Q&A: Jennifer Oxley Talks About The New Season Of 'Wonder Pets: In the City'

When my son was younger, we watched a lot of animated kids programs on Noggin, a commercial-free cable network for kids which boasted some great original kids programming, such as Jack's Big Music Show and Wonder Pets! The latter show also aired on Nick Jr. and had a visual style that was incredibly distinctive.

Josh Selig and Jennifer Oxley developed the series and Oxley created a style of animation called "photo-puppetry" that uses photos of real objects and moves them using Adobe After Effects. There was plenty of music and a real focus on the magic and overall kindness of animals. Each episode followed basically the same premise. The episode started in a classroom in which the teacher and kids were leaving for the day. A red phone began ringing, and when The Wonder Pets answer the phone, they find that an animal is in trouble somewhere.

The show aired for three seasons, from 2006 to 2016. In 2024, Apple TV ordered an updated take on the show, helmed by Oxley. And while the characters and setting are a bit different this time around, the series will still feel familiar to fans of the original.

Season two of Wonder Pets: In the City premieres Friday, March 20th on Apple TV and I was recently able to speak with Jennifer Oxley about the show and what it felt like to bring back the series after being away from it for nearly a decade.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

My son was at the age where we watched a lot of Noggin when he was younger, and before we talk about The Wonder Pets, I just want to give a shout out to Oobi, which is one of the more bizarre shows I've ever seen.

Jennifer Oxley:  Oh my gosh, I wish I had this painting. I don't have it handy, but when Josh Selig, who's the creator of that, when I first met him, he actually asked me if I would paint some original Oobi art as if it was hanging up on the set, and it was the most unusual job I'd ever gotten. And then he asked me to animate the theme song.

When you were originally doing Wonder Pets!, you were caught up in the middle of production, and it's really busy and hectic, and you don't really have the time to reflect on it. And now that's been ten or so years since the show ended, I wondered what is like to have the time to get a bit of perspective on the show. To realize that there is an entire generation of people who grew up with the show. And that it has more meaning to people than you realized when you were originally working on it.

Jennifer Oxley: Yeah, that's really important and powerful. As I was doing it, it was early in my career, and I didn't really know. I didn't know if it was going to be a success, and how it would really be resonating with kids, or even adults.

But then for years after, people would sing back to me, "What's going to work? Do you work? The phone, the phone is ringing." They would sing back these themes from the show. And then even fast forward to now, the kids that were watching it way back when are now older, and just posting these videos on social media about the show, and how it made a difference in their lives. It's really special.

So how does that frame your preparation when you're getting ready to reboot this? It's now going into the second season, but you've got to be aware, there's people out there who have these memories of the original. You don't want to disappoint them, but you can't do the same show you did back then.

Jennifer Oxley: You just sort of hit it right there. Because when they first asked me, if I wanted to think of what a reboot might be, my first thought was "My gosh, I want to do what I did before. I want to sort of live up to and elevate, you know, what we were doing." And it becomes a question of why now? Why reboot it? Why not just let it live? You know, what more do we have to say?

So I asked myself all those questions, and it really pushed me to make sure that this reboot lived up to what made the original, I think, for fans, so great. I think there are some fans that maybe still miss Linny, Tuck, and Ming-Ming. And there was this request to introduce all new pets. But they're not gone. It's just that we get to meet a brand new team of pets that are sort of working in tandem with them.

When it was done the first time for Noggin, it didn't have commercials, but Nick Jr. did. And Apple TV doesn't have commercials. And so I suspect the show's structured a little bit differently than it was back then.

Jennifer Oxley:  Yeah, we definitely did not have to think about any sort of commercial breaks. We really didn't think about it too much on the original. I mean, I think there were some special episodes where we had to keep that in mind. We had to sort of keep in mind, oh, this is going to cut here. And there were a couple of longer ones, the two part specials, that we had to be mindful of that kind of thing. But yeah, no commercials this time. So we just didn't really have to think that through.

How long did you have between wrapping season one and starting season two?

Jennifer Oxley:  We pretty much rolled straight through. Which is great for the team. So yeah, we went from season one right into season two with no break.

So do you have a chance to see the reaction to some of those early season one episodes as you're working on season two? I don't know how the timing falls on this. I'm just curious if you saw people's reaction and thought, 'Okay, we need to tweak this or, oh, we're right where we need to be.'

Jennifer Oxley: I definitely followed it a little bit, and I heard that some episodes that maybe were more popular than others. And I definitely read some of the fan comments, loving that it looks just as good as the original, that it was somehow like visually enhanced, but still staying true to the original photo puppetry style. Which I was really pleased to read that because that was a goal. And the fact that we are still recording with a live orchestra, which is very unusual today to be doing that.

But that was definitely something that I wanted to continue from the original. That I wanted the music to live up to the same production values that we established way back when. I know that there were some fans that wondered what happened to Linny, Tuck and Ming-Ming. So I do kind of wish that we were allowed to tell what I call like a pass the baton kind of episode where we get a chance to see that there really is this vast network of pets.

And maybe we even show a couple of them and then we zoom in on this, these city pets. And then maybe there's even some sort of crossover where they get to save an animal with our original pets. So I do wish that we had had the opportunity to tell that sort of pass the baton story to explain the world a little bit better to the fans, because I think we as the creators know that the people who are working on it.

But I think that wasn't totally clear in the episodes that we've done. It's just something maybe to do if we get another series.

You mentioned the people being pleased with the production value and I'm guessing the technology has changed a lot in this 10 or 15 years. And how does that impact sort of your workflow? I mean, is it easier? Is it more difficult? How have all the technological changes impacted you?

Jennifer Oxley: You know, we still use After Effects. So, you know, but it's come a long way since when we started and we still photograph real animals. It's one of my most favorite things to do in the production is bring animals into the studio and photograph them and work with them and just get to know them.

And then we use them to create the character rigs. On the original, you know, sometimes you can't photograph a whale, you can't photograph a dinosaur. So you have to sort of figure out, how are we going to do this and meet the style that we've established?

I think nowadays there's so much more access to photo databases, whereas on the original, that was really not there. So we didn't have this huge resource of photos to choose from. So a lot of times we were going out to individual photographers and sourcing that way. Whereas now, it became a little bit easier to gather the photos that we needed if we couldn't photograph them ourselves.

One of the challenges of this streaming era is there's just so much out there. It's weird, I'm actually working on a book and the person I'm working with said, look, the publisher's job is just, we publish it, you get to do everything else. You promote it, you do it. And to a certain extent, streaming is like that, too. You've got to get out there and promote this, maybe in a way which you didn't have to do back in the day when you were on Nick. They had this big army of people to do stuff for you. That has to be a little bit of a challenge for you. I don't know how comfortable you are doing it. I mean, you seem fine today, but is that a little bit different than back in the day?

Jennifer Oxley: Yeah, I think so. I mean, things have changed a lot. I think when we were on Nickelodeon, it was more traditional where you watch it on TV and they were able to position it.

So they positioned it before whatever was the hit at the time. And then you'd watch that and there were promos, there were all sorts of things on air leading up to this launch of this new show. So I think it was sort of baked in, that PR, whereas now I think streamers have to find other ways to get the word out, like what we're doing now.

But it's really fun. It's fun to talk about the show. I love talking about what I love, so it never gets old.

Season two of Wonder Pets: In the City premiere Friday, March 20th, 2026 on Apple TV.