The Fred Rogers that audiences have come to know and love through his children’s show comes off as kind and unassuming, lacking all cynicism and defense mechanisms that adults have built up over time. This Fred Rogers seems whimsical and almost childlike. But, as those who have delved into his series can attest, few things on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which ran on PBS from 1968 to 2001, were coincidental.
“He was a scholar,” says JoAnn Young, writer and producer of Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like, which premiered on PBS in March. “It might appear to be a simple little television show, but it was very studied and thematic. He tried to approach subjects that might bother children, like divorce, or getting angry, and how to control your emotions — above all, to build up their self-respect. He worked with a child psychologist, and he checked every single script with her.”
With more than 50 PBS specials under her belt, Young became the go-to person for a retrospective celebrating the 50th anniversary of the show. “Our primary goal was to get as many people as possible to watch this program about Fred Rogers’ work,” she says, “perhaps even a PBS audience who might never have seen a Mister Rogers program.”
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Together with Ellen Doherty, the executive in charge of production at Fred Rogers Co., Young put together a one-hour special featuring some of the most pivotal moments of the show, along with musical numbers and interviews with stars who were influenced by Mister Rogers — including Judd Apatow, John Lithgow, Sarah Silverman and Esperanza Spalding. “We thought this was such a powerful thing to show, that not only was this an outstanding children’s program, but it truly affected lives,” says Young.
Adds Doherty: “This is the beauty of social media. We keep track of when Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Fred Rogers are talked about, and I remembered seeing Sarah Silverman tweet for Fred’s birthday a couple of years ago.” Apatow had mentioned his fondness for Mister Rogers in an interview with Rolling Stone, and Spalding had already talked to PBS about how watching Yo-Yo Ma perform on Mister Rogers made her want to learn an instrument. “As a producer of children’s media, it’s so great to hear these stories of successful adults and what their references were as a kid and how those shows shaped them,” says Doherty.
The production team waited until the very last minute to secure the perfect host for their show. “We held out for Michael Keaton until we could fit into his schedule, which, if you’ve ever produced a program, you know how risky it is to put all your eggs in that basket,” says Young. “I called his assistant daily, practically, and we did get him. It was so joyful to have someone who had actually worked with Fred Rogers and knew what a wonderful man he was and could really talk about the subject knowingly.” (Before he became an actor, Keaton had worked for a time at Pittsburgh PBS station WQED, where Rogers’ show was based, and occasionally pitched in as a crewmember.)
Young and her team chose to highlight what they felt were the show’s key moments, of which there were plenty. While appearances by high-profile guests like Tony Bennett, Itzhak Perlman and Big Bird were guaranteed crowd-pleasers, the moments of the show that truly made an impact had no star power whatsoever.
“Mister Rogers wasn’t political, but it was no accident that he chose a black man to be the policeman [on the show],” says Young. “At that time in the country, things were very bad, as far as civil rights, and he thought it was important for all children to have respect for that black policeman. The first time that I saw the washing of the [policeman’s] feet in the little kiddie pool, it blew me away, it was so biblical. It seemed to me like a really important moment on television.”
What the PBS special does not do is delve into who Fred Rogers was once the cameras stopped rolling. With a feature-length documentary about him, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, simultaneously in production (the film, released June 8, has now become the highest-grossing biodoc ever, with $20 million and counting at the box office), the production team of It’s You I Like agreed to stick to the icon’s television work.
“We were really under strict restrictions not to talk about him biographically,” says Young, who has not yet seen Morgan Neville’s documentary. “[Fred Rogers Co.] had a long-standing contract with Morgan Neville and came to the agreement that we wouldn’t use biographical notes, and he would just let us go ahead and talk about his work.”
There were moments, says Young, where the division presented its challenges. “For example, [I would have loved to use clips of] him testifying before Congress about PBS keeping its funding,” she says. “It would have been perfect for me to do that in this program. But I feel like in the end it did not hurt me one bit, or hurt the program, because you learned a lot about Fred Rogers just by seeing the way he talked to children. You got to know the man, and we didn’t do one second of biography.”
Young believes one of the reasons Rogers is making a resurgence, 15 years after his death, is because in this time of great polarization, he never expressed a political position on the air. “He didn’t want any child to feel like they couldn’t watch the show because he had said something about a political party. He walked a very balanced line,” she says. “He seems like a voice of reason in this time.”
This story will appear in a August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
