An Interview With ‘Nicki Fix’ Head Writer, Cecil Castellucci

From comics to music, there’s nothing Shade the Changing Girl‘s Cecil Castellucci can’t do. Adding to that list of accomplishments, Castellucci is the head writer of EEP Universe and iHeartRadio’s upcoming scripted podcast, Nicki Fix’s Time Mix. The first two episodes drop on October 19th and tell the story of young musician, Nicki Fix, who travels back in time to 1996 to try and save her favorite gig spot from being closed down. Nicki Fix isn’t Castellucci’s first experience in radio and you can find out more in my interview below:

Rachel Bellwoar: As a writer and musician, what made you want to step into the world of podcasts? 

Cecil Castellucci: One of the secrets about me is that I used to teach recreating radio at the Museum of Television and Radio (Now Paley Center) in Los Angeles, where it was my job to teach old time radio to kids, from acting it out to doing the sound effects by hand. I’m interested in telling stories in all the ways that there are in the world. I was excited when Heather Einhorn and Adam Staffaroni [co-founders of EEP Universe] asked me to come on board to help bring their vision for Nicki’s story to life. Time travel, the ’90s, and the music scene is of interest to me, so what they had come up with for their story was stuff that I was into. So, for me, it was natural to be interested in having a small hand in a podcast drama.

RB: Has writing for an auditory medium been different from writing for a visual medium, like comics?

Castellucci: Of course! Every medium is different and has its strengths and weaknesses. Recently, in my newest graphic novel Shifting Earth, which also had science fiction aspects, I could rely on images to show the main character being pulled through a wormhole to a parallel Earth. But you can’t show that sci-fi element in audio drama; it must be built with sound. Thank goodness for sound designers! One thing that was hard for a story like NICKI FIX, and something that Adam and I talked about, is that time travel is often dependent on visual cues like a warbly portal or shimmery wall of something, or seeing the clothes and the world. So that was a real challenge to make those cues auditory. Shout out to the other writers in the room: Louis Kornfeld, Natalia Yanchak, and Bleu Beckford-Burrell! I actually found some tips for trying to think of how to set that up from Jessica Abel’s great comic Out on a Wire, which is about documentary radio shows. And audio is so different from comics because one of the strengths of comics is silence.

Bellwoar: What would you say sets Nicki apart from other characters you’ve written for (like Shade)? 

Castellucci: It’s interesting because Nicki really came from Adam and Heather’s vision of her, and the fun and games you can have with the lessons learned from traveling to another time and getting a different perspective on your own life. That’s YA in a nutshell! And what makes Nicki interesting is she’s a girl unstuck in time who is trying to find out who she really is. The thing that sets her apart is that she uses music as her armor. And while I’ve had music be a part of other characters in my novels, like in Beige, in this case, music both makes and undoes Nicki. What’s similar between Nicki and Shade, the Changing Girl or Jane (from The Plain Janes) or Soupy (from Soupy Leaves Home) is that she is a girl in an alien (to her) world.

Bellwoar: Growing up, did you have a place that meant a lot to you like the Millenium Rink means to Nicki?

Castellucci: Shout out to my Riverdale, Bronx JHS 141 friends and the fantastic community tween program they had called The Center. I think that would be the closest thing I had to the Millennium Rink in my youth. It was a place where we could play sports, watch movies, do crafts, and stay off the streets. It was where I learned about some alternative culture like B-horror films and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and also learned how to navigate and survive the social strata of middle school. In high school, my sanctuary was a fabulous café in the East Village called Café Orlin which sadly no longer exists. It was there that my friends and I went to be arty. I think what’s different for me and for Nicki is that I lived in New York City so that was all available to me. If I had grown up in the suburbs, then I think a place like the Millennium Rink would have been my place of safety.

Bellwoar: It’s weird to think of the ’90s as long enough ago to support a time travel story. Were there any ’90s touchstones you knew you wanted to include to invoke the setting?

Castellucci: One thing about the ’90s is that even though the internet was around, it was in its infancy, so the time period had this ripe area of sort of having the characters unplug for a little bit.

Bellwoar: While not an exclusively solo activity, time travel doesn’t always allow for more than one person to make the trip. How did you decide to have Nicki’s friends tag along?

Castellucci: Once again, we were bringing Heather and Adam’s idea to life, so we in the room were playing with their initial concept and tried to tackle many different ways to do that. But it seemed more dramatic to have three characters that had different issues in the today times and gain some kind of growth from going back in time. It also helped to have them be at odds with how to deal with their circumstances and to face their own demons, so to speak. I don’t want to spoil it, but we had some fun with things that can go very wrong if you’re not all on the same page when you go back in time. You know, step on a butterfly and shit can happen that changes everything!

RB: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Cecil!

The first two episodes of Nicki Fix’s Time Mix launch October 19th wherever you get your podcasts. After that a new episode will drop on Wednesdays.