Disney Channel’s Big City Greens Premiers Just in Time for Summer Break

Disney Channel’s Big City Greens Premiers Just in Time for Summer Break!

I received an all-expense paid trip to L.A to attend the #Incredibles2Event, #BigCityGreensEvent, & #PixarFest Events. No additional compensation was received.

Disney Channel’s Big City Greens

Disney Channel’s new animated comedy series “Big City Greens,” debuts just in time for the summer break. This new series follows the offbeat adventures of 10-year-old Cricket Green, a mischievous and optimistic country boy who moves to the big city with his wildly out of place family – older sister Tilly, dad Bill and Gramma Alice and it premieres this coming June 18.

Meet the Greens | Big City Greens | Disney Channel

During our recent visit to the Disney Television Animation studios, we had the opportunity to chat with the series creators, executive producers, and brothers Chris and Shane Houghton (“Harvey Beaks”). After having “met” the greens and its creators, the one thing that is for sure is that this new series will be a huge success!

Big City Greens Debuts June 18!

Before we sat down to chat with brothers Chris and Shane, we got to listen to the most heartfelt presentation on how this series came about and we also got to screen the first episode of City Greens entitled, “Space Chicken.” This first episode will debut on June 18 at 9:30 AM EDT/PDT on Disney Channel, DisneyNOW, and Disney Channel VOD.

The series premieres with a week of new episodes rolling out daily, Monday, June 18 through Friday, June 22, as part of Disney Channel’s GO! Summer. Following the debut week, new episodes will premiere throughout the summer on Monday and Wednesday mornings (10:00-10:30 a.m. EDT/PDT). Each episode in the series contains two (2) mini episodes eleven minutes in length. Now that you know everything about the series premiere, let me introduce you to the inspiration behind the series.

The Inspiration Behind the Show!

I already told you that this new series, follows the offbeat adventures of 10-year-old Cricket Green, a mischievous and optimistic country boy who moves to the big city with his wildly out of place family. But what I haven’t told you yet is that this series is heavily influenced by the brothers’ childhood growing up in St. Johns, Michigan, a small rural town north of Lansing also known as the mint capital of the world.

These two brothers, Chris and Shane, grew up with lots of farm animals around, learning to draw, riding in tractors, and then and they moved from their small town to the city to attend college. Chris attended the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan and Shane attended the Florida State University Film School.

The series’ characters are based on true-life characters the Houghton brothers grew up with. For example, Shane explains that Cricket’s Gramma Alice character was in fact inspired by their own Grandma Alice. The foundation of this show is not only the inspiration from Shane and Chris’s childhood, they explained that they wanted the show to be two parts funny and one part heart.

Speaking of family, childhood inspiration, creators and executive producers are not the only connection these two brothers have to this series. As a matter of fact, Chris is the voice behind Cricket. Now, let me introduce you to some of the rest of the Green family and Remi too.

• Cricket Green: voiced by Chris Houghton – a trouble-making country boy who has moved from the farm to the big city.
• Tilly Green: Marieve Herington voices Cricket’s quirky-yet-lovable 12-year-old sister, Tilly Green.
• Bill Green: Bob Joles voices Cricket’s hard-working single father and farmer, Bill Green.
• Gramma Alice: Artemis Pedbani voices Cricket’s sweet but tough grandma, Gramma Alice.
• Remi: Zeno Robinson voices Remi. Remi is Cricket’s best friend. Remi is what Cricket is not. He comes from a wealthy family, he is sheltered, scheduled, and he is a single child.

Speaking of the Greens, noticed the Greens red barn house in the middle of a busy neighborhood? Well, the Greens house was also inspired by the Houghton childhood “old garage” garage in their St. Johns’ property. Both Chris and Shane wanted the Greens place to feel like a little country oasis.

Having two boys of my own, you would assume that there would be some kind of sibling rivalry working together and spending the last two years developing this series. But trust me these two have nothing of such, as Shane told us, the biggest benefit they have going for them is that they are family and “we know each other likes, what we want, what they mean. We can figure it out. We’re very thankful.”

One of the many things I love about the mission of these two brothers for this series is to always try something to say through the show’s message and their aim is to always follow their motto making the show “two parts funny and one part heart.”

Big City Greens Guest Voice Cast

Speaking of their motto and the show’s mission, the brothers always outline each individual episode first and then find the right voice to go along with each character.  As Shane explained, “often times, the characters come up and we think, ‘Who could bring a fun element to this character?’ And sometimes that answer is Busta Rhymes.”

Speaking of guest voices in the series, the cast includes Emmy® Award-winner Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”) as store manager Louis; Emmy Award-nominated Raven-Symoné (“Raven’s Home”) as news reporter Maria Media; GRAMMY® Award-nominated Busta Rhymes as a wise fish; Danny Trejo (“Spy Kids”) as bodyguard Vasquez; Academy Award® winner Jim Rash (“The Descendants,” “Community”) as waiter Ted; Paul F. Tompkins (“Bajillion Dollar Propertie$”) and Lauren Lapkus (“Orange Is the New Black”) as city hipsters Justin and Val.

As well as, Andy Daly (“Silicon Valley”) as Officer Keys; Scott Aukerman (“Comedy Bang! Bang!”) as a radio DJ; Griffin McElroy (“My Brother, My Brother and Me”) as a pepper merchant; Paul Scheer (ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat”) as supermarket manager Chip Whistler; Zeno Robinson (Marvel’s “Spider-Man”) as Cricket’s best friend, Remy; Lorraine Toussaint (“Orange Is the New Black”) as Remy’s mom; Colton Dunn (NBC’s “Superstore”) as Remy’s dad; and Anna Akana (“Youth & Consequences”) as café barista, Gloria.

Disney Channel’s Big City Greens Premiers June 18!

Yes, Big City Greens has heart because after all, the Houghton brothers developed the series based on their childhood memories. But that is only one of the reasons this show will be a huge success. In my opinion, this show has the right formula and one of the reasons I like Big City Greens so much is because instead of following the norm, these guys went with what felt right for them.

Shane explained why they decided to depict a lower to middle-class family with a dad instead of a mom, “we see a lot of traditional families on TV and we wanted to shake that up a bit. We didn’t want a squeaky clean wish fulfillment kind of show. We wanted a family that reflected the people we knew growing up.” Hey, no wonder the show was already been picked up for a second season! Remember to tune in on June 18 at 9:30 AM EDT/PDT to watch Big City Greens.

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