Longtime “The Simpsons” writer Carolyn Omine was dealt a few personal setbacks the past few years, as both her father and sister died — while she was also facing the professional uncertainty that came with the Hollywood strikes.
As Omine faced these hard moments, she found escape in watching videos of English mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown. The clips of Brown show him playing pranks on people — not in a mean-spirited way, but rather to explore human behavior. “There was something very moving about them,” Omine says. “Something that sort of reflected the just the beauty of what human beings are.”
When the strikes ended, “The Simpsons” found itself on an accelerated timetable to produce its first-ever original episode for Disney+, a Christmas-themed special that premiered Dec. 17 (timed to the 35th anniversary of the first-ever “Simpsons” half hour, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” which premiered on that date in 1989).
“We were, like, six months behind,” she says. “And normally, I would probably just not have done an episode that year, because I had just been going through so much. But it was all hands on deck. Everybody’s got to do something because we were so behind.” That’s when she pitched the idea for what would become “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” inspired in part by Brown. “I just wanted something uplifting and sort of soul nourishing in some way,” she says.
Popular on Variety
In the episode, Brown comes to Springfield to see if he can convince the dour town to restore some of its Christmas cheer. He zeroes in on Homer Simpson, who’s established as a terrible gift giver, and hypnotizes him to see if Homer can be convinced otherwise. Homer winds up believing he’s Santa Claus — and Springfield falls in love with Santa Homer.
But that’s all prelude to the even deeper story that comes mid-way through the episode, when Ned Flanders has a crisis of faith. Ultimately, it’s a mix of Brown, Prof. Frink and a little magic that brings him back.
Variety spoke to Omine about the episode, including what it was like to bring in guest stars Brown, Pentatonix and Patti LaBelle. She also addresses how a surprisingly mature Homer interacts with Ralph Wiggum (who signs on as his elf) and the serendipity at the end of the episode.
How did you settle on a man of science, Prof. Frink, being the character who brings back Ned Flanders’ faith?
I thought, well, if we did take away Ned’s faith, we probably should give it back by the end of the episode. And then that became this thing of, how do you do that without it just being super easy? It would be easy to cheat, because we have actually shown God as a character. He could have just shown up and went, ‘hey, here I am. Believe in me, I’m real!’ But how would you give Ned back his faith, just using the things that a real person would have at his disposal, to try and find a reason to believe in a higher power?
I was listening to KCRW, and there was this woman who had spoken about going on a super deep dive with one of those experimental submarines, where she had gone below the abyssal zone and the hadal zone, and just seeing these creatures that logically should not exist. She talked about how it was this moving experience, because it did kind of make her realize that anything can happen. I liked the idea that Frink would be the one that would be, surprisingly, not completely dismissive of the idea of God.
Frink is open to the idea of God, and I didn’t expect that.
The quote he says was actually Einstein’s answer when people asked him if he believed in God. ‘I see God in the orderly harmony of nature.’
The submarine that Frink and Ned take reminded me, of course, of the Ocean Gate submersible that broke apart while trying to visit the Titanic site. Was that in the back of your mind?
Definitely the idea of it imploding and even that Frink is just a little irresponsible. Then it turns out that is, it was all just a joke. I had originally planned that in the end, when you find out about that it was all just part of a Darren Brown experiment, that it was even the yoke, was something that Derek Brown had done. But I had a friend who, actually just passed away, but he was very sick, and I was pitching him the story. And when I told him that Ned takes his breath through the yoke, he was like, ‘Oh, that’s so beautiful.’ Then I told him that it was all a trick. He was like, ‘Can I just be honest with you? That breaks my heart.” I realized, you know what, let’s leave in that there is some magic.
Even Derren ultimately believes in a little bit of magic with the bow tie gift he gets from Homer. How did Derren Brown react when you pitched him his role?
Generally if we’re going base something so much on somebody, we would first ask them. But I wrote it all, and got it to where we had the story broken, and we wrote the script. Then we just sent it to him. And I kind of crossed my fingers. I was like, ‘well, if he doesn’t want to do it, maybe we’ll just make up a person that was like him.’ He wrote back immediately, and said yes.
Did he live up to expectations?
He absolutely did. Normally we record everybody over zoom, but I had gone from LA to New York because Hank Azaria had his big 60th birthday celebration. And then it just so happened that Derren was free. So I justified it in my head that like, well, I could fly back to LA or could fly on to London. So I did fly out to London to record him, and I felt that it was probably also worth it for the episode too, because it was such a big part.
He is such a huge part of this episode, were you worried whether or not he could deliver?
I had pretty good faith that he would probably be good, because he’s such a showman. There is a lot of acting in that magicianship. But I was really pleasantly surprised at how good he was. I thought his timing was really excellent and funny. And when he needed to be sweet, he was sweet. There were just many moments where I was like, ‘that’s good.’
Did he have any notes in terms of, ‘I would say it like this,’ or ‘this is how I would describe my process’?
No, he didn’t. I did watch a lot, so maybe I was pretty close. He’s so easy going, and was completely fine with it — because there’s some moments that sort of make fun of him. When he was doing the scenes where he hypnotized Homer, he almost had a hard time saying the line, because he just kept laughing at the thought!
Speaking of Homer, we see a more mature Homer, maybe more than we’ve seen in recent years. Once he recovers, he has a pretty good head on his shoulders. It was in some ways kind of refreshing to see some that. How would you describe Homer in this episode?
I’m very protective of Homer. Even in that first moment shopping when you see him sitting in the men’s department and Maggie’s putting glasses on his head, I was like, make sure he doesn’t look bored. Make sure he looks engaged with her. Because I want it to be very clear that Homer doesn’t dislike Christmas because it’s a hassle, or that he hates buying gifts for people. I wanted it to be very clear that he hates buying gifts because he thinks he’s bad at it, and that he thinks he’s disappointing people.
Once he becomes Santa, I wanted him to be sort of like the Peter Sellers character in ‘Being There,’ where he’s serene and at peace and maybe some of his genius is being assigned to him. Then in the end, when he wakes up, we’re trying to explore this other idea of faith, which is, hypnotism is basically power of suggestion. Somebody told him, ‘you know exactly how to buy the best gifts for people.’ Of course, Homer takes it into meaning that he’s Santa, but once he believes he’s Santa, he believes he can give people the gift that they want, and he’s able to do this thing. Once he’s snapped out of it, he kind of wants to be able to believe that way again. I don’t like it when Homer is sometimes like a food monster and a complete raging id. Because I do think he does have a desire to be a good person.
The way he interacts with Ralph is really touching.
We’ve not really had Homer and Ralph interact. It’s kind of nice after all these years to go, this is such an interesting pairing that we haven’t really seen. It’s just so easy to write this relationship. One of the real gifts about writing for The Simpsons at this time, the characters have such a rich backstory.
It’s perfect, because who’s the one character in in Springfield who Homer has an edge on? Ralph.
They both have a sweet, dumb-dumb quality. It’s a good matchup. Just the idea that the town finds something to believe in, which is Homer for a brief period, it tickled me.
How did you land on Pentatonix and Patti LaBelle to provide the music?
When I grew up, my mother really liked Mahalia Jackson, so my Christmas album was always the Mahalia Jackson Christmas album, and especially ‘Silent Night.’ We really needed a singer that could deliver that kind of soulfulness, singing these lyrics that are a little, I don’t want to say sacrilegious, but they really are about feeling like God is gone. For someone like Ned, it’s the most terrifying, sad thought he could have.
I knew it was going to be great, because it’s Patti LaBelle. When she sang we were all in tears. I wasn’t expecting to be as moved as I was. She did it maybe four times, and each time was completely different. To have this recording session that was so emotional and beautiful, afterward, we were all just talking about how we were filled with goosebumps. It was beyond any dream we could have had of how good that was.
And then Pentatonix, they did their arrangement themselves with their producer. Our music people, Kara Talve and Russell Emanuel and Jake Schaefer, they all are part of Bleeding Fingers Music. They are musical people. And yet, watching Pentatonix, they were just like, ‘holy crap!’ These guys are so precise. They were so game and so enthusiastic about the show. They had asked if they could do the fly through, which is the opening credits when ‘The Simpsons’ words come out. They hit it so good.
Normally there’s such a long lead time to making ‘Simpsons’ episodes, but you were on a short deadline for this one. How quickly did you have to work?
We found out that to premiere on Disney+, which is the first time we’ve done that, everything had to be done by October 17, so that they would have two months to translate and dub it into all the different languages. We had already committed to doing this double Christmas episode. So we didn’t have as much of a rewrite. We had to really pick and choose what we could do, because we’re limited by time and money. Luckily, knowing that we were going to be very tight, we really were kind of obsessive about the first part about the storyboards and the animatics to try and make sure we got that part right. Once we got the color back, we had to edit it and score it and mix it in rapid succession. It was kind of a crazy October.
It’s only because we’re such a well-oiled machine, that everybody could kind of step up and do that. Our mixers are so good, and our music, people like Kara, compose all that in really just a couple of days. It’s really insane.