ND Stevenson has long been fascinated by shapeshifters.
“I wanted to know how far you could go with that.
If you could turn into any person, what does that mean?”
Riz Ahmed’s Ballister and Chloë Grace Moretz’s Nimona.Netflix
It was in high school in South Carolina where he would start to sketch his own shapeshifter, Nimona.
Over the years, the character would begin to take form: pink, full-bodied, partly shaved head.
“My initial idea was sort of a punk Joan of Arc character.”
Ballister and Nimona come face to face with Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang).Netflix
“In hindsight, my lifelong obsession with shapeshifters has a pretty obvious conclusion,” Stevenson notes.
The creative came out as nonbinary in July 2020, and transmasculine and bi-gender in March 2021.
“Never could I have guessed what would’ve happened.”
Nimona, in gorilla form, is on the run with Ballister.Netflix
Who is Nimona?
“And it’s messy, which I think is what I really loved about it.
It represented a lot of reality in that way.”
Frances Conroy as the Director and Eugene Lee Yang as Ambrosius Goldenloin in ‘Nimona’.Netflix
Nimona is a shapeshifter determined to be a supervillain’s sidekick.
He’s not really a villain, as much as he tries to be.
It was the subtext.
Then there’s Nimona herself.
“I grew up not liking female characters,” Stevenson says.
“They were just not written as well as the male characters.
If people would write a good female character, then I’d like her.”
Nimona doesn’t look like the typical heroines of the time.
Physically, there are more curves and meat on her bones than any Disney princess.
And she certainly doesn’t act like the typical heroine.
“That was something I wanted to challenge going into this.”
That’s when he knew the story was having a much wider impact than he imagined.
It wasn’t something they could ignore.
Everyone seemed to be talking about it after the studio acquired it.
“We were both working onSpies in Disguise,” Quane remembers.
“They put together this little teaser piece that they were playing in the theater at the studio.
We sat down and were like, ‘Oh s—!
This looks incredible.’
An adaptation ofNimonahas been talked about since Stevenson, now 31, was in his early 20s.
And even that had its obstacles.
“People were nervous around that,” he says.
“That was a conversation that was happening in a different way around animation.
It’s a family movie versus a webcomic that can kind of do whatever it wants.”
The LGBTQ representation in the film was also something Stevenson fought for.
Then Disney bought Fox, including Blue Sky, ina splashy industry-changing dealin March 2019.
Quane and Bruno would come aboard as the new directors shortly after that Christmas.
“They had so many studios already.
[Disney] owned several studios and were making tons of movies.
So that was really scary right away.”
“It was beyond devastating,” Bruno says.
“It wasn’t just the place I worked, it was a huge part of me.
It was my family, my friends.
Every movie is a time capsule, a major part of my life.”
Holding out for a hero
Nimona, it turns out, wasn’t down for the count.
It was Megan Ellison at Annapurna who saw said footage and vowed to keep the project alive.
By April 2022,streaming giant Netflix had savedNimonaand would finally bring the film to screens.
Stevenson has seen that specific situation.
“It’s hard not to think about it,” he says.
That’s part of what hits me so hard about it.
‘There’s a monster in our midst.
It could be any one of you.
It could be someone in your family.
It could be sitting next to you right at this moment.’
“We never put focus on being a lightning rod or making a point with this movie.
“I would say to those [politicians]: Watch it together.
See what it’s actually saying instead of judging before.
The things we’re talking about are universal.
They’re for everyone, this idea of taking a look at who people are and understanding.
It’s not scary, it’s not bad.
We’re just trying to be honest with the world that we see and welcome everybody into it.”
As a trans person, Stevenson acknowledges how “scary” this time is on a personal level.
“But it’s also something that I think is so worth doing,” he says.
I think that’s what this movie is.”
Want more movie news?
