Sheila Bautz
Special to the Herald
Canadian Emmy-winning writers, Robert and Joel H. Cohen, sat down in their Fox studios in Los Angeles for a video interview with this writer from the Prince Albert Daily Herald. The brothers are from Calgary, Alberta, with Joel frequenting Saskatchewan for years. Their new animation stars an All-Canadian cast and First Nations Voice actors, as well as a theme song written and performed by Canadian legend Bryan Adams.
Both creators have worked on numerous shows and animations, including The Angry Birds movie. Robert is the creator of HBO’s Somebody, Somewhere and The Big Bang Theory. Joel H. Cohen is infamous for The Simpsons. Together, they created the new adult animation comedy Super Team Canada.
The animation focuses on the exploits of six, little-known Canadian superheroes representing various provinces and territories across the nation. The Superheroes attempt to save the world from evil and destruction, and an unemployed octopus.
“During COVID, we were just bouncing some ideas around, because nobody was doing anything and we just thought it might be fun to do a Superhero show,” said Robert. “We love being Canadian and we’re proud Canadians. We missed Canada.”
The brothers began reminiscing about cartoons they grew up on, like Rocket Robin Hood. They brainstormed the animation specific to Canada, including an all-inclusive multi-cultural representation.
“That just evolved into us thinking What if we did a show where all the great superheroes on Earth suddenly went away and the only option left, begrudgingly, were these regional superheroes from Canada,” said Robert, “and they ended up becoming the defenders of the earth.”
The brothers began writing scripts together and contacted Will Arnett.
“We both know and love Will Arnett and have worked with him before – another Great Canadian – and then we decided let’s just run it by Will because if this idea is going to go anywhere, we need somebody with his stature,” explained Robert, “and also nobody in the States will understand the sort of the humour and reverence that we’re approaching it with. Will hopped on board. We were able to sell it and that’s how it started. So it really began during Covid I guess in 2021.”
The character Sasquatchewan represents Canada’s prairies and is voiced by First Nations Voice Actor Brian Drummond. Saskquatchewan uses his physical strength to bring brute force to the Superhero team.
“All of our cast is incredible, but the guy that voices that character is Brian Drummond who’s an incredible BC based actor,” said Joel. “He does a lot of parts on the show, like when you hear the announcer, that’s him as well. Even in the pilot episode, he’s Ted Zorg, which is our villain. So basically, he is just an amazing voice actor.”
The character Chinook is the youngest member of the Superhero team at 12-years-old. With the power of ice, snow and wind, she is a First Nations hero steeped in Indigenous lore with the ability to receive advice through communicating with her spiritual Elders. She’s also the wisest.
“When we picked the characters, we sort of tried as best we could, and I’m sure there are many places we fail, to represent every part of Canada,” explained Robert. “Chinook is voiced by Ceara Morgana and she is also Indigenous. She’s amazing. We wanted to be very respectful of every character, but especially because of Canada, we wanted to make sure that things were as accurate as they could be and we would have consultants in different fields that were representative of that field. We wanted to do it, not just to do it, but also to make it correct and for our voice actors that might have come from that particular group, so that they were respected, but that they also felt they were accurate.”
Other characters represent various parts of Canada and the country’s diversity. Breakaway is a former minor league hockey player voiced by Will Arnett. There is a French-Canadian crime-fighter character named Poutine voiced by Charles Demers. The Robotic Crime Management Polite Computer, known simply as RCM-PC, is a representation of all immigrants in Canada. RCM-PC, described as a Canadian Swiss Army Knife who worries she is not enough, is voiced by Veena Sood. Niagara Falls is voiced by Cobie Smulders, a character who Robert and Joel credit as being the most intelligent member of the Super Team Canada animated crew.
When it comes to creative control of new animations, Joel explained that in the animation and television industry’s view, it is a collaborative process.
“We had the characters. We had our cast, but we had to decide who these Super Heroes were and we had ideas in our head,” explained Joel, “but then as you get in a collaborative process, everything — and I believe entertainment is very collaborative — we were working with, our amazing designers and animators at the Atomic, and they of course have their impressions of what they were. They would show us stuff. Then we would have notes and for some of the characters, we probably had 7 or 8 iterations before we landed on who they were, and they also have to work for animation.”
When creating an animation, Joel explains that the initial designs cannot be overly detailed or complicated. Animation is a process in the making with everybody on the team working together to ensure the storyboard is what he describes as ‘super visual, super funny and actual’. Joel elaborated that the animation and storyboard process needs to result in something manageable, which takes on a life of its own as the episodes progress. The brothers describe the process of animation as involving further inspiration from their voice actors who breathe life into their characters.
“Definitely,” said Robert, “We were lucky enough, we had Jay Baruchel as a guest star in an episode. We knew what the character was, but when Jay was doing the voice for the character, he was so hilarious, and it changed the character entirely. We went back and did new drawings to fit his voice track.”
“It’s collaboration,” said Joel. “We write something and the voice actors bring a ton of amazing analog and energy and soul in their voices, and then the animators are again also a huge part of it. The viewers see the results of these various, literally dozens of people, by the time we’re done putting this product in.”
The resulting show credits do not list every individual contributing to the final product that results in an animation episode.
“It’s more like the Writer’s Guild generally only likes to have one or two names on the as written by so as I mentioned in a collaboration, there’s sometimes 30, 40, 20 friends that work on stuff and they all contribute jokes or doing rewrites or whatever, but you’ll just never see their names,” explained Joel.
Super Team Canada is Thunderbird Entertainment’s Atomic Cartoons first adult original animated series, produced with Will Arnett’s Electric Avenue, in association with Bell Media’s Crave. The series dropped on Crave in May 2025. Showrunner Robert Cohen serves as an executive producer along with Joel H. Cohen.
