Michelle Obama Ad-libs and Making Food Fun: Behind-the-scenes of Netflix’s ‘Waffles + Mochi’

There was only one thing that Michelle Obama was not willing to do for her new Netflix series Waffles + Mochi. She would work with zany puppets and distill major life lessons into eloquent ad-libbed monologues, but the former First Lady was not about to give little Waffles and even littler Mochi their ceremonial badges at the end of the “Herbs & Spices” episode. Nope. Not after what the half-yeti, half-waffle puppet and her little frozen sidekick did to Mrs. O’s fictional grocery store.

“In our “Herbs & Spices” episode, Mochi and Waffles destroy the store by sort of accidentally giving all the herbs and spices away,” Waffles + Mochi co-creator Erika Thormahlen told Decider in a recent interview. “Jeremy [Konner] and I, and our writer, Ann Austen, had scripted this lesson at the end where they get their badges. Jeremy goes to shoot and Jeremy, what did Mrs. Obama say to you?”

“She was like, ‘Wait a second, I’m about to give them badges… and they just, like, messed up my store?'” Thormahlen said, recalling Michelle Obama’s confusion.

Co-creator and director Jeremy Konner added, “We were seconds away from rolling and she was like, ‘I’ll say these lines, but I also gotta take them to task. I’m not gonna give them a badge unless they go downstairs and clean this up.'”

“We were like, ‘Yes. You’re correct. As you pretty much always are,'” Konner said.

Netflix’s new children’s food show Waffles + Mochi is the first scripted show from Michelle and Barack Obama’s production company, Higher Ground. Originally titled “Listen to Your Parents and Eat Your Vegetables,” the enchanting series follows Waffles and her best bud, Mochi. Growing up in the Land of Frozen Food, the two adorable puppets dream of becoming chefs like their hero, Julia Child. One day they hitch a ride with a lost delivery van which takes them back to a grocer store run by “Mrs. O,” aka Michelle Obama. After Mrs. O hires them, Waffles and Mochi must then learn about tomatoes, salt, pickles, and all the other ingredients stocked in the store. They do so by globe-trotting in a magic cart to the homes of famous chefs, celebrity friends, and everyday foodies.

Waffles + Mochi might be produced by the Obamas, but it’s the brainchild of the aforementioned Erika Thormahlen and Jeremy Konner. Thormahlen, a writer and actress with a Masters in Education, had long been “really obsessed” with the idea of mashing up Sesame Street and the Food Network to teach kids about food. Years ago, she teamed with pal Konner, best-known for his work on Drunk History, to try to sell networks on their concept.

“We put together this like really kooky little short, and it didn’t go anywhere because no one was ready to have kids in the kitchen,” Thormahlen said, explaining that the project seemed dead for years until a fateful encounter. “We ran into one another at a restaurant and Jeremy had become a dad and his famous words to me at that moment were, ‘I wish that show was on because I can’t get my kid to eat a tomato.'”

Konner and Thormahlen went back to their original concept and tweaked it to better resemble shows like Mind of a Chef, Ugly Delicious, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and the work of Anthony Bourdain.

“When you see these brilliant food personalities eating their way across the world, they don’t talk about vitamin content of a street taco in Malaysia. Right? They don’t talk about how things are good for you or bad for you,” Konner said. “We got really excited about trying to bring that sensibility to kids, because we believe that you should not eat a piece of broccoli because it’s good for you. You should eat broccoli because it’s good!”

After learning that Priya Swaminathan (with whom Konner had appeared on a panel) had joined Higher Ground, they decided to “shoot for the moon.” To their shock and delight, they were asked to pitch the project to Michelle Obama herself.

“We went to DC and were told that she is the busiest lady In the world. Basically, she takes meetings in 15 minute increments and we should expect our meeting to last 15 minutes. So we were very nervous about this crazy puppet stuff and how to distill it into 15 minutes,” Konner said. As it happens, Obama was already sold on the project before the 90 minute meeting even started.

“She walked in with a group of people and sat down and immediately sort of exploded with joy and fun and stories about her relationship to food and her evolution with food,” Konner said, revealing that the former First Lady outed herself as a one-time “peanut butter sandwich” and “mac and cheese girl” during the meeting 

“She grew up in the Midwest, so her taste buds are wired to love cheese and Barack’s taste buds grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He’s got a completely different palate,” Konner said, revealing that the difference between Michelle Obama and Barack Obama’s tastebuds actually wound up inspiring the animated tastebuds voiced by Kate Berlant and John Early in Waffles + Mochi.

But that’s not the only creative input the former First Lady gave to the series…

“Pretty much every line that she says in the show, is her own,” Konner said. “We all really wanted Mrs. Obama to come off as Mrs. Obama, we didn’t want her saying lines that didn’t feel natural to her. She didn’t want that either.”

“So we had baked in these lessons at the end of each episode where Waffles and Mochi learn something about their food, like how pickles can be a lesson about patience, how salt can be a lesson about moderation. We had written lines,” Konner said, “but the second they got in her hands, we just said, ‘How would you talk to kids about patience? What would you say?’ And then turned the cameras on and let that happen.”

“She would just go and talk for 10 minutes to give like the most beautiful, eloquent, funny, sweet monologue about patience that had us all behind the mirrors tearing up,” Konner said. “All we want in life is for Mrs. Obama to teach us life lessons.”

But Waffles + Mochi isn’t just about Michelle Obama (who was only available for three days of shooting). The bulk of the show follows Waffles and Mochi as they travel the world in search of knowledge. Thormahlen said their dream was to have Waffles and Mochi shot in the most “mind-blowing landscapes.” They pulled it off with the help of production alums from Mind of a Chef and Sacha Baron Cohen’s team and puppeteers like Michelle Zamora (Waffles) who had experience in “guerrilla puppeteering.” 

Then they had to get celebrities like Jack Black and Rashida Jones as well as celebrated chefs like José Andrés to embrace the wacky world of Waffles + Mochi. Thormahlen said that while a lot of the “grownups” came to the process with nerves, they soon connected with Waffles and Mochi on “that like inner child level.” One guest, Chef’s Table Season 1 alum Massimo Bottura, fell particularly hard for one of the puppets.

“Massimo had a real Mochi crush. I don’t know how to explain it,” Thormahlen said. “We ended up leaving Mochi there, you know, and Mochi is now living the life in Modena.” 

Mochi might have wound up in Italy, but where did the idea for him and Waffles start? Thormahlan explained that the designs for Waffles and Mochi themselves came from her and Konner’s “collective idea of cute.” The color palate was purposely kept away from primary colors to feel “fresh and modern,” and they made Mochi a strawberry pink because the color “sounded, again, like the cutest.” The fact that Mochi the boy is pink and our heroine Waffles is blue was sort of accidentally intentional.

“I think when we sort of looked back and realized, oh wow, we had kind of created these characters that were not maybe easily identified in terms of gender, that was really cool for us because it just means that kids and anyone who comes to the show can hopefully see themselves in either Waffles or Mochi,” Thormahlan said.

Thormahlan and Konner not only hope that kids see themselves in Waffles and Mochi, but that it inspires a shared curiosity in food.

“You know, after my son watched the tomato episode, he wanted to make a tomato dish. It worked. He was excited about just trying it. And that’s what we are hoping for, not that kids go around with some idea of health food in their minds, but that they just want to get cooking with their parents,” Konner said.

“We just want kids to get curious,” Thormahlan said. “I was a picky eater. So if I had had a show like this growing up, I think dinner time would have been a lot easier.”

Waffles + Mochi is now streaming on Netflix.

Watch Waffles + Mochi on Netflix