It wasn’t low ratings or the cost of animation that led to the first (and until now only) season of MTV cult favorite Clone High not continuing, way way back in the 2000s. According to Season 2 executive producer Erica Rivinoja, the reason was simple: “Our representation of [Mahatma] Gandhi was very upsetting to people. We screwed up with that, and it was the reason it was canceled. So we didn’t want that to happen again.”
The first season, which introduced a high school full of clones made from the DNA of history’s most famous figures, heavily featured a party-loving Gandhi clone (voiced by Michael McDonald). This portrayal led to protests including a hunger strike featuring 150 Indian politicians and Gandhi’s grandson at the MTV India offices… and eventual cancelation.
Yet, as a staff writer on the original series, Rivinoja says that she noticed about five years ago that there was a growing momentum around the cult appreciation for Clone High. “It got really popular on TikTok, and it became kind of a thing again, which was really weird because for the longest time it was just sort of, ‘Wait, what was that Clone High thing on your resume?'” she laughs. “I’d meet people that were like, ‘You worked on Clone High? Oh my gosh.'”
Rivinoja was intimately aware of the issues that led to the show’s abrupt end. So when original series creators Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Bill Lawrence asked her to serve as showrunner on the show’s revival on Max, she says that she and the other writers knew “right away” that they’d have to tackle not just the issue of Gandhi, but other issues that wouldn’t be considered kosher in 2023. “It was just, ‘We have to do better this time around. We have to,'” she says.
So, beyond a few nods at the character’s absence, Gandhi is not a featured player in the new season, and the show’s approach to casting has also changed, with new clones like Frida Kahlo, Confucius, and Harriet Tubman joining the cast, played by voice actors Vicci Martinez, Kelvin Yu, and Ayo Edebiri. (And OG character Cleopatra is now voiced by Iranian-American comedian Mitra Jouhari.)
These choices, Rivinoja says, didn’t happen because “we are just trying to be woke and amazing. We just really wanted to make sure there was better representation — not just for the sake of doing it; for us, it genuinely felt important and fun and comedy-driven to do that. You know, seeing Harriet Tubman in high school, or how [new clone] Christopher Columbus would be perceived now… It just seemed like these were all really, really funny ideas, so that was what we wanted to evolve the story with.”
Executive producer Erik Durbin, who came on as co-showrunner midway through the writing process for Season 2, adds that the new characters also gave them the opportunity to “explore different personality types by adding these characters. So, you know, there is the expectation — they’ve got the DNA of these historical greats — but also everybody is different in other ways. And as driven as you might get about who you are and who you’re supposed to be, you are at this time of your life where your hormones are going crazy. And and then all you care about is who you’re gonna date or who you’re into or who’s not into you. And so that as like a a sidetrack is a common denominator at this age, which is also what makes it extra fun for me.”
Despite all the changes, Rivinoja says that it was really important to everyone involved that the new season function as a second season, including continuing the story following the Season 1 cliffhanger, which left viewers wondering for literal decades if Abe (Will Forte) was about to declare his love for Cleopatra or Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan). “It was really important that we continued that idea, you know, because it was such a cliffhanger, with them being frozen. So it really always felt like Season 2. We were calling it Season 2 from the beginning.”
One update made from Season 1 to Season 2 was the theme song, originally performed by Tommy Walter of Eels and Abandoned Pools. As Rivinoja says, “The thing about the pilot is there’s so much exposition and you just have to catch people up on, okay, there’s a board of shadowy figures, there’s clones that have been frozen — like, it’s just so much. So we were like, this could be like the eighties and the nineties where you just shove a bunch of exposition into the theme song — that was our goal, to just try to help catch people up with it.”
Clone High (Max)
Walter did return to write a new version of the theme song, updating it to reflect the plot developments which led to Season 2. “We were like, ‘Hey, can you just do a new version of it that will really help people?’ And I think he did an amazing job and the lyrics are super funny,” Rivinoja says.
Adds Durbin, “And it still has the same vibe as the original, which to me, when I came in 20 years later, still feels fresh and fun — it feels current in a way that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. It’s just a great theme song and he kept the vibe of it. I love the element that ‘Way, way back in the 1980s,’ when the show first came out, was ironic. And now it is not ironic.”
Rivinoja agrees, laughing. “It’s not ironic at all. Oh, we’re so old.”
With Season 2 now out in the world, and a third season close to completed, Rivinoja’s excited to take on more “very special episodes — anything where they can take themselves super seriously, I really want to do.”
Adds Durbin, there are also “the different genres to play with the types of teen shows that are out there, like Euphoria and Riverdale and The OC and Outer Banks. There are like 20-something years of these super-feely teen shows with social issues on top. The combination of those is hopefully endless.”
Clone High is streaming now on HBO Max.
