Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and Apple TV+
Everybody’s favorite Peanuts are back! The latest Snoopy Presents special on Apple TV+, premiered over the weekend. The focus of the special has garnered a lot of excitement: After being introduced in the late 1960s, Franklin, Peanuts’ first Black character, is finally getting the spotlight in Welcome Home, Franklin.
The Daily Beast’s Obsessed spoke to Craig Schulz, executive producer of Welcome Home, Franklin and overseer of all Peanuts media, and director Raymond S. Persi over Zoom, about Franklin’s introduction and initial backlash, following the legacy of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz (who is Craig’s father), and seizing the opportunity to respond to a controversial shot from the 1973 Thanksgiving special.
The creation of Franklin has a remarkable origin. “The year was 1968,” Schulz says. “Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. A young school teacher named Harriet Glickman had seen this, and it profoundly affected her. She thought that one way to get a better message out to the community was to reach out to some cartoonists and see if we could get a Black character in the cartoon world—which there hadn’t been up until then.”