Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, an all-new stop-motion animated show, premieres on Adult Swim on August 17. Created by Gonzalo Cordova and animated by Cinema Fantasma, Women Wearing Shoulder Pads tells the story of businesswoman Marioneta Negocios, a wealthy Spanish woman trying to sell miniature cuyes (guinea pigs) in Ecuador while dealing with a strange stalker, a persistent romantic pursuer, a bitter rival, and more. This dramatic, twisty story features an all-female cast, a focus on LGBTQ+ romances and family relationships, and an impressive wardrobe of stylish outfits.
Game Rant spoke to series creator Gonzalo Cordova and Cinema Fantasma co-founders Roy and Arturo Ambriz about all things Women Wearing Shoulder Pads. They discussed Cordova’s inspiration, which includes marionette theater as well as the work of Pedro Almodóvar and Joan Crawford, the show’s Latin American identity, and, of course, all the adorable cuyes featured in the show. They also discussed why Cinema Fantasma’s stop-motion animation style was perfect for the show and how they hope Women Wearing Shoulder Pads can be an inspiration to other non-English shows in the future. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Marionettes And Melodrama: The Origins Of Women Wearing Shoulder Pads
Game Rant: Women Wearing Shoulder Pads is unique in that only female characters perform speaking roles in the entire show. Was that always the plan, or something that came later in development?
Cordova: That came very, very early in the process. The initial show was just mashing together several things. There’s a theater in Los Angeles called the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, which is a puppet theater, and I’d been watching Pedro Almodóvar films, and I mashed them together. Then the title Women Wearing Shoulder Pads came to me – and that title, if you notice, has the word “women” in it. So I really wanted to commit to the initial idea.
But, I think, on a real substantive level, this show is a melodrama. It’s kind of a heightening of melodrama. In the best melodramas, you forget about the male characters. In Almodóvar’s work, you forget about the male characters. With the exception, occasionally, of Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem, you kind of forget them. You forget the love interest, and you’re just into these women. In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, some of the male characters are barely visible. I wanted to heighten that. This work is the logical endpoint of, “I’m making the most melodrama you can make. I need melodrama.” The only way to move is to make that choice. It felt logical.
Game Rant: Another thing that’s so cool about Women Wearing Shoulder Pads is the focus on cuyes [a type of guinea pig]. These adorable animals are everywhere in the show, and it deals with the question of—are they pets, are they food, are they something else? Why did you choose to make cuyes such a central theme?
Cordova: That probably came around when I was working on the pitch. I wrote this pitch amazingly fast. It’s the fastest pitch I’ve ever written. It’s something that had been pitched out and happened—and then we waited, because TV takes a long time. But everything about the show is in some way instinctual, and then I figured out why I wanted to do that later.
I think part of the reason is that I identified [cuyes] so much with Ecuador. They had some childhood memories for me. My family came to the US when I was six, but we would return to Ecuador in the summers. One of the memories of Ecuador that’s most cemented in my brain is being in my early teens, and being on a road trip, and having a bus stop at a small outdoor restaurant, and seeing what I thought were guinea pigs in cages. I thought, “Huh, it’s weird that they have pets here.” Then, sitting down and having them come out [as food], and having my mind blown, because I didn’t remember this from when I was a little kid.
I had a lot of deep feelings about seeing family do this, and eat at this restaurant. So I think that really stuck with me. Since then, I’ve grown and matured as a person. I’m not as squeamish about the idea. The show makes the point that it’s not that much different than eating a duck at a fancy restaurant. I wanted to explore those feelings, and it also becomes a metaphor for Ecuador, foreigners coming in, exploitation, and pride in the country. It becomes something else that I don’t fully understand—like I said, so much of this show is instinctual.
Game Rant: With puppet theater being such an inspiration for Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, was working with Cinema Fantasma the plan from day one, or did they come into things later?
Cordova: They were not there from day one. Actually, I initially wanted to do marionettes. And Adult Swim said, “You should do stop-motion. It will be so much better. It’ll be easier. You know people, you can find these collaborators.”
I met with a few stop-motion studios from around the world, and the second that Cinema Fantasma came up on screen, I knew it. I knew they understood the show and that they would bring a lot of passion and love to it. Creatively, the show’s soul was defined at that moment, in that choice. Adult Swim also had the same instinct. I kept meeting other wonderful people, and probably would have been fantastic for the show too, but I knew these people were going to be able to capture something.
Game Rant: For the Cinema Fantasma team, then, what were your first thoughts when you heard Gonzalo’s initial pitch for Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, and did you know right away it would be a good fit for your animation style?
Roy Ambriz: My first thought was, “Wow, this is such an amazing show that’s never going to be produced.” It’s crazy to think that someone would give so much freedom to this weird idea. That’s what we keep believing. It’s a miracle that this show exists. I think it defies all the standards of television today. But it’s beautiful. It’s a gift that Gonzalo has given the world.
Arturo Ambriz: I remember the first time that we found out that they wanted to pitch us a show. We were like, “What? Why? Why do they want to pitch us something?” We were really excited. I remember that [Roy and I] spoke, and we said, “Don’t get too excited. They’re not going to choose us. We’re just starting our careers. We just made our first show.”
But we said, “Let’s have a pitch, and let’s make it really honest about what we could do and who we are and what we could bring.” I remember that when we finished that first meeting, we were like, “This would be amazing.” We were a little bit depressed because we said something like, “Life is not that good. They are never going to choose us.” They told us that they were casting at a lot of different studios.
Then we received the mail that said that we were the ones to make this, and we knew at that moment that our lives were about to change because of the show that Gonzalo created. It gave us one of our first shots in the industry. In Hollywood, in LA, in the big industry, not just Latin America. And that’s just starting.
Cordova: I think it’s really funny that Roy said, “We were really realistic” because in the meeting, we asked them, “How will you go about making the show?” and they just said, “We’re Mexican. We can do anything.”
The Show Features A Fascinating All-Female Cast
Game Rant: Well, it worked. Women Wearing Shoulder Pads is an absolutely gorgeous show. I love how each character has such a distinct design, so I have to ask, who was the most fun to design?
Cordova: So, the designs were all done by very closely coordinating with the entire team. Ana Coronilla was the art director and had her design team. We had people doing illustrations. My wife worked on the costumes, which were also a big part of defining the characters.
If you ask that team, everybody’s gonna say Espada. I loved designing that toreador outfit. It’s a beautiful work of art, and one of the best pieces of craftsmanship on the show. But I really love Nina Quispe, the little girl. I just have a soft spot for her. I liked working on the designs for her different outfits; I thought they were really cute. And Coquita had the best outfits in the show, in my opinion.
A lot of that was researched by my wife, Rachel Kinnard, who worked on the costumes. She found a lot of these sources, these original images that her team then worked to tailor to the puppets. And it was really fluid between me and my wife and the design team. It was just such a wonderful collaboration to find these characters and start to find their voice, and how they move, and what they look like.
Game Rant: What goes into creating a lead character like the rich businesswoman Marioneta Negocios, who is not necessarily always sympathetic—she’s self-motivated, outright antagonistic at points. How do you write a somewhat “villain protagonist” like that and keep her compelling to the audience?
Cordova: A lot of it is based on Carmen Maura, who was in a lot of Pedro Almodóvar’s films in the 80s. She’s also based on Joan Crawford and how intense she can be in her films, and how much they push that. This is always an exaggeration, so I was trying to push that aspect.
I honestly always thought [Marioneta] was so funny and charming, and a big part of that is that she does so many unlikable things. We had a wonderful collaboration with Pepa Pallares, who is the actress who performed as Marioneta, and she brought a lot of likability by making it closer to herself.
Initially, some of the lines, people had the instinct to do it a little bit more villainously, and I was like, “No, do it like you.” Then, when they bring a little bit of their personality in, that edge, that roughness of it, is a little sanded down. I think it makes them fun. It’s like, “Oh, this is a person.” People do make choices like this. And she had such a wonderful instinct for that. She really was a joy to work with.
Women Wearing Shoulder Pads Is A Celebration Of Latin American Identity
Game Rant: Do you think that Women Wearing Shoulder Pads could be the start of a trend of seeing more Adult Swim shows in non-English languages, or perhaps other networks?
Cordova: I don’t think this show is the start of it. Los Espookys was incredibly influential to me for making something for the US that was originally in Spanish. Obviously, the show is made for Latin America, but it’s also made in the US for the primary market of Adult Swim. I really have to credit that show for inspiring me to try to pull this off.
Arturo Ambriz: I really think that this show is going to be really important for the Latin American community. I think that everybody’s excited. Everybody is saying right now that they feel represented. They are really enjoying seeing things that are not clichés, but actually authentic. I think this show is going to be really important for the community in Latin America and in Mexico.
We really hope that this show helps more productions be made in Latin America and to search for authentic representation, because it’s not the same—how other people see us and how Latin Americans see ourselves, and how we represent ourselves. We find little bits in the show, little details in the sets, in the wardrobe, in how the characters act, and in how they move their hands in a very Latin way. It’s not something that we often see on television. I think this show is going to be really, really important.
Game Rant: One question I had about the Latin American representation and identity of the show is what motivated the decision to have Marioneta be someone from Spain who later moved to Ecuador?
Cordova: It mainly came from being deeply inspired by Pedro Almodóvar’s work, and Carmen Maura’s work in his films, and thinking, what if I took a character from a Pedro Almodóvar film and dropped her into my fuzzy, half-remembered, fantastical memories of my childhood? And have her interact with what I thought the world was like at that point? And a lot of it is just trying to put her in that world.
I grew up with my family telling very over-the-top, melodramatic stories about family history. Completely embellished. It felt like it had a kinship to Almodóvar’s films. So I wanted to take a character from his world and put her right there and see what happens.
Game Rant: You mentioned being inspired by family stories—has your family watched Women Wearing Shoulder Pads yet? What do they think of the show?
Cordova: I’ve shown the first half of the series to my mother and father. My mom is obviously deeply in love with the show. She studied fashion, and I used a lot of her designs in the show. Every few minutes, it’s like, “That’s my dress! That’s from my portfolio when I was in school!” So it’s been really wonderful to see that.
And my dad—there’s almost like, like you know how in superhero movies and comics there will be Easter eggs? There are Easter eggs in there just for my family. Character names and details, and things that happened. My dad was picking up on those things. It’s been a very personal show, and they pick up on that, and they think that stuff is really funny and really cool.
Game Rant: Women Wearing Shoulder Pads premieres on Adult Swim on August 17. What’s the feeling right now? Are you nervous? Excited?
Roy Ambriz: I really want to know how people react. I know it’s not a conventional show. I’m sure that a lot of people are gonna love it. I really want to know if this has been our last day working on this production, or if there’s gonna be a second season. I’m thrilled, because this is like watching a sports event. You have to get the results by the minute.
Cordova: This show is a Hail Mary. It’s like a throw that’s really far away from the goal. It’s a gamble. So I’m anxious and excited. Whatever happens, though, I’m already so happy with the finished product that part of me doesn’t care. But part of me is also biting my nails.
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