Doc McStuffins creator Chris Nee recalls fighting to make Doc a girl, explains why she refers to herself as the “bad girl of preschool TV"

The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter asked Nee which was harder, making her animated Disney character a girl or her being Black? "Her being Black was a quick yes," says Nee. "The girl piece was interesting. I pitched Doc as a girl, but in the pilot, which I’m amazed has never leaked, Doc was a boy. Disney bought the show and said, 'We think the character needs to be a boy.' It was about what was on the channel then. They weren’t paying attention. I remember thinking, 'This is a terrible idea, but development takes years so I have time to get it back to being a girl.' And nobody else had bought it. Nickelodeon famously passed." Nee adds: "A lot of blood was lost. Disney is very meddling. That said, it was very hard to choose to leave there. I ended up with a very good thing, but you’re constantly fighting back a million notes, and I certainly found my sea legs to do that. It’s the Disney way. They’d put a lot of new execs with me and I was not easy on them." When Nee says she got to Netflix, "I had to recalibrate how to know how I felt about something because I didn’t have to fight. Sometimes the fighting is how I’d learn what I cared the most about and what I could let go of. I didn’t let go of a lot at Disney. I thought of myself as training executives to not give me stupid notes." As for being the “bad girl of preschool TV,” Nee says: "I’m writing the world as I want it to be. To truly know me is to know that I have the gooiest of centers. I’m the fastest to cry. And if I love you, I love you in all ways. But I walk in with a chip on my shoulder, waiting for people to judge me or to call me sir. The world is passed a lot of that, but I still carry it. When we were first doing publicity for Doc, I was very clear with myself that I would never lie about my life or my family. I assumed Disney would want to sidestep it, but they kept setting up press for my whole family (her son and former partner). And I was like, 'Oh, I’m behind.'"