‘Dew Drop Diaries’ Shows Why Audiences Love Their Fairy Stories

For hundreds of years, people have been telling stories about tiny fairies, elves, gnomes, sprites, and leprechauns: teeny, tiny magical beings with the power to change someone’s life, despite their less-than-intimidating size. 

And, in 2023, children and adults alike are just as fascinated with spellbinding small-fries as they’ve ever been, and Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go’s Rick Suvalle is using that long-standing love to inspire his own diabetic daughters and other young viewers that anything is possible with a motivated and creative mind, along with a little help from one’s friends. 

Dew Drop Diaries, the newest 3DCG series from DreamWorks Animation, premiering on Netflix Monday, July 24, follows a group of three-inch tall family fairies – or as they’re known in the fairy world, “Dew Drops” – who live inside teensy fairy houses on brownstone balcony gardens in “The Big City.” They have been assigned to human families to secretly help out around the house with the little things that can often fall through the cracks, like making sure your first lost tooth actually makes it under your pillow before bedtime or your favorite toy doesn’t get left behind at the park.

The series stars Scarlett Estevez as “Eden;” Viviann Yee as “Athena;” Sydney Mikayla as “Phoebe;” Zehra Fazal as “Dr. Tracy Ryan;” Spencer Moss as “Harper Ryan;” Jakari Fraser as “Marcus Greene;” Olivia Trujillo as “Cassie Cortez-Chang;” Nick Kishiyama as “Dylan Cortez-Chang;” Olivia Daniels as “Lola Cortez-Chang;” Reggie Watkins as “Dr. Damon Greene;” Bob Bergen as “Hammy the Hamster;” Bill Farmer as “Wilford the Dog;” Dee Bradley Baker as “Qwak the Chipmunk” and “Ruffles the Bird;” and Brec Bassinger as “Willow.” And Dew Drop Diaries’ animation is courtesy of City of Ghosts’ TeamTO, based in Paris and Valence.

Suvalle is the show’s creator, as well as executive producer alongside Doug Unplugs’ Aliki Theofilopoulos. AWN caught up with both creatives to talk about Dew Drop Diaries origins, art direction inspiration, and why the adoration of fairies has stood the test of time and age. 

But first, check out a trailer for the series here:

Victoria Davis: Rick, you’ve been on the Thomas train (pun intended) for a while now. How does it feel to not only step into something new, but also something that’s yours and is so personal to your family? 

Rick Suvalle: Creating and producing Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go was definitely a career highlight. Getting that opportunity to reinvent a beloved franchise was truly a gift. But getting to create something wholly original and personal like Dew Drop Diaries, was something I had dreamed about since the moment I decided I wanted to write for television. And it absolutely lived up to expectations, thanks to the support I got at DreamWorks, because creating a show is a team effort. Everyone involved, from the P.A.’s to the artists and executives, helped fill in the edges of our world. 

VD: And Aliki, how did you get involved with the project?

Aliki Theofilopoulos: Rick and I were introduced to each other while I was an executive producer on Doug Unplugs. He freelanced a script for us on our show while he was developing Dew Drop Diaries at DreamWorks. 

Rick and I had a blast working with each other from the start.  I really loved the charm and great storytelling that was so evident in his writing style. So, when the studio mentioned that they were looking for someone to partner with Rick on his newly greenlit series about fairies in the city, I jumped at the opportunity! 

VD: Rick, DreamWorks gave me a heads-up that this series was inspired by your two daughters… but that’s all I know about the series' origins. Can you give me the full story?

RS: I have two daughters with Type 1 Diabetes and my wife and I teach them that they can do anything they set their minds to, so I wanted to create a show with that same “can do” attitude. I thought that making the central characters these tiny fairies who defy the odds and do big things was the perfect metaphor for being a little kid. 

That said, having fairies that could do magic and fly felt like a bit of a cheat, and I really wanted to see our characters being creative and resourceful in their problem-solving, so I decided to make the Dew Drops “fairies-in-training” where they still have wings, but they can’t fly yet. As I’m sure you’ve seen by now, we still have magic in the show but, at the end of the day, it’s really friendship and teamwork that wins the day.

VD: This question is for you both. I grew up watching FernGully and Thumbelina as a kid, as well as movies like Epic and The Secret World of Arrietty as a tween and being just as attached to the idea of these little people, or little fairies, running around our world helping people get by. What is the appeal of believing in something smaller than yourself, like a fairy?

RS: I do think we have these little moments in life where we really do think someone is looking out for us. When I first pitched the series to DreamWorks, I opened with, “Have you ever misplaced your phone or your keys, only for them to miraculously re-appear right where you just looked for them? Then you might have a Dew Drop living in your house.” I instantly got smiles and nods after that because, yeah, we all wish and wonder if we have a “little” someone looking after us. 

AT: I really fell in love with the “what if” element of the series. When I was small, I so wanted fairies to be real! Even as an adult, I love fairy imagery, fairy stories, and hearing about what fairies mean to kids. In my neighborhood, some children have put out little fairy gardens in front of their houses and I just think that is so sweet. We all want to believe that there is a little bit of magic in this world, and I think fairies personify this. There is also something to fairies being so tiny and, yet, having special powers that I think is delightful and inspiring.  

VD: I also love that parents can really latch on to ideas in this show as well, like how a lost toy can come back home. My husband and I have spent more than a couple days terrified of our almost two-year-old losing some of her most treasured stuffed friends and the faith of someone or something looking out for our daughter is pretty anxiety-relieving. Are there stories in here that you guys intentionally added not just for the kids, but for parents as well?

RS: First, I love that you felt that way watching the show. Second, I feel your pain. When my youngest was about two-years-old, she left her favorite stuffed giraffe at a relative’s house and I paid more in postage to have it overnighted back to us than if I had just bought a new one at the store the next day. We do some crazy things as parents. While the show isn’t designed to relieve parental stress, it definitely has the potential to relieve a child’s stress and anxiety. 

But we have a lot of multi-level humor that both kids and parents will appreciate separately, as I wanted to create a show that I would enjoy watching along with my kids. And that’s why our opening teasers are usually homages to famous action-adventure films, too.

AT: Oh man. I could have used the help of a Dew Drop Fairy when my three-year-old left her lovey in a house for sale that we visited when house hunting. We had to retrace our footsteps and revisit the houses we’d seen to find it.

VD: How did you decide on the show’s animation design? Why 3DCG versus 2D, other than CG being a signature of DreamWorks?

RS: During the development phase of the show, we used a wide variety of artists and basically let them experiment with our characters and our fairy houses and create some stills of action moments. During that time, we got a general idea what our characters and world would look like, but it wasn’t until Aliki joined the team – and our partner studio in France, TeamTO (and their amazing art director Audrey-Anne Bazard) got involved – that we really locked down a look and a style. 

AT: When I first joined, I knew the show would be in CG and, having worked on a couple CG shows so far, I learned a few things about what is important when translating ideas into a CG animated universe. Namely, for me, it’s taking 2D principles that I learned during my early years of working as a 2D animator at Disney Features and applying this to CG. We all know that there is just so much life in those initial rough sketches and personality in rough storyboards that, with the Dew Drops particularly, I wanted to make sure we could capture this feeling in the way they were animated. 

That meant making considerations for some of the final design aspects as well as the animation style for each individual fairy. It was about finding that sweet spot between realism and cartooniness for every aspect of the show. The designers, animation directors, and animators at TeamTO did such a superb job of bringing the characters to life in animation, as well as with lighting and textures. We could not be more pleased.

VD: Were there any major challenges you guys faced in production, with the animation, the stories, etc.?

RS: I think one of our biggest challenges was lighting. Having tiny fairies that secretly help kids means that they’re hiding in shadows or behind objects on shelves, places where traditional lighting doesn’t hit. And TeamTO had done an amazing job creating a realistic lighting scheme for the show, so we had to get creative, having moonlight bounce off floorboards and making the Dew Drops’ wings glow to illuminate an area more. And while an initial challenge, TeamTO rose to the occasion. 

VD: What’s a message you touch on in the show that you’re particularly excited for kids to see and learn from?

RS: One of the themes of our show is gratitude. Being thankful for friends, family, and life’s little victories. We demonstrate this in “diary moments” at the end of most episodes, where one of the Dew Drops will share their feelings of gratitude through their unique “gratitude journals.” One has a memory box where she stores a memento from the day’s adventures. Another draws a picture of something she’s thankful for, and another, who likes to bake, memorializes her gratitude on a recipe card saying and writing things like, “And a dash of friendship made it all worthwhile.” My hope is that the kids watching will emulate or find their own creative ways to show and commemorate what they are grateful for.

AT: I absolutely love the gratitude aspect of the show as well. We have these episodes that are just so fun and delightful, and though the take-aways are baked right into the story, showing our audience how to take a moment to notice and acknowledge the silver linings in life is just such a gift. We’ve learned that practicing gratitude helps produce such positive emotions in children (and adults) that we hope our fairies can inspire audiences to apply an “attitude of gratitude” to their lives as the Dew Drops do. 

Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.