He’s a 22nd Century Man: An Oral History of Phil of the Future

When Disney Channel’s Phil of the Future premiered on June 18th, 2004, it wasn’t just the concept of time travel that drew viewers to the series. It was the opportunity to laugh, to become invested in witty characters and their interactions, all within the comfortable space we found in Disney Channel. We had Raviv Ullman’s Phil Diffy as our guide, protective older brother of Pim (Amelia Bruckner) and son of Lloyd (Craig Anton) and Barb (Lise Simms). 

Their “vacation from the 22nd century” went awry when the family’s time machine broke down, leaving them trapped in the year 2004. The Diffys survived the 2000s with plenty of shortcuts and gadgets stowed away, like spray food, Skyaks, laser squash, and WIZRDs (wave interferometer Z-ray device). Their caveman, Curtis (J.P. Manoux), cast a backward glance at the show’s time continuum.

There were, unfortunately, only two seasons of the show. But the cast and crew who brought those episodes to life delivered a sophisticated comedic sensibility balanced by the emotional depth of growing up. We watched Pim attempt to rule her new school while the overly perky Debbie Berwick (Kay Panabaker) befriended her. Evan Peters amused us as the lovable recurring classmate Seth Wosmer. Many of us heard Aly Michalka sing for the first time when Phil coached Keely through stage fright. 

20 years later, we’ve interviewed 10 people from the cast and crew of Phil of the Future. They reminisce about the show’s creative genesis, unaired pilot, catchy theme song, and memorable characters, all on our “holiday through history.” 

When they brainstormed series ideas, creators Douglas Tuber and Tim Maile were inspired by music. Phil of the Future’s working title was The Out-of-Timers, a nod to the 1989 Elvis Costello song “Man Out of Time.” Tuber had the time travel idea in a record store that sold Costello’s number. He thought, “Oh, what about if it’s a kid out of time, but not running out of time, but they’re out of our time?” 

As for which time the Diffys belonged to, Zager & Evans’ 1969 song “In the Year 2525” offered a starting point for exciting futuristic technology. However, Tuber recalls that a Disney Channel executive thought 2525 was too far into the future. Other elements changed before the show aired. Lise Simms’ character, Barb, once had a detachable head. 

Maile explains, “In the pilot, mom had an artificial body. So her head was real. But I think we referred to an unfortunate whale-watching incident that required dad to get her an artificial body.” While 16-year-old Raviv Ullman was ultimately the perfect fit for his character, Phil wasn’t always going to be a teenage boy, either. In fact, the original unaired pilot was a much different introduction to this world, the team reveals. 

Doug Tuber (series co-creator, executive producer): Initially, Tim and I said, “Oh, it’s Girl from the Future.” Disney kind of skewed to girls a little more at that time. We had just come off Lizzie, and that was a big hit, so we made it a girl from the future. And they said, “Can you make it a teenage boy?” 

Tim Maile (series co-creator, executive producer): There was a period during the development process where they thought, “Actually, we need to age Phil down,” and they wanted him to be like 10 instead of 13 or 14. I think the leading candidate to play him was [Rory Thost] who went on to be Bradley Benjamin Farmer, Pim’s paramour.

Raviv Ullman (actor, Phil Diffy): I was in high school in Fairfield, Connecticut, basically booked Phil of the Future, we did the pilot, and then after the pickup, booked Pixel Perfect [the 2004 Disney Channel Original Movie]. The way that the schedule was going to work is, I was going to do Pixel Perfect in Salt Lake City and then go straight to shooting the first season of Phil of the Future. 

Jill Danton (producer, pilot): Tim Maile and Doug Tuber, who were co-EPs, writers on Lizzie McGuire, had known me. And so I said, “Yeah, I’ll do the pilot for you.”

Maile: The [unaired] pilot story is: Before the credits, we see [the Diffy family] breaking down in the time machine and realizing they’re going to be stuck here. And then the first scene is, they’re getting ready for the first day of school. Pim has decided, as she did throughout the series, that she’s from the future, she’s vastly superior to these early-2000s primitive people, and that it’s her destiny to kind of rule the earth. 

Ullman: We shot the pilot in the same house that American Beauty was shot at, which was kind of wild. ‘Cause I remember being a fan of that movie and being like, “This is pretty crazy to be in this house.” 

Maile: [Keely and Phil] become friends pretty quickly, and Phil feels bad that he’s hiding his big secret from, really, his only friend. And some of the conflict throughout the middle part of the episode is him wanting to be able to tell Keely that they’re from the future, but dad is very paranoid that if people find out they’re from the future, the government will take them to a secret facility and lock them away. 

Tuber: Light them up and dissect them, put them in jars of blue liquid. 

Maile: The B story of the pilot was Pim meeting Debbie Berwick, and Debbie Berwick just sort of latching onto her like a puppy, the way she did throughout the series, and Pim being appalled by this person.

Danton: A big one of our locations [for the pilot] was El Segundo High School, which is a pretty famous and well-known shooting location. We shot a lot of stuff there. I think the big culmination scene, almost like the movie Carrie at the school prom, like everything went to hell and came to a crescendo in this big auditorium dance scene.

Maile: So the big, climactic scene was at the school dance, and Phil is trying to mend fences with Keely, who isn’t having any of it [and doesn’t believe the secret Phil told her]. In the meantime, Pim has shown up with a chicken in a cage. Phil wants to know what she thinks she’s doing, and she says, “I’m switching Debbie Berwick’s brain with that of a chicken,” which she does. I think it goes somewhat haywire, and a lot of other students get turned into chickens as well.

Dawn R. Ferry (production designer, pilot): It was a barnyard theme. The hay bales were actually very practical ‘cause we had corners, strategic places so the chickens couldn’t just take off everywhere. 

Tuber: Phil gets a hold of [Pim] and says, “What are you doing? You can’t do that.” He grabs the WIZRD, zaps her out the door, rockets her out of the auditorium, and then he turns the kids back into humans.

Maile: All the kids are a little bit dazed and not quite sure what happened. Phil grabs the microphone and says, “Hey, how about a big hand for the great special effects that Debbie Berwick came up with for the school dance?” And people seem to buy that story. But meantime, Keely has seen all of this, and she realizes, “Wow, Phil was being straight with me.” At the end of the episode, Keely knows Phil’s secret, and they will move forward as friends.

Ferry: What was great about working for Disney, and particularly on Even Stevens, is that we broke the bounds of reality. We were mostly real, but we weren’t afraid to push past actuality. And, of course, when you’re doing something like Phil of the Future, where you have a mom whose head comes off and all of these other crazy things, it’s great to have a background like Even Stevens. 

Maile: The character [Barb] made it clear that, when she was just lounging around the house, it was much more comfortable to just take her head off and not have to have the artificial body. So there’s a scene where she removes her head and sets it down on the end table and is participating in family life. We had shot a couple episodes where she did remove her head. It was in the prelude to the Iraq war, and there was lots of terrorism going on, and the journalist Daniel Pearl had been captured and beheaded. I think probably it was the correct decision at the time to think, “This would be rather upsetting for people to watch a disembodied head sitting on a table.” So we reshot the scenes in the first few episodes where she had done it, and that just sort of fell out of the overall story of the Diffy family, which, in a way, was too bad, because Lise [Simms] was a very good physical comic, and part of the whole comic idea of it was that her body would go haywire from time to time.

Craig Anton (actor, Lloyd Diffy): Lise Simms, I learned so much from her. The kindness that she had every day, the upbeat energy and positivity was truly inspiring. I saw the way she greeted everybody on the set, and I was like, “I want to do what she’s doing.” She’s leading by example. She was just lovely every day to work with, and we had great laughs and great fun. And same with Raviv. He would laugh honestly and openly [at] everything we were doing all the time. We had giggle fits sometimes where we had to take a minute before we could roll again ‘cause we’d both start cracking each other up. And then Amy, to this day, I don’t know any young person that was so adept at comedy. She could sell a joke in five different ways. She had biting sarcasm, wit, and precociousness, and also physicality. 

Phil of the Future’s catchy theme song was composed by John Adair and Steve Hampton (who would go on to write the Wizards of Waverly Place theme song) and was sung by Dan Mackenzie. Adair remembers the typical process for submitting theme songs. He and Hampton would write separate versions to suit the creative brief, and in the case of Phil, Adair’s version was the one Disney pursued. Viewers could easily sing along with a chorus reminding us who this show was about—a guy who “never knew in history just where he would land” but was all about “keeping it together just as best as he can.” Adair remembers select lyrics being provided by Disney, but his team’s creativity in imagining the song is evident.

John Adair (co-writer, theme song): I think somebody at Disney had heard one of the other things that we had done and said, “Hey, would you guys want to try doing a theme for us?” 

Maile: I know they had a lot of different people sort of, on spec, compose theme songs. I know The B-52s did one that we actually thought we liked quite a lot. But I guess the judgment was that kids didn’t have a whole lot of interest in The B-52s, necessarily.

Adair: The music department at Disney had put the call out to a few different people to compete for the main title theme. That’s not unusual.

Tuber: It was about a dozen or so that were produced.

Adair: Steve probably collaborated with me a little bit on tweaking lyrics and making sure everything was buttoned up in that way. I know we did all the instrumentation ourselves, so he may have played some guitar on it as well. He and I and a couple other people were the background group that’s going “Phi‑i‑il” in between on the chorus, in and around the lead singer.

Dan Mackenzie (lead vocalist, theme song): Someone, based on whatever the songwriters for the Phil of the Future theme song were looking for, thought I’d be good for it. And I think, actually, whether it was expressly stated or not, there was something about them wanting somebody who sounded sort of like Michael Stipe from R.E.M. That was either a specific or a general stylistic direction. I’d like to think I’m sort of a versatile singer, but I think my pocket is kind of in that alternative rock, indie folk, pop [space]. 

Adair: I think in this case, they were hoping that maybe the lyrics could tell a bit of the story, since they were introducing this show to an audience for the first time.

Mackenzie: There’s a real catchy hook in a very kind of old-school way. It just was very catchy in a way that TV shows from the ‘70s and the ‘80s always were.

Adair: They went back and added a lot of sound effects, at least in the initial version of the main title theme. They had a lot of wacky visual effects coming in, like almost sort of cartoon things that would pop up here and there. They had a sound designer add sound effects for those.

Maile: Yeah, that was something I would say we kind of learned from Stan Rogow, who was the one who put all of the effects into Lizzie. We realized, especially for a single-camera show that doesn’t have an audience, a laugh track, that having those sound effects kind of provided the cue that, oh, this is funny for the audience. So it’s like a rim shot, but just a funny sound really helped punch specific comedy moments.

The series had other musical moments of note. Star Aly Michalka sang “Protecting Me” in the episode “My Way,” marking the first time many people probably heard an Aly & AJ song (including Raviv Ullman). “You’re always there for me, when I need you most. Day and night, you’re by my side, protecting me,” Keely sings in the episode while a shrunken Phil clings to the microphone to help her with stage fright. Fans may also notice that Phil has a drumset in his bedroom, nodding to Raviv Ullman’s talent as a drummer. 

Another memorable music episode was “Daddy Dearest,” in which Craig Anton wrote and sang his own folk music. In the episode, Lloyd is fascinated with the genre and embarrasses Phil and Pim by signing up to share his folk song knowledge at the kids’ school. They duplicate their father and try to make the dupe cooler, only to feel guilty and then perform onstage with Lloyd. Art imitated life, as the cast and crew played music together during breaks from filming.

Anton: So that’s really funny. So, originally in the script, they had some folk songs in there, and then I show up on the day to shoot them. They go, “Yeah, those didn’t clear legal. They’re not public domain. Do you think you could write something really quick?” So I wrote all those songs,  [except for “Froggy Went A-Courtin,” performed by Lloyd, Phil, and Pim]. And I think I might have been riffing with these guys, but I ended up having to join ASCAP, and I got money off all those things.

Ullman: The fun thing about doing television is that the writers do write to your strengths. I do believe that Phil as a drummer came from my own experience as a drummer, which is so cool. Years later I did a show called Rita Rocks, and I played a drummer on that show as well. That was one of those situations where the character was a drummer and part of the audition was like, come in if you can drum, kind of thing. That electric drum set lived in a green room on the lot that we were shooting [Phil] at. Different crew members and cast members would bring in their instruments and amps, and on lunch breaks, we would have jam sessions, which was very fun. I remember Craig would bring a guitar, and people brought stuff. So those drums got some good use.

Tuber: I believe my wife [Rachelle Romberg] wrote [“My Way,” where Michalka sings]. 

Anton: Aly was always just lovely, and I got to see her last spring. She came through Savannah. She was on tour [for Aly & AJ]. So we got together for a bite and a drink and got to catch up. 

Ullman: Not only was I blown away by the amount of talent coming out of the people that I was working with, whether it was Aly & AJ and their music or Craig and his comedy scene and community, but I felt welcomed into it, and that was really important coming from a small town living with my family.  

Phil has a prehistoric pal with a local doppelgänger: Curtis the caveman and Vice Principal Hackett are both played by J.P. Manoux, and the two characters occasionally are face to face (thanks to Manoux and his stand-in). “I’d like to think that Mr. Hackett is a direct descendant of Curtis,” he says. Curtis is a fun-loving character but also a dead giveaway that there’s something different about the Diffys. He bedecks Debbie Berwick with stickers at the dentist, briefly gets a job at a hardware store with Lloyd, and even switches places with Phil in the “Neander-Phil” episode, causing the teen to behave like a caveman at a fancy dinner party. 

Tim Maile explains, “I think from the very beginning that we started discussing it, we thought, ‘Well, it would be funny if they picked up a caveman hitchhiker and he was still with them. It would just be a complication in their already complicated lives.’” There was originally a completely different actor, Tony Longo, set to play Curtis. Manoux also remembers Mindy Cohn auditioning.

Maile: [Curtis] was going to be more, sort of like an older brother to Phil, kind of a cool but not really smart older brother. But the character evolved in different ways over the course of developing and recasting. 

Manoux: I lost the part to the seven-foot-tall guy, [Tony Longo]. Yeah, that’s how it started. Later, when they had the character of Mr. Hackett, who was going to be appearing in a few episodes, I don’t even know if I auditioned for Mr. Hackett. They might have just been like, “J.P. would be great for Mr. Hackett.”

Maile: In the pilot, they had a cap for Curtis to wear, which essentially civilized him. It made him an erudite, well-behaved person. But if the cap came off, he reverted to basically a panicked Cro-Magnon man who had no idea where he was.

Manoux: I remember hearing that they were going to reshoot the pilot and that even though they thought the actor who played the caveman was a lovely person, maybe the test audiences with kids were a little scared of him, more scared than they wanted. 

Tuber: [Longo] passed away a while ago. We really liked him. I mean, it’s why we chose him. And he was really funny in the part [of] Curtis, the original, as we envisioned him. He was really good. 

Anton: Super funny, super gregarious, super lovely person.

Manoux: One [producer] said to me, “Oh, man, it’s such a bummer. We love having you as Mr. Hackett. Now we really wish we had someone like you to play the caveman.” And the people they’d seen, they didn’t think were terrific yet. And I don’t know why I was, like, ballsy enough, like, stupid enough, whatever. I remember saying, “I’ll do both parts!” 

Through TV magic and the crew’s creativity, the Diffys brought an array of 2121 gadgets to Disney Channel. Characters can’t resist using the technology, even though they risk spilling the family secret. “Kids love gadgets and the ability to manipulate reality,” Maile observed at the time. In the “Unification Day” episode, Pim uses a can of spray meatloaf to get out of cooking the dish from scratch for a school assignment. Pim attempts to throw the dispenser in the garbage, but it ricochets, falls to the ground, and spills open, producing a meatloaf as big as a dining room table. Lloyd’s derriere expands after eating leftovers for days on end, and Craig Anton recreated the scene for TikTok several years ago. It’s the same episode in which Phil would rather hang out with his friends than his dad, but the two reunite and play laser squash together. 

“I don’t know that I have a favorite [episode]. But I think the laser tag, probably off the top of my head, would probably be because that had a nice, heartfelt moment with Raviv and I,” Anton shares.

There was a gorgeous game on Disney Channel’s website called “Phil’s Skyak Adventure,” capturing the Skyak as an enchanting vision of private air travel. Manoux directed the episode “Where’s the WIZRD” and remembers a Skyak having to be repainted after being stored on a roof; Ullman recalls learning how to operate the prop with Aly Michalka. When in doubt, the handy WIZRD is the ultimate multipurpose gadget (one that sometimes backfires). Characters use it to duplicate themselves or others, to masquerade as someone else, switch places, and more. Maile conceptualized the tool based on a real-life scientific story.

Maile: We sort of figured, “Well, let’s come up with one sort of central gadget that does everything.” And I remember as we were developing, writing the pilot, there was a story in the LA Times Sunday magazine about, I think it was people at Caltech who were talking about wave interferometers, that if you could interfere with gravity waves and do it deliberately, you could basically alter reality. And I thought, “Well, that’s very cool, and that could explain the underlying way that the thing works.” So we called it a wave interferometer Z-ray device [aka WIZRD], figuring that the future was well beyond X-rays and Y-rays and on to Z-rays. 

Tuber: There were a lot of gadgets in the pilot. In the future episodes, there was either none an episode or maybe it featured one, like the New-Ager, where the dad is zapped in his office into a baby—who was my son, by the way, in that scene. 

Ullman: It was all play. What I remember is that in the second season, we had a version of the Skyak sometimes that was a little more controlled, that was actually on a robotic arm sometimes. But in the first season, it was definitely just, like, a toy that you would find at a playground where it’s just on a spring, loaded. Aly and I had to practice and get good at leaning forward on it and then leaning backward on it, leaning to the left and to the right, and they would just kind of walk us through that. As lo-fi as some of the effects were in the making of it, it was like being on a playground. 

Ferry: [The time machine] was an RV, also. And the whole idea was that when they’re part of the technology of the time, when they do these time vacations, that they can morph their travel vehicle into something that is appropriate to wherever they go to, like a cloaking device, if you will. [For the inside], I’m a huge fan of twinkle lights. They’re pretty, they’re fun. They put off a really nice, soft light. I’m all about helping my DP with plenty of lighting because if you don’t give them fun, motivated lighting and cool lamps and all of that stuff, you shoot yourself in the foot. [The Diffys] are kind of from the stars, if you will. I just sort of liked the metaphor of having something that had a little bit of a star-like quality to it in their motorhome.

The spectacle of Phil of the Future materialized through the acting, writing, producing, directing, special effects, eye-catching wardrobe, and of course, hairstyles. Oscar winner Adruitha Lee was head of the hair department in Season 1, after styling the Lizzie McGuire cast. Since her time with Disney Channel, Lee has worked on motion pictures including Bombshell, I, Tonya, Spring Breakers, Dallas Buyers Club, and numerous others. Working with costume designer Cathryn Wagner on Phil of the Future, Lee crafted smart looks for fashionistas Keely and Tia (Brenda Song), channeling actress Brigitte Bardot’s head scarves for Michalka. From the inside out, these were characters who were easy to love.

“Aly and Amy and I were young and just so excited to be a part of this show and working, and at that point we knew what the legacy of some of these Disney shows were where we were coming in the wake of Even Stevens and Lizzie and Raven, and there was an excitement in the air of what we were doing and making,” Ullman recalls. 

There was a cosmic scope to his character’s circumstances, too. “He was grounded in an understanding of what was right and wrong over literal space and time, and there’s something kind of profound and beautiful about that,” says Ullman. Phil and his conscious-driven essence connect with viewers of yesteryear who may revisit the show today. 

Ullman: Definitely any storylines and any lines are always attributed to the writers. That is their work, 100%. I’d love to think that I brought an earnestness to Phil, a sincerity to Phil. I grew up in a very supportive family. We did not have a lot of money growing up, but me and my siblings always had the opportunity to play on whatever sports team. I always was able to go to auditions and go to singing lessons and dance lessons. Our family always supported each other in any dream that any of us had, and that felt very present in making Phil. I left my family behind on the East Coast to go make that show, and that was coming fresh from being a kid at home and going to school. So that experience of the closeness of my family and my extended family was absolutely present in the creation of that character. 

Maile: I certainly can’t remember having any conversations about, deep down, what’s going on in Phil’s head. It’s credit to Raviv that he was able to kind of let it play out on his face what his character’s internal processes were. But that would be, I would say, much more to his credit than to ours.

Ullman: I would be able to go hang out in the writers’ room. The cinematographer would let me sit and watch dailies during lunch with them. When I turned 18, the camera crew would take me to work on projects with them on the weekends. And I got to really appreciate the hundreds of people that it takes to make a television show and understand what the work was that they put in. I just appreciate that opportunity because it made me love it even more and made me love those people even more. And because I was young, 17, 18 when we were shooting, people like Craig really took me under his wing. 

Anton: A lot of people ask me, what’s been your favorite thing you’ve ever done? And [Phil] was truly probably my favorite thing I’ve ever done. And part of that is because of the world and the culture, that special closeness we had with the cast and crew. I mean, there just wasn’t a bad apple in the bunch. I was super grateful to come to work every day and be a part of that, and we had a lot of laughs doing it. We’ve kind of stayed in touch since then, so that’s been lovely. It’s got a big place in my heart, for sure.

Adruitha Lee (head of hair department, Season 1): [Lizzie McGuire] was a great little show for me to do and to get into the business. It was fun. I got to experiment and do a lot of fun things, and Hilary was open to everything that we wanted to do. I worked the last year of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, before I did Phil. 

Ullman: Adruitha, her career has exploded. I was able to present her with an award last year. It’s wild to think that she worked on that show because now she’s working on the biggest films in Hollywood, and is just so wildly talented.

Lee: I love Italian Vogue, and I know that sounds crazy for those type of shows, but you can pull a lot of stuff from magazines like that, and that’s when we still had a lot of newsstands in Hollywood. I would pull stacks and stacks of books and bring them in and just do tears and show them to Aly and Brenda.

Ullman: We had an incredible wardrobe team that came over from Lizzie, and so I, again, was kind of in awe that I got to work with them and that they came with such knowledge of the Disney landscape and the kinds of shows that we were going to be making. But definitely there was a collaboration in, every week we would have wardrobe fittings and look at the next episode. And if there was something that I really didn’t like, I’m certain that I was able to say, “I don’t like this one.” 

Lee: [Raviv] was so great to work with. His hair is a little bit coarse, has a little bit of wave in it. So it’s easy to do this type of [spiky look].

Ullman: I do remember my first audition for Phil of the Future, I had just finished being able to grow these horribly long sideburns, and our casting director said, “Great job. Can you come back tomorrow and do it again without the sideburns?” And I was devastated. Looking back at pictures with those sideburns, I cannot believe that I ever wanted those to begin with. They were just so long, my whole head, it was so strange. So sometimes it’s good to let the people who know what they’re talking about guide you. I definitely had no sense of fashion on my own. And still, my wife now kind of leads the charge on that.

Lee: [The young women of the series] were very fashion-forward, and they knew who they were, they knew what they wanted at such a young age. I just dove right into it. Every weekend I was shopping somewhere and [I’d] show them what all I had, and they would pick things, and then they would go get their costume on and come back in the hair and makeup room: “Can we use this? Can we use that?” They were great. I wanted them to make it theirs, like I do with a lot of actors. After I finish and do what I do, I’ll tell them to be the last one to touch their head, and any little thing that they want to adjust, please do. 

Ullman: [For the Season 1 finale “Team Diffy,” where Phil is turned into a statue], we shot that in a real park on location here in LA. And at the end of the day, I’m head to toe covered in makeup. They had a trailer that had a shower in it for me to be able to clean up afterwards, but it wasn’t working that day for some reason. So I had to drive home in full statue makeup with full statue hair. And I remember pulling up to a red light and the person next to me being like, “What the heck is going on in that car?”

Doug Tuber and Tim Maile returned to direct the Season 2 episode “It’s a Wonder-Phil Life,” written by Ivan Menchell, in which Phil grapples with the possibility of telling everyone he is from the future. Lise Simms doubles in this episode as mom Barb Diffy and the Timekeeper, showing Phil what life would be like if his time-traveling ways were revealed. The story of a character with a secret is one that lives on and inspires television of every decade. Some of the adults working on Phil remember a time when characters like Samantha Stephens on Bewitched carried with them hidden identities. Phil and other Disney Channel characters, like Raven Baxter, Miley Stewart, and Alex Russo, brought that texture to kids’ TV in the 2000s.

Tuber: When Tim and I were kids, I know me, anyway, there were a lot of shows then where there were secrets. Now, they weren’t kids, so much. Like in Bewitched, it’s a secret that he married a witch, and neighbors are suspicious, but it’s still a secret. And I Dream of Jeannie, only a couple people knew, his best friend knew, but it’s like, that was a secret. So when this script came up, it had to deal with the secret issue, and it also was like It’s a Wonderful Life. I mean, it’s titled “It’s a Wonder-Phil Life.” That was always a beloved movie of mine, anyway. And it’s sort of, “What if I’d never been born?” And you see what happens. It appealed to me. I’m glad that we got that one to direct, actually. We had dealt with the secret and the “what if.” I think a lot of people like “what if” stories.

Manoux: I don’t think in the beginning they imagined they would want or need a, was it Mrs. Kravitz, who was the neighbor on Bewitched who knew something was going on? Hackett was probably going to be more evenly balanced with other teacher characters at the school, but when they recognized that it was important for the plot for [the Diffys] to have to really keep their secret, they suddenly decided he lived next door, just over the fence. And that, of course, is awesome for me. I got to play even more as Mr. Hackett. 

Tuber: My dad [Richard Tuber], who was a science fiction TV writer at one point, kind of got me interested [in time travel]. Even as a little kid, we’d talk about, “What would happen if you went back in time and did something? Would it affect the future?” I was always sort of interested in it, and science fiction in general. 

Manoux: Disney shows, there’s a lot of aspirational, wish fulfillment stuff. If you’ve got the ability to go back in time and redo something, that’s kind of a universal sentiment, maybe, that even kids and tweens can appreciate.

Ullman: We had an incredible writing team, and staffing always changes over the years, and from season to season, some people come, some people go, but early on, we had creators from other Disney shows. In our second season, we had Michael Curtis, who was an exec and writer on Friends, and Roger Schulman, who was one of the writers on Shrek. There was an incredible lineup of, like you’re saying, sophisticated family comedy writers that aren’t pandering, but writing for an entire family to be able to sit down and watch it.

Danton: Being able to identify with a character, saying, “Hey, he’s like me. He reminds me of me,” or, “He reminds me of a friend of mine,” or, “I’ve got a guy like that in my school,” you make this connection and feel the character is grounded in someone you can understand and identify with, but yet they’re special in some way. Every young person certainly wants to feel or wants to be told that they’re special in some way. So I think that was really the connection. 

Ullman: I’m proud that the hundreds of people that worked on the show made something that you are interested in discussing today. Not to disparage it at all: I don’t think it’s because we made something necessarily profound. I think it’s because we made something joyful, and we so badly need that all the time, especially now. And there’s something beautiful in nostalgic joy. When I do get stopped by somebody on the street who recognizes me from the show, it feels different than maybe seeing a favorite pop star from today or somebody from a movie from the 2020s. Because if you were a kid that had Disney Channel and you watched Disney Channel every day after school, we were in your living room every single day when you were a kid. And that’s kind of wild to have that kind of shared experience with people. And I just love that it brought joy to people. Anytime anybody stops me and says something, I’m just moved that the show brought them joy.

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Allison McClain Merrill is a freelance journalist and contributor to Paste Magazine. She is writing a book about Disney Channel history. Her pop culture and travel adventures can be found @pastfootforward and @AMcClainMerrill.

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