“To write for a Black family, you start asking yourself, ‘What am I doing?’ So we cast all Black actors for Gerald’s family — that helped with authenticity. Then we listened to Jamil, Gerald’s voice actor, loved his phrasing and pacing, and wrote more of what he brought. In the ’90s, we were doing our best just to show different ethnicities on screen, thinking it’d be cool for a kid to see Gerald and say, ‘Finally, a character that looks more like me.’ People tell me that now.”
Craig Bartlett, Creative Talent Network (2020)