‘Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie’ EP Craig Schulz & Director Raymond S. Persi on Joyful New Peanuts Special (VIDEO)
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The perks of being a wallflower are not lost on Peanuts introvert Marcie when she suddenly finds herself front and center in the new special, Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie.
The animated outing, which dropped on Apple TV+ on Friday, August 18, finds Peppermint Patty’s bespectacled sidekick thrust into, of all things, a political crisis after her under-the-radar ability to iron out her school’s crowded hallway traffic and solve the cafeteria’s pizza shortages gets her elected to be class president. Never one to turn down the chance to help her friends in secret, Marcie is soon struggling with all of the attention and pressure that comes with everyone’s expectations.
It’s a sweetly insightful story filled with classic Peanuts gags and deep-cut characters rarely seen outside of the comic strips, as well as a heart as big as Snoopy’s doghouse. Which is just how creator Charles Schulz’s son wanted it.
“My goal in all of this is to continue the legacy of what my dad did,” says Craig Schulz, who executive produced the special. During a recent chat with the icon’s offspring and Marcie director Raymond S. Persi, Schulz also noted that he was the one who came up with the idea of the Apple TV+ Snoopy Presents series with a core team that also includes his son and now writing partner, Brian. “And we’ve got more to come.”
So far, the Snoopy Presents titles have included Lucy’s School, To Mom (and Dad), With Love, It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown and For Aud Lang Syne. Each has centered on specific characters and share the mix of wry humor and childhood innocence fans have come to love about these kids and the world’s greatest Beagle. “The goal was to give people the specials they remember of Peanuts,” offers Persi. “Everybody has these memories in their heads of what it feels like to watch some of the older specials…and that’s what we wanted to give [them].”
They also want to give viewers something to talk about. Whether it’s Marcie’s anxiety, Sally making a pitch for environmentalism or Peppermint Patty facing Mother’s Day without a mom, “the issues we deal with in [them] are universal,” continues Persi, adding that even his own team connected with the Marcie storyline. “I think that’s because a lot of artists do like to do things we can put out into the world but we’re not exactly looking for the spotlight.”
And that is the true beauty of Peanuts: No matter your age, there are still life lessons to be learned from—or shared with—Charlie Brown & Co. “We wanted to inject more messaging into these stories,” Schulz explains. “If you look at the five that have come out, Marcie being one of those, there is a really good message in there that both the children and adults can converse about after the show.”
Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie, now available, Apple TV+.
