Teletubbies head stateside
Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:49 PM
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London, England
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Four hours at a birthday party decorated with Teletubby images and littered with Teletubby aerials, and I’ve become a 3-year-old again.
My camera crew and I have been passing the time by munching on Cadbury chocolate mini-eggs and sucking down radioactive green-colored fruit punch, waiting for the big moment – when the Teletubbies appear on a stage here to be presented with passports.*
(*Apologies to our serious-minded readers: As one colleague put it to me, it’s hardly the stuff of "weighty geopolitical issues of our day," like the war in Iraq or the environment, but maybe we could all use a bit of levity now and then.)
Anyway, this is groundbreaking. Really.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Teletubbies hold onto their new passports and Dipsy gets a breath of fresh air while preparing for a photo-op. |
The birthday party is for Tinky Winky (the purple one), Dipsy (green), Laa-Laa (yellow), and Po (red), who are marking their 10th year anniversary as the Teletubbies.
And to celebrate the occasion, the colorful quartet is setting foot for the first time outside their studios (aka Teletubbyland) in Stratford-upon-Avon. They’re going far, too.
This weekend they will fly to New York, where – also for the first time – the performers will be unmasked and introduced on the TODAY show next Wednesday.
Big business
So here we were, at their anniversary-cum-bon-voyage party, at a west London restaurant.
"It's our one opportunity to bring [the performers] back together that we probably won't get again," said co-creator Anne Wood. Production for Teletubbies ended in 2003 so the four actors have not worked together since.
Also, "the audience for whom it was first made – [the children] who were three and four," continued Wood, "now it's a very interesting age [for them] looking back on it."
"In a way they've become icons themselves and we're going to, if you like, the city of icons, New York," added co-creator Andy Davenport. That includes stops at the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.
Calling them icons isn’t a stretch.
It's big business.
The brand has generated over $200 million for BBC Worldwide, which held the show's rights globally apart from in the United States, in merchandise and overseas sales to broadcasters in 120 countries, according to local newspaper reports.
It was all business at the anniversary/bon voyage party, too.
Cameraman Marcus O’Brien and I had to negotiate with Andrew Kerr, a senior vice president at Ragdoll -- the production house behind Teletubbies -- over the interview backdrop because the creators were concerned about sending conflicting messages to their young audience.
Plus, we were under strict – but understandable – orders to film the Teletubby performers in full costume or full civilian get-up. "We don't want on our heads the responsibility of having traumatized little kids everywhere by showing a decapitated Teletubby," as Brian Balthazar, the TODAY show producer who arranged our access to the group, very helpfully put it.
It’s hot under there
Admittedly, it was a little traumatizing for us to see Teletubby heads lying around the ground when we tiptoed through the dressing room. The four actors slumped beside them, sweaty and wan-looking.
The costumes are extremely large and difficult to breathe through. One outfit alone weighs more than 60 pounds and contains within it myriad wires enabling the performer to make various gestures and movements.
The costumes are so cumbersome that the actors can only perform for 10 minutes at a time before they have to take off the heads and, literally, take a breather. During one last photo-op that went on a fraction too long, production assistants came rushing out with what looked like oxygen tanks, pumping air into the giant mouths of the Teletubbies.
I chatted briefly with one of the actors, John Simmit, who plays Dipsy (the green one with the dancehall moves). Simmit, of Cuban-Jamaican descent, is a professional stand-up comedian noted for helping to put black British comedy on the entertainment map.
"It’s surreal to see little figures of yourself when you get off the plane in places like Egypt," he said. "The show’s been a much bigger success than I expected, but it feels absolutely great being part of such a cultural institution for kids."
It’s pretty clear how important they still are to young children.
When the Teletubbies make their first live appearance before a crowd of tiny tots, they stare, open-mouthed, at the sight of their favorite TV characters come to very large life.
Their reaction overwhelms the co-creators. "It’s so moving to see their faces," said Davenport. "It’s the first time for us, you know, to see the kids’ reaction live."
