Carl Jones, the co-executive producer behind The Boondocks, says the studios he worked with understood so little about Black life that he had to climb on top of a table and act out scenes himself so the animators could get them right.
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In an exclusive interview with Baller Alert, Carl Jones explained how years of filling a gap inside the industry led him to build Martian Blueberry, the Black owned animation studio he co-founded with his partner, Love Jones.
The Boondocks, adapted from Aaron McGruder’s comic strip, became one of the most celebrated animated shows of its era and the first Cartoon Network program to win a Peabody Award. Behind the scenes, its scripts were sent overseas to animators and storyboard artists who had little firsthand knowledge of the world the show was depicting. Carl became the bridge.
“A lot of what you saw in the animation was acted out by me,” he said. “I would have to actually perform the scripts so we could send it overseas to the animators and the board artists.”
That problem runs deep in animation. For decades, Black characters were drawn as racist caricatures, and the people running the industry rarely knew how to portray Black life with any accuracy. By the time The Boondocks arrived, the caricatures were gone, but the lack of Black people in the room was not.
“There weren’t a lot of us hired by these studios, so I would have to act out a lot of this stuff so they would understand the way we walk, the way we talk,” Carl said.
His favorite example comes from one of the show’s most memorable characters, the rapper Thugnificent.
“Thugnificent was ghost riding the whip,” Carl said. “I had to sit on top of a table and actually show what that looked like.”
Every correction came with a price tag. Carl said the show regularly ran over budget because the team kept catching and fixing details that the studios had gotten wrong.
“We would go over budget because we were fixing so many things about the show that was wrong culturally,” he said.
Those fixes showed Carl exactly what the industry was missing: a studio where the people telling Black stories already understood them, with no one needing to perform the basics on a tabletop. The idea stayed with him for years.
“I knew that this was a need,” Carl said. “It was always just a dream, but I never actually put pen to paper and made it work until I met Love.”
Love Jones, an actress turned producer, had already worked alongside Carl on animated projects for artists including Trippie Redd and Megan Thee Stallion. Together they launched Martian Blueberry, with Love serving as co-founder and COO. The studio’s name draws inspiration from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” a nod to the history Black artists have always carried into their work.
Carl brought a deep résumé to the partnership. Beyond The Boondocks, he was executive producer, head writer, and director of Black Dynamite: The Animated Series on Adult Swim, and he co-created Freaknik: The Musical, the animated special starring T-Pain, Rick Ross, and Snoop Dogg.
Since opening its doors, Martian Blueberry has produced Megan Thee Stallion’s anime style “Neva Play” video and Undeniable: Stories from the Negro Leagues, MLB’s first animated series, which won a Webby for best animation. The studio has also worked on Max’s Young Love, based on the Oscar winning short Hair Love.
The studio Carl dreamed about while fixing someone else’s show now belongs to him and Love.
