Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is a welcome return to the world of Gremlins nearly forty years after the 1984 premiere of the first film. The animated Max series tells the story of a young Sam Wing as he first meets the adorable Gizmo and is set in 1920s China. Despite the gap in time between the original films and now, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai captures the unique tone of the original in part thanks to executive producers Steven Spielberg and original film director Joe Dante.
In Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Sam Wing is brought to life by Izaac Wang, who delivers a fun take on the character first established by Keye Luke. The duty of voicing Gizmo, originally undertaken by Howie Mandel, has shifted to AJ LoCasio, who makes the Mogwai as adorable and fun as ever. Rounding out the primary cast is Gabrielle Nevaeh, who plays a brand-new character named Elle.
AJ LoCasio, Gabrielle Nevaeh, and Izaac Wang spoke with Screen Rant about their work on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai and what fans of the original can expect from the prequel series.
AJ LoCasio, Gabrielle Nevaeh & Izaac Wang on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
Screen Rant: Izaac, you had to jump into this and play a younger version of a character that so many people know from films they love so much. Was that a lot of pressure for you as an actor?
Izaac Wang: In the beginning, not really. Towards the end? Yeah, most definitely. [The] more and more the series went, on the more and more I realized the impact that this show is going to have, and the kind of fan base that surrounds this genre. At this point, you can call it a genre, because there are so many people who enjoy it. So there’s a little bit of pressure; just a tad.
And Gabrielle, your character is very cool and very tough, and maybe is that way because she hasn’t had it so easy. What was your favorite thing about her to explore and get into?
Gabrielle Nevaeh: My favorite thing about Elle is probably her journey overall in the season. When we first meet Elle, you see that she’s tough, she’s resilient, [and] she doesn’t put up with any crap, but it’s for a reason. She was abandoned by her parents when she was super young, so she’s dealing with a lot of emotional barriers.
She meets Sam, and she meets Gizmo, and they kind of work together on those emotional barriers and help Elle become the best person that she can be given her circumstances. The most fun thing aspect [of] voicing Elle is that she’s so different from who I am. I’m a very bubbly person, I have a huge personality, I love meeting people and making friends, and Elle is the exact opposite.
AJ, you do such a great job picking up from Howie Mandel’s work in the original. How do you express a full range of emotions as Gizmo when what you’re able to actually say is so limited?
AJ LoCasio: Well, thank you first of all, Oh, boy. I mean, it’s the same as we do as people. There’s such a range of emotions he goes through; it’s just finding the right emotes as we go through each scene. Basically, he doesn’t speak English per se, or human vernacular, but we have a sanded-down version of English that he does. It’s kind of like a Mogwai [version], where you take sort of the general feeling. Everything’s human analogous, but filtered through Mogwai.
How long can you keep up doing that? Do you have to take crazy breaks in sessions, or is it fine and comfortable?
AJ LoCasio: It’s pretty comfortable. It’s kind of like a weird voice I’ve been doing since I was a kid, because my dad used to do something similar. He used to make one of my stuffed animals talk, [and] puppeteer them, so I picked it up. It sounds less comfortable than it is. I will say the evil Mogwai, or the Gremlins, are much more taxing. That eventually gets to you.
Izaac, how would you describe this version of Sam Wing; him at this younger age?
Izaac Wang: Pretty authentic. Basically, [he’s] just like me. Obviously, I wasn’t sheltered and stuff. I mean, I wasn’t too sheltered. I was sheltered enough. In my personal opinion, he’s just your average kid. He’s just like [how you would be if] you have semi-strict parents who don’t want you to grow up to be a super-adventurous bad kid. In that perspective, yeah, he’s just a normal guy, and then when he meets Gizmo, then he becomes not-so-normal. Other than that he’s pretty much exactly like me.
Gabrielle, your characters all spend so much time together. In this process, how much did you three actually get to work together and be in the same room?
Gabrielle Nevaeh: You know what? It’s hilarious because I think Izaac and I actually only worked together maybe twice, or three times. That’s just how the world of voiceover works sometimes, especially with COVID. We got a good amount of episodes in before the pandemic hit, but we did an entire run from the comfort of our homes. I met AJ at Comic-Con. We had some time to hang out there, but it’s hilarious to kind of get the interaction face-to-face when the project is done.
Izaac Wang: [We did it] once. I remember.
AJ LoCasio: I remember them getting mad at us because they were like, “We have to separate them because they keep laughing.”
Izaac Wang: Oh yeah, we kept laughing at each other.
AJ LoCasio: At some point, I remember there being like a conscious decision to [separate us], so maybe it was twice. And Gabby, I do know you walked through a room that I was in, and I was like, “Was that–” and they were like, “Oh, that’s Elle,” and that [was] it. That was my first–
Gabrielle Nevaeh: That doesn’t count!
AJ LoCasio: It doesn’t count, but I just saw you in the waiting room. That one sound studio that had all the Kit-Kats in the bowls.
Izaac Wang: Yes! That’s where I met you. My favorite waiting room. There were so many Kit-Kats. I ate, like, twenty.
AJ LoCasio: Yeah. But I was just like, “Oh, that’s all right. Well, I guess we’ll meet in four years after a pandemic hits.”
AJ, because you get to expand on Gizmo in this, were there aspects of his personality that you were excited to dive into or help create?
AJ LoCasio: We get to see Gizmo be a little sassy, which I enjoy. There’s a little bit of him being sort of moody sometimes. In the movies, we get to see and be brave and sweet, but [here] we get to watch him go through the whole range of emotions. It was pretty fun to just be like, “Oh, I don’t know if I’ve seen him do that,” so yeah, it’s very exciting. And also, again, [it’s] scary because you don’t want to do anything that steps outside of what people expect of that character. But when you spend hundreds of hours doing a certain character, things are going to run the gamut.
Izaac, you said you learned more about the appreciation people had for these movies as you were doing this. What were all of your relationships with Gremlins before this? Did any of you watch it because of the audition? How did your appreciation for the franchise come to be?
Gabrielle Nevaeh: It was actually kind of by chance that my dad wanted to show me the film, just as, like, a family movie night. I think I was thirteen when the audition came around for the project. A couple of weeks beforehand, I watched the original film, [and] it was really great. I’m not a horror fanatic, I don’t like scary things, but it was right up my alley. It had the heart of the story, and it was just a really great film to be an introductory scary movie. Then, by chance, I happened to have an audition a couple of weeks later, so everything just kind of happened for a reason.
Izaac Wang: I think I watched it way later than I should have. I did watch the movie before, as I said earlier, when I was moderately young. I probably should have watched it again when I got the job instead of waiting for like four or five episodes in.
AJ LoCasio: I grew up with it, just because it was something that was always on TV. It was just always on, and I know my dad was a fan. My primary memory of it other than [seeing] Gizmo [and] being like, “Oh, he’s so cute. I want a toy of Gizmo,” which I never got, was [that] I was terrified of the evil Gremlins. There was a scene where they’re in air vents, and I would cover up my air vents because I thought one of them was goign to pop out. I had a lot of phobias related to Amblin [and Steven Spielberg films]. I was terrified of [raptors], ET, and Gremlins, so thank you Spielberg. But that was one of my primary fears, like, “They’re going to come out of the air conditioning!”
And now you are them.
AJ LoCasio: Yeah, I get to be the thing I fear the most. I’ve lived long enough to see myself become the villain.
About Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
“Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai” takes viewers back to 1920s Shanghai where the Wing family first meets the young Mogwai called Gizmo (AJ LoCascio). Voiced by Izaac Wang, Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 “Gremlins” film) accepts the dangerous task to take Gizmo home and embarks on a journey through the Chinese countryside. Sam and Gizmo are joined by a teenage street thief named Elle (Gabrielle Nevaeh), and together, they encounter—and sometimes battle—colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore.
Check out our other Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai interviews here:
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai premieres May 23 on Max.