Entertainment

How Toto held the line

Published

2 years ago

August 31, 2024

Steve Lukather has lived in his house overlooking Studio City since 1979 — longer than you’d expect, perhaps, given that he bought the place before his band Toto exploded with its fourth album, 1982’s quadruple-platinum “Toto IV,” which won Grammy Awards for album and record of the year and spawned a chart-topping single in the yearning, sumptuous, still-inescapable “Africa.”

“I don’t live a big, huge, stupid life,” Lukather says, brushing away any surprise that he didn’t upgrade as soon as he had the chance. “I like my little crib in the hills.” With a laugh, he adds, “I got it before both divorces, and I got to keep it.”

Lukather is hanging at home on a recent afternoon, barefoot as he sips a nonalcoholic Corona, with his bandmates David Paich and Joseph Williams. The walls are lined with plaques commemorating the millions of records sold by Toto and by some of the countless acts with whom Lukather has played in the studio; books about the Beatles and about rock’s greatest album covers are piled neatly on the fireplace.

In the middle of the modest living room sits a gleaming Steinway grand piano — the very one, Lukather points out, on which he wrote two of Toto’s biggest ballads, “I Won’t Hold You Back” and “I’ll Be Over You,” as well as “Turn Your Love Around,” which George Benson took to No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart in 1982.

Yet Lukather isn’t living in the past. On Sunday night, nearly four decades after the band last grazed the Hot 100, Toto will headline the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. The hometown show is part of a broader resurgence for a group of guys in their 60s and 70s who currently boast 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify — more than the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen or Eric Clapton — and who’ve survived long enough to see their once-derided yacht-rock vibe come back into vogue.

What’s more, Toto is on the road with two founding members in guitarist Lukather and keyboardist Paich at a moment when some classic rock bands are lucky to claim a single OG. (Take a bow, Foreigner.)

How to explain Toto’s endurance? For sure, the band has been lifted by a rising tide for all legacy acts: a kind of catch-’em-while-you-can mind-set that’s helped draw huge audiences to the likes of Billy Joel, the Eagles, Stevie Nicks and Dead & Company. In 2022, Toto opened for Journey on a U.S. arena tour; this summer, Journey is playing stadiums with Def Leppard.

There’s also the songs, of course — “a couple of which have just struck a nerve with people,” says Williams, who joined Toto as lead singer in 1986. He means “Hold the Line,” the band’s hard-riffing breakthrough, and the swank “Rosanna,” which beat Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind” and the theme from “Chariots of Fire” for record of the year at the Grammys. But what he really means is “Africa,” that fever dream about a rain-blessing excursion that’s been memed to high heaven, been used on “South Park” and “Stranger Things” and been covered by Weezer as a joke that no one can quite figure out. On Spotify, the song has racked up nearly 2 billion streams.

According to Williams, these hits have “lived past the knowledge of the band itself,” as he puts it.

“I was on an elevator once in a hotel when we were on the road, and there were two couples in there,” he says. “One woman was saying to the other woman, ‘What are you guys doing tonight?’ and she says, ‘We’re going to see that band Africa.’”

“Imagine their disappointment when we walked out,” Lukather says.

As individuals, though, the members of Toto — among the other founders were the brothers Jeff and Steve Porcaro on drums and keys, respectively — have inspired a certain fascination, at least among music nerds, with the way they balanced the band with busy side careers as studio players who shaped the slick but soulful sound of ’80s pop.

Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’,” Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” Michael Jackson’s uber-blockbuster “Thriller” LP — all featured Lukather, Paich and/or the Porcaros. Also: Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” a framed platinum copy of which hangs next to one of Jackson’s “Beat It” by Lukather’s dining room table.

“These guys in their sleep could do it pretty much on the first take,” says David Foster, the veteran record producer who started out as a fellow session musician — you can hear both him and Paich behind Benson on “Turn Your Love Around” — before becoming the one hiring Toto’s members to play on hit records like Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.”

“It was just an amazing array of musicians,” he adds. “David Paich has the best feel of any piano player I’ve ever met.”

Toto’s high-gloss only-in-L.A. aesthetic didn’t age well into the ’90s and early 2000s, when rock went grungy then garage-y; even in Toto’s heyday, critics dismissed the band as hot-dogging technicians. (Rolling Stone’s oft-quoted dismissal: “All chops and no brains.”)

Yet a new generation of acts — Haim, Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Mk.gee — has lovingly embraced the intricate sense of craft that Toto built into its records. And though the members’ session work wasn’t highly visible in the early, no-liner-notes era of digital music, their contributions are now eagerly tracked on websites like Discogs and in music docs like this year’s “The Greatest Night in Pop,” about the recording of “We Are the World” — one more defining mid-’80s smash that featured Paich and Steve Porcaro on keyboards.

“Everybody knows Toto, but you only really know Toto when you know all the other things they worked on and how sick they were in any circumstance,” says Ethan Gruska, a young L.A. musician and producer who’s convened a not-dissimilar crew of musicians to make not-dissimilarly tasty records with Phoebe Bridgers and Ryan Beatty. “Obviously, I’m biased” — Gruska is Williams’ nephew — “but my friends who are players have always thought that what they established was cool.”

Which isn’t to say that Lukather, Toto’s intellectual thought leader, is without his share of older-rock-star grievances. Among them:

the term “yacht rock” (“We deserve a yacht, don’t you think?” he asks)
the fact that Toto hasn’t been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (“It’s not based on stats — it’s based on the taste of 80-year-old men”)
clueless record execs (“Walter Yetnikoff knew nothing about music,” he says of the late CBS Records boss)
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s unwillingness to meet Toto after its hit “Africa” cover (“The guy just iced me”)

Still, asked whether he identifies a bitterness within himself, Lukather scoffs.

“F— no,” he says. “How could I be bitter with a career that’s almost 50 years old?”

Toto formed out of friendships struck up at Grant High School in the Valley. Nobody called anybody “nepo babies” back then, but the members of Toto were all connected: Paich’s father was Marty Paich, the arranger and conductor known for his work with Ray Charles and Barbra Streisand, among many others; the Porcaro brothers were the sons of the jazz drummer Joe Porcaro; Lukather’s dad worked in TV production on shows like “I Dream of Jeannie.” (No wonder that when they needed a new singer after frontman Bobby Kimball left the band, they clicked with Williams, son of the celebrated film composer John Williams.)

The players had already proved themselves as session guys — Boz Scaggs’ “Silk Degrees” was a crucial showcase — when they cut Toto’s self-titled debut in 1978 and scored a top 10 hit with “Hold the Line.” For the next year’s “Hydra,” “we started to go all Dungeons & Dragons on everybody,” Lukather says; the result whiffed, as did 1981’s “Turn Back.” But with “Toto IV” the band found just the right blend of groove, melody and texture, a sweet spot it stayed in for a few glorious years.

Did Toto’s famous perfectionism in the studio ever suck the joy out of making music?

“Sometimes,” Williams says, shaking his head beneath a black cowboy hat. “I spent a few times behind the glass where the joy had left my body.”

Lukather, for one, still loves getting deep into the weeds of recording; last year he released an album of new songs under his own name even though he knew he wouldn’t make any money from it. The paying work — not to mention the validation he’s grown accustomed to receiving from an audience — is onstage, which is one reason he went into something of a tailspin during the pandemic when live music ground to a halt.

The guitarist doesn’t want to go into detail about it today. But as he told the music-industry analyst Bob Lefsetz last year in an episode of Lefsetz’s podcast, Lukather struggled with depression and a subsequent bout with ketamine abuse. So when Toto finally got back on the road with Journey two years ago, he says, “it made me appreciate life like I’ve never appreciated it before.”

The tour reenergized Toto’s live business as well. “People saw us and went, ‘Wow, these guys are actually good,’” Lukather says.

Surely, the members of Toto saw the recent news that Journey’s Jonathan Cain had filed a lawsuit accusing the band’s Neal Schon of misusing the band’s corporate credit card — while the two are in the midst of playing concerts together? Williams laughs. “They need the money from the shows to keep suing each other,” he says.

“We’ve gotten close to that,” Lukather adds. “It’s not pleasant.” (Fun classic-rock fact: Lukather’s son is married to Cain’s daughter.)

Lukather doesn’t name names in regards to this almost-litigation. But asked why his solo record wasn’t a Toto album — Paich and Williams are both all over it — he says, “Don’t want to deal with fighting people over semantics.” Susan Porcaro Goings, widow of the late Jeff Porcaro (who died in 1992), has sued the band over her share of Toto’s royalties; Steve Porcaro quit Toto in 2019. Why did Steve Porcaro leave?

“The last tour he was on, he was so miserable every day,” Lukather says. Reached on the phone, Porcaro says, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I was very, very happy on the road. I just needed a break.”

Last month, Porcaro announced that he’d sold the rights to his music — including the Toto songs he had a hand in as well as the indelible Michael Jackson hit “Human Nature,” which he co-wrote with lyricist John Bettis — in a deal with the Jackson estate and the music company Primary Wave. (The New York Times reported that the deal, the latest in a long series of catalog transactions involving veteran pop and rock artists, was “estimated in the low eight figures.”)

“OK, so 10, 11, 12 million?” Lukather asks. “I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him about it. But most of the people I know that have sold have regretted it.” He’s been approached, he adds, and said no every time. Lukather’s view is that it’s smarter to resist a one-time payout — “Living in California, they take 50%, boom, right off the bat” — and instead keep the royalty checks coming “a couple times a year,” he says.

“Also, you have no say [after selling your rights] if somebody wants to make a toilet-paper commercial out of one of your songs,” he adds. “That’s my life and my creativity balled into this thing called music. It’s personal.”

Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams of the American rock band Toto

For these reasons and others, Lukather serves as Toto’s manager, which he reckons keeps him busy on the phone and the computer for at least four hours every morning before whatever musical labor the day holds. Like the catalog buyers, would-be managers have tried to woo Toto.

“There’s been a lot of fabulous people — put ‘fabulous’ in quotes — and they all have 20 acts yet still find time to play golf every day,” he says. They’ll promise they can work untold wonders for the band, he adds. “It’s like dating — you’ll say anything you can think of to get those pants off.”

Which, considering the strong shape Toto is in, just makes Lukather laugh. “If we were sucking the last bit of air out of the tire, it’d be a different conversation,” he says. “But we’re headlining a stadium show in Amsterdam in February. We’re doing 80,000 people at a festival in Mexico City with Paul McCartney and Green Day, and our name’s right there. It’s astounding to me, man.

“This is getting bigger, not smaller. I’ll take the ride for a while.”

Entertainment

Kathy Hilton won’t be WeHo Pride’s grand marshal after backlash from community

Published

27 minutes ago

June 4, 2026

Press Room

Kathy Hilton won’t be WeHo Pride’s grand marshal after backlash from community

Kathy Hilton will no longer be the grand marshal of West Hollywood’s pride parade.

The city and WeHo Pride on Wednesday released a joint statement, announcing that “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star would no longer serve as the Grand Marshal Icon for the 2026 WeHo Pride Parade. The event is scheduled for Sunday.

“After thoughtful discussions, the City of West Hollywood, the WeHo Pride production team, and Kathy Hilton have determined that the 2026 WeHo Pride Parade will not designate a Grand Marshal Icon honoree,” read the statement.

The decision comes less than a week after Hilton was announced. That May 28 announcement was met with swift backlash from the LGBTQ+ community and allies, who called out Hilton’s ties to President Trump and alleged MAGA-leaning politics. Critics also cited accusations that the socialite had used a homophobic slur while on a trip with other cast members of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” an action she has previously denied.

In their joint statement, West Hollywood and the WeHo Pride team expressed their appreciation for “the respectful and sincere dialogue” around both the event and the “role and significance” of Pride honorees.

“The City of West Hollywood has always believed that Pride belongs to the community,” the joint statement said. “Since its earliest days, Pride has served as both a celebration and a platform for activism, visibility, resilience, and the ongoing pursuit of equality, dignity, and justice for LGBTQ+ people. … These conversations reflect the passion people have for WeHo Pride and underscore the importance of ensuring that WeHo Pride continues to honor the history, values, and diverse voices of the LGBTQ+ community.”

In a statement, Hilton expressed gratitude for being considered for grand marshal and reaffirmed her commitment to the LGBTQ+ community and causes.

“My reason for wanting to be involved in this year’s WeHo Pride weekend was simple: to celebrate, support, and share in the joy of a community that means a great deal to so many people,” Hilton said. “Pride is, and always will be, about celebrating and uplifting LGBTQ+ voices, experiences, and achievements. … My support for the community and WeHo Pride is unwavering.”

She also mentioned several queer advocacy organizations and events she has supported over the years, including GLAAD, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Dr. Mathilde Krim, God’s Love We Deliver and Project Angel Food.

The latest Pride-related dust-up follows the abrupt cancellation of the Long Beach Pride Festival in May. The city’s Pride Parade took place as planned.

Both snafus have occurred as conservative politicians and advocates continue to attack LGBTQ+ rights and visibility nationwide. Some Republican governors have even pushed for conservative alternatives to Pride month festivities. A recent Gallup poll has found that after years of steady gains, support for marriage equality and same-sex relationships has slipped, particularly among Republicans.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages

Published

9 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages

Back in the good ol’days — the ’90s — John Travolta would love to get off the topic of “Michael,” “Pulp Fiction” or “Get Shorty” in interviews with film journalists like me and regale us with how utterly besotted he had been with his first flying experience, how that drove his passion for piloting and buying planes and airfield-adjacent luxury houses.

He didn’t even seem to mind having to move house when this or that development balked at him flying his Boeing 707 out of there on the way to locations.

Travolta would tell any journalist who asked that he was writing a kid-friendly book, “Propeller: One Way Night Coach,” based on his first flights as a child in old propeller driven airliners — cheap red-eye overnight treks with too many connections for your average jet age traveller to tolerate.

I remember picking up the book when it came out later in the ’90s — at an airport gift shop — and thinking “Well, that’s as cute as I figured.”

And now, decades later and trapped in the B-movie hell of his post “Gotti” career, Travolta’s turned that cute book into the most delightful, fanciful and colorful bon bon of a movie.

“One Way Night Coach” is a child’s fantasy of flight and flying the way it used to be — with pristine, uncrowded, futuristic airports, an early ’60s era of jets and prop planes with over-uniformed stewardesses in white gloves, the days “Back before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham,” as Sideshow Bob memorably sneered on “The Simpsons’.”

It’s a fictionalized account of Travolta’s childhood about an only child (at least two Travolta siblings have bit parts in this movie) of a never-made-it/never-will actress/single-mom (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) who indulges her aviation-obsessed eight-year-old with a cheap cross-country overnight flight.

Little Jeff (Clark Shotwell) will revel in almost every Idlewild to Pittsburgh to Dayton to Chicago to Kansas City to Denver and Los Angeles minute. He strolls into the cockpit to meet pilots, charms the stewardesses and checks out the sleeping bunks on the TWA Lockheed Super Constellation, loving even the delays if not the Chicken Cordon Bleu he’s offered on legs of the journey that offer a meal.

And as he’s an observant child, he comments (Travolta narrates) on his 50ish mother’s vamping and posing, her choice of cigarettes (Newports) and drinks, the solo traveling men whose attention she pursues and earns.

“I was her best audience,” adult Jeff remembers of the mother who’d read him plays as bedtime stories and delusionally hopes that this trip to Los Angeles might be her “big break” even though she’s pushing 50.

“Hollywood called,” she’d explain about their overnight cheap flight arrangements to ticket agents and crew. “They told me to take the next flight!”

At every turn, Jeff meets or sees kindness — stewardesses who indulge his many questions and bump them up to first class on the mostly-empty planes, a captain who fixes his toy model of a Constellation, a mentally ill flyer who flips out but is calmed by a flight attendant who isn’t overworked and frazzled in jet-powered tin-can jammed with Joe and Jane Sweatsocks who think nothing of traveling in their pajamas.

Normally, I cringe at pictures this reliant on voice-over narration. I recoil from stars who populate their picture with Sandler etc. offspring. But “Propeller” is unfailingly sweet and never cloying.

Sure, it’s fictionalized. But if you’ve followed Travolta’s life and career, a lot of him is in this — his raptoruous engagement with flying, an indulged child who developed a taste for fine food and creature comforts, a mother who was his guiding star as an actor.

I get why there are less adoring reviews than mine floating around “Propeller.” It’s unfailingly sweet. Mom’s man-hunting is seriously dated. This TWA tale is decorated with Gershwin’s majestic “Rhapsody in Blue” — United Airlines’ signature tune. And Travolta’s been around long enough for recent generations to come up and not feel a connection to the “Saturday Night Fever/Get Shorty” star whose career has fallen off and life has been visited by too much tragedy.

But I’d hate to be seated next to anybody who doesn’t appreciate this adorable, pristine and nearly perfect aviation fantasy on any flight, much less an overnight one.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Clark Shotwell, Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ellen Travolta, Ella Beau Travolta, Olga Hoffmann and John Travolta.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Travolta, based on his book. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:01

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

Entertainment

After ‘Barbie’ success, Mattel looks to He-Man for another box-office lift

Published

11 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Press Room

After ‘Barbie’ success, Mattel looks to He-Man for another box-office lift

Three years ago, Mattel Inc. struck box-office gold — or rather, pink — with the billion-dollar success of “Barbie.”

In its first return to theaters since the female-forward phenomenon, the El Segundo toymaker is turning to the brawny He-Man for another box-office lift.

Its latest film, “Masters of the Universe,” opens this weekend, as Mattel looks to build on that previous success and continue extending its signature toy brands into the entertainment arena.

“The movie is very much in tune with culture,” said Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz. “Everything is much more contemporary relative to what was created more than 40 years ago, but it’s still very true to the origin story and to the DNA of the brand.”

The new film arrives at a pivotal time for Mattel, which is facing pressure from investors to grow its business. The maker of Hot Wheels, American Girl and Uno has recently confronted a challenging market for toys, beset by tariffs on goods produced overseas and weaker-than-expected demand for Barbie dolls and Fisher-Price preschool products.

Amid uncertainty in the toy market and the fallout from tariffs, Mattel’s net income dropped 25% to $398 million in 2025. And since the company announced disappointing holiday sales totals in February, its stock has dropped more than 30%, closing at $14.34 on Wednesday.

“Masters of the Universe” toys at Mattel headquarters in El Segundo.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The share price slide prompted investor Southeastern Asset Management to send a letter last month to Mattel leadership suggesting the toy maker should sell itself and go private. Southeastern manages about 4% of the company’s stock on behalf of its clients.

“The frustration among investors has been the fact that if you look at the business from 2021 through 2025 and even this year … the business really hasn’t grown,” said Eric Handler, a Roth Capital senior media and entertainment analyst, referring to Mattel. “This is a company that needed something fresh in the portfolio, and there’s a wide range of investments being made, of which ‘Masters of the Universe’ is one part.”

Kreiz pushed back on the idea that the company is not growing. In the fourth quarter of 2025, net sales were up 7% to $1.8 billion, though the result was not as strong as the company expected.

Mattel has spent $1.2 billion in the last three years to buy back shares, with an additional $1.5-billion share repurchase planned for the next three years.

“We’re investing in our own stock because we believe it is undervalued,” he told The Times in an interview at his office, which has floor-to-ceiling windows that give an expansive view of El Segundo. “We absolutely agree that the share price doesn’t reflect the progress that we’ve achieved over the last few years financially, operationally, our place in culture, the strength of our brands, and the continued expansion of the business. And more importantly, the potential that we have down the road.”

“Masters of the Universe” is a key variable in that equation.

The movie, which had a budget of roughly $170 million, is expected to bring in $25 million to $35 million in the U.S. and Canada during its debut weekend. That’s a far cry from the $162-million opening haul of “Barbie,” but box-office analysts say that film captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that’s hard to replicate.

The ‘80s-era “Masters of the Universe” is “a property that was famous with a certain group of fans, but it hasn’t had much of a pop culture presence,” said Shawn Robbins, who directs movie analytics at Fandango and founded the forecasting site Box Office Theory. The movie has notched a respectable 74% approval rating from critics on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

“There’s been so many callbacks to nostalgic franchises,” he said. “Some people are always on board for them, and maybe the positive reviews bring people in who were on the fence. But people are also ready for something fresh and new and exciting.”

Kreiz said he’s often asked how the company will match the success of “Barbie.”

“The answer is, we don’t need to match ‘Barbie’s’ success for movies to have a meaningful economic impact on the company,” he said. “Not every movie will be ‘Barbie.’ If we create quality content that people want to watch and create quality experiences that people are engaged with, good things happen, and these brands will resonate and will be here for years to come.”

While theatrical revenue is important, the measure of success for “Masters of the Universe” could also include its eventual reception on streaming platforms and, of course, toy sales, analysts said.

There are hundreds of products tied to the movie, from collectible action figures of Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man and Camila Mendes’ Teela, to branded Uno decks, Legos, clothing and skateboards.

Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe."

“For us, it’s a huge win already,” said Robbie Brenner, president of Mattel Studios and chief content officer, who also served as a producer on the film. “We have reinvigorated and relaunched this brand that has been around for decades … and done it in a way with just the best-in-class toys. Obviously that’s our bread and butter. And then to have made an epic, incredible movie … is a huge win.”

While Mattel does not yet have sales totals for its “Masters of the Universe” toys, executives said during an earnings call in late April that product sales were “growing double digits” amid strong customer demand, particularly from adults.

When Kreiz was named CEO in 2018, he saw the potential for Mattel to expand beyond toys. In an entertainment landscape dominated by known franchises and intellectual property, the former TV and media executive wanted to leverage the company’s IP in new ways to attract consumers.

Hence, Mattel has expanded into real-world experiences such as a Barbie pop-up at Coachella or a traveling Hot Wheels monster truck show. In February, the company fully acquired Mattel163 mobile game studio after buying out a stake held by Chinese tech firm NetEase. The studio has released games based on Uno, Skip-Bo and other Mattel intellectual property.

And on the film and television front, the Mattel Studios division now has 51 people — most of whom are based in El Segundo — focused on projects across platforms.

After “Masters of the Universe,” Mattel Studios plans to release a “Matchbox” streaming movie in October. The division has more than a dozen films in development that have been announced, including an American Girl movie with Paramount, Polly Pocket with Amazon MGM Studios, as well as a live-action Magic 8 Ball series from M. Night Shyamalan.

“The journey for the company was to evolve from being a toy manufacturer that was making items to become an IP company that is managing franchises,” Kreiz said. “It’s not that we’re not creating toys — it’s obviously a big part of our business — but the opportunity is to expand so much more than the physical product.”

“Masters of the Universe” was in development for years at several different studios before it was picked up by Amazon MGM.

That partnership stemmed from Mattel’s work on the “Barbie” movie with Courtenay Valenti, then president of production and development at Warner Bros. Pictures who is now head of film at Amazon MGM.

“Masters of the Universe” felt like a good property for Mattel to bet on because of its nostalgia factor and deep bench of colorful characters, from the green tiger Battle Cat to the heavily armored Ram Man and ever meme-able Skeletor, which the company hopes will attract new audiences, Brenner said.

The movie is directed by Travis Knight — chief executive of stop-motion studio Laika who also led the 2018 “Transformers” spin-off “Bumblebee” — who Brenner said “nailed” the narrative’s tone. (It didn’t hurt that Knight was already a fan of the franchise and had sported the He-Man haircut as a child.)

“It’s a property that’s kind of out there,” said Brenner, who grew up watching He-Man and his twin sister She-Ra. “It’s got all these crazy characters. But just riding that line between what is funny and kind of irreverent and then kind of heartfelt, that is a very hard thing to put in a blender and to get right.”