‘Kamp Koral’: Tom Kenny & Bill Fagerbakke on Exploring ‘SpongeBob’s Under Years’

Everyone’s favorite sea-sponge is back for a new adventure in Kamp Koral: Spongebob’s Under Years.

In the new series featuring SpongeBob (Tom Kenny), Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence), and the gang, we see them as young kids at a summer camp. Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) is their grumpy teenager camp counselor. Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) runs the camp, while Plankton (Doug Lawrence) is in charge of the cafeteria. The crew is up to their usual antics like jelly-fishing and driving Squidward crazy, but they have some new adventures along the way. Season 1 is now available on DVD, and the series was recently renewed for a second season by Paramount+, so fans can keep enjoying the fun under the sea.

Nickelodeon/Paramount+

TV Insider spoke with Kenny and Fagerbakke about the show and the new take on their beloved characters.

How was Kamp Koral pitched to the two of you? How did the end result of the season compare?

Bill Fagerbakke: I was anxious because I didn’t know what was in store. Obviously we had this cartoon that we treasured and then, “Oh, we’re gonna do a spinoff? What? And they’re younger? Is this going to be for tots? How is this going to work?” When we really were able to communicate with [original series producers and showrunners] Marc Ceccarelli and Vinne Waller about it, then I was excited because we saw it was going to be the same approach to the characters and to the humor, just with a different style of animation. And knowing these guys and how talented they are, I was really happy and excited to see what they would do with CGI, and in particular, how Squidward might be tortured in CGI, and man, they brought it. 

Tom Kenny: Yeah, same thing. We’re so protective of these characters and this franchise. We love them so much that anytime there’s something a little off the beaten track, you kind of tend to look at it a little bit askance like… a Broadway musical? Is there a need for that? What’s it gonna be? And then it turns out that our worry is unfounded because the people that they have handling it are highly creative and love the franchise, the world of SpongeBob as much as we do so. And Kamp Koral, like Bill said, was kinda like that. Like, “Uh really? SpongeBob babies? I don’t know.” And then it turned out to be more than that, funnier than that because of the aforementioned Marc Ceccarelli and Vince Waller, and Jenny Monica, our producers who have been with the show since the very, very beginning and hired by Steve back in the day ’cause they’re great. And so yeah, I gotta learn not to worry ’cause I can’t help it but…

Nickelodeon/Paramount+

Fagerbakke: I would get worried if suddenly Vinnie and Marc and Jenny are gone and they’re being replaced. Then I would get so worried. [Laughs]

Kenny: Yeah that would be… that would give me palpitations. But yeah, it was kind of a nice soft landing for us and even any uncertainty about SpongeBob’s determinedly 2D animation aesthetic transferring to CG turned out to be moot as well just because they figured out how to make CGI have that wonderful rubbery squashy stretchiness of hand-drawn animation. That’s one thing they really wanted to crack and solve, and they have, so when we’re doing ADR on the episodes, you’re seeing finished or almost finished animation and I’m always amazed at how fluid the stuff is. You kind of forget that it’s CG ’cause I’m kind of a 2D animation chauvinist myself.

How does it feel to be able to revisit these characters and see their origin stories?

Fagerbakke: One of the keys for the success was what they did with those characters. Having Krabs be the owner of the camp and Squidward be the horrific camp counselor and Plankton be the horrific cafeteria owner, that is all wonderful — and having Mrs. Puff in the mix too, that’s been key to the success of Kamp Koral for me. 

Nickelodeon/Paramount+

Kenny: You were talking about revisiting the characters. We never stopped visiting them because SpongeBob has never been out of production and the original SpongeBob show, I just found out on this Zoom call that it got picked up for another season. I was like, “Oh, wow, cool. Alright, so it just keeps rocking along. Just keeps swimming along.” We get to keep having fun along with all the hard work that’s entailed for all of us. You gotta bring it, you can’t — it’s not just a gimme. But it’s hard work in the service of something that we really love, and everybody else is working just as hard if not harder than us. So, it’s a blast just all aspects of it. The SBU, the SpongeBob Universe as they call it now — Kamp Koral, The Patrick Star Show, SpongeBob — it’s just more of the fun stuff for us. More of the stuff we feel lucky to have.

What do you think that both new and old fans of the franchise will appreciate the most about Kamp Koral?

Fagerbakke: The integrity of the visual humor, because obviously that’s the basis for cartoons right? The visual play is limited only by the imagination of those creating it, and oh my, don’t we have some talented people and talented visual artists. And so this continues with that metric of constantly surprising you with what they do, and delighting. I enjoy ADR so much, because it’s stuff that we’ve worked on six to eight months before, which is just on the storyboard and in your brain as you’re performing and being recorded, then you get to see it, and I’m giddy every time. I love ADR. [Laughs]

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Kenny: Yeah. That’s the first time we get to see something kinda close to finished condition, fully rendered in the case of the CG show. So it’s ridiculous. It’s crazy. It’s every day. It never stops with the three series going. So we are deeply immersed in SpongeBob every working day Monday through Friday, and what a lucky lottery scratcher for us to have found laying on the ground. Actually it wasn’t laying on the ground, Steve Hillenberg handed it to us. It’s a nice job for sure.

Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, Season 1, Streaming Now, Paramount+