time in which doing so was rare on a kids’ channel.
“It was the first time I saw kids who looked like me on TV doing sketch comedy,” said Fowler, who is black.
In 1994, three of the seven cast members were black and another was Latina. Jermaine Fowler, an “All That” executive producer, said the diversity of the original cast was eye-opening for him as a child. Others behind the reboot grew up watching the original show. Mitchell, 40, has stayed tied to kids’ television and Nickelodeon over the years, most recently starring as a rapper who teams up with two girls to run a gaming company in the channel’s “Game Shakers.” As such, he’s kept his “ear to the streets” in regard to what youngsters find funny, he said. Kay, 64, said he hadn’t been in children’s television for over a decade when Robbins approached him about the new “All That.” At first he was uncertain whether he still had a grasp on what young people found entertaining, but he figured his preteen son could help him learn. Thompson said that Robbins visited him at “Saturday Night Live” to pitch him the idea, and Thompson was all in. Robbins, who became the president of Nickelodeon last fall, was the driving force behind the reboot, personally reaching out to people involved in the original show to ask them back. (Many of the old fans might revolt if it didn’t.) But Robbins said they might decide to change the song later on - possibly even to the modernized version Chance shared. Robbins said that the original theme song by TLC will stay, at least for now. It also means posting sketches on YouTube, which executives see as a funnel to the actual show. That means posting heavily on the show’s Instagram account, where they tease new sketches, revive old material and introduce the new cast members (or, the “new kids of comedy,” as the network called them). “We have to make sure we’re reaching kids everywhere they’ve been consuming content,” he said. Traditional marketing is no longer sufficient, said Robbins who was also a creator of the original “All That.” Unlike when the original “All That” aired in 1994, kids’ shows now compete not only with each other, but with the millions of videos on YouTube. “We consciously said we wanted to cut the sketches, do more sketches per episode and never really get to seven minutes.”Ī bigger challenge than appealing to today’s young viewers is reaching them in the first place. “Kids today watch things in two and three minutes,” he said. Kevin Kay, an executive producer on the reboot who also worked on the original “All That,” said that sketches from the ’90s could drag on for seven minutes. Modern attention spans also demand much shorter skits, the creators said. The network has marketed the reboot, which airs on Saturday night, as the triumphant return of popular characters like Mitchell’s “Good Burger” cashier and Denberg’s “Loud Librarian.” Thompson, the cast member who has perhaps found the most success as an actor, signed on as an executive producer. Now, 25 years after it first launched, Nickelodeon is rebooting “All That” with a new batch of child actors. The Nickelodeon show helped launch the careers of Thompson, Amanda Bynes, Nick Cannon and Jamie Lynn Spears, while spawning hit shows such as “Kenan & Kel” and “The Amanda Show.” From its debut in 1994 to its cancellation in 2005, “All That” was a cultural force in kids’ television, a PG version of “Saturday Night Live” that became known for churning out young talent. These absurdist characters from the children’s sketch show “All That” were beloved ’90s oddities that could thrive only on cable. Same if you know Kel Mitchell as a well-meaning but incompetent fast food worker, or Lori Beth Denberg as a hypocritical librarian who howls at children to be quiet while causing a constant ruckus.
If the image of a young Kenan Thompson wearing flippers and speaking bad French in a bubble bath elicits waves of nostalgia, you’re probably a child of the ’90s.