Writing Steven Universe taught Kate Tsang to do whatever she wants in movies

Working with the writing teams has been a rewarding experience. Steven Universe: Future Adventure Time: Distant LandsKate Tsang, a first-time filmmaker, is familiar with the intricacies of telling stories about coming-of age. Steven Universe: Future in particular tackles emotional expression, as the title character grapples with processing the trauma of his past and the question of what his future holds, once he doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. While the first drafts of Tsang’s script for her movie Marvelous, the Black Hole These were written long before she was born. Steven Universe: FutureShe found that working on this show had helped her approach her writing rewrites.

And Tsang says if there’s one big thing she learned from her days on those projects, it’s that she shouldn’t be afraid to embrace sincerity, or to create the stories she feels the world needs, even if there isn’t a previous show she can emulate.

“I could write what I wanted to see,” Tsang tells Polygon. “It didn’t have to quite exist yet. Sometimes sincerity may not be as desirable as edginess or bleakness. With Steven [Universe], that’s what I love so much about it. There’s a heart to it, and there’s an optimism. I wanted that for my film as well.”

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Marvelous, the Black Hole The story is about Sammy, the prickly thirteen-year-old (played by Miya Cerch), and Margo, the surly stage magician Margo. Margo takes Sammy under her wing. As Margo shows Sammy stage magic, Margo forms an unlikely friendship. In the process, she falls neatly into the tried-and-true trope of a wise old mentor, à la Karate Kid.

But there’s a key difference in Marvelous, the Black HoleTsang spotted this in her own work when she looked at others of a similar style.

“I had so much difficulty finding an actual comp[arison] that would work for this relationship, because there aren’t actually that many intergenerational-friendship stories between two women,” she explains. “And especially not two unrelated women. It’s usually a grandma and grandchild, but there are no [stories about] two people from different walks of life that are women coming together.”

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Tsang wrote Margo to have a certain grit that would play nicely against Sammy’s edginess. Margo needed to be someone who wouldn’t coddle her, and wouldn’t be afraid to call her out. Tsang put Perlman on her top list when it came time to cast the role. She’d grown up watching CheersPerlman is the smart-mouthed waitress Carla in this movie.

“When you think of someone with tough grit and heart, that’s Rhea,” says Tsang.

Perlman was able to create a special relationship with Cech. Tsang says she didn’t really give them specific instructions in developing their characters, because it was more important for them to spend time together, develop their chemistry, and figure things out on their own. She instead took them both to magic shows and created playlists that were based on their personalities.

“We had some Joy Division on Sammy’s,” laughs Tsang. “It was really emo. Rhea also had classic soul music. And some Frankie Valli.”

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Sammy is absolutely the sort of character who would listen to Joy Division and other “emo” music. All black is her favorite color. She smiles very rarely. She defaces school property. She’s angsty and angry and impulsive, struggling to process the grief of her mother’s death. She’s rebellious and unapologetically angry, but balanced with enough heart that the audience understands where she’s coming from. Tsang felt Sammy was a personal project.

“I was that Sammy, and I just never saw her anywhere,” Tsang says. “Growing up in the ’90s, I never saw anybody that quite reflected who I was, in terms of an Asian American actor or a role for them. I loved Lydia Deetz [in Beetlejuice]. This was the person I wanted to become, and who I felt closest to. Similar with Edward Scissorhands. This is what I wished for my Asian American youth. Sammy is what I want for my daughter. And so I wrote her into being.”

Marvelous, the Black HoleReleased in theaters April 22.