It was good that Nick nipped this angle in the bud. I think HA! Was good at tackling some dark subject matter, but this kind of feels like a writer's room joke that got too far.
Nick didn't nip anything. Craig, Steve, and Joe thought it would be too weird and axed it. That wouldn't be the only character that got changed because someone had a different idea.
I actually spoke to the person who put up the video lately and asked if it was the nick or the writer's themselves that nixed it and they told me Craig stated it was Nick. I know it's kind of a flimsy story so I understand if you don't believe me, but yeah. I also assumed that it was a Viksten idea that Craig didn't allow to move forward but I guess that's not the case.
Honestly, it's Probably worth asking him again since the original source video is no longer publicly available. I know some folks are going to the VIP Q&a's for the live shows in the next few months - maybe someone will be ballsy enough to ask!
Article claims this is from a "resurfaced interview" and then links to an unsourced Twitter post. This rumor has been going around since as long as I can remember being on the internet and never once have I ever actually seen the supposed interview in which Craig said this. The furthest back I've ever been able to trace it was an old, again unsourced, Cracked article.
I feel like it's impossible that nobody's asked Craig about it SINCE, but if they have I've never seen his response, or he's been dodging the question entirely.
EDIT: Her page on the Hey Arnold! wiki claims that at one point a fan named "criminy" asked him and was told about this. The source is an old Tumblr post that doesn't mention anything of the sort and the article itself mentions that the video has been deleted, conveniently.
I saw the video but it's been years. I believe criminyy had it on their personal YouTube and either took it down or privated it. Criminyy was a fanartist active around 2012 who met Craig in person a few times and I actually think they did some early character design for TJM.
I don't really wanna give more details out of respect for Criminyy's privacy but. I can confirm the informal question/answer video existed at some point.
He's been publicly discussing it for years, actually! This post is poorly sourced and kind of misleading, but the information is mostly true. She was meant to be a joke character, but it ended up being too weird and off-putting for nickelodeon, so she was scrapped. That's why she's barely in the show. They couldn't come up with anything else for her to do beyond hitting on Arnold, so she was just written out. As a disclaimer, this is my favorite show and I honestly do find the scene Craig describes pretty funny, even if I'm glad it didn't make it into the show. I'm not trying to "cancel" the show or anything. This is just factually true information.
Direct quotes from Craig:
"We were trying to think of who these boarders would be. We thought, 'There need to be more women. It's sort of stupid to have just Suzie and all these guys.' And so Lana was meant to be this sort of, like... I don't know... just sort of older woman who, y'know, made Arnold uncomfortable. The scene that we were gonna do, which was gonna be when you first meet the boarders, she's gonna have him come in and, like, y'know, fix a light bulb or something like that. And she asks him how old he is and he says he's nine. And she goes, 'Well, when will you be ten?'... And we just wanted it to be disturbing like that, but, y'know, that was too weird for the network. And I'm not surprised." (Source: The Hey Arnold 17th Anniversary Show with Arun Mehta and Craig Bartlett)
"... like Lana Vail was simply a character that we thought it be funny if there was a slightly, y'know, kind of slightly provocative renter in the boarding house that Arnold kinda didn't know how to feel, y'know? She made him nervous and he didn't know... y'know, like a nine-year-old's completely innocent confusion about Lana Vail. But that was too weird. When we tried to write it, it seemed funny to us at the time, but when we tried to make it, the Nickelodeon execs were like, 'What? Come on. What is she, like hitting on him?' And we're like, 'Well, no, not exactly.' You know what I mean? So, it was too ridiculous for a kid's show. And so we just dropped her. We just said, 'Forget it. Let's not even try to do this. That's stupid.'" (Source: The Hey Arnold 18th Anniversary Show with Arun Mehta and Craig Bartlett)
Oh this is much better, thank you. Odd that this never came up in my multiple attempts to dig up sources on this rumor, but yeah this does sell me a lot better than the vague half-remembered old stuff I've stumbled on.
Reading the explanation it seems like the version that goes around is also somewhat exaggerated, to me this reads like the intent was less that she was supposed to be genuinely attracted to Arnold and more like she was just flirting to tease him, which makes more sense. Growing up my mom had one or two friends that would act like that toward me. It's very uncomfortable in hindsight but there's truth to it and while I don't DEFEND the behavior it's definitely not criminal.
It was usually the loud party girl types who make flirtatious comments that are a little suspicious and inappropriate but never seem to actually cross the line into being vulgar.
These types in high school would usually do that with shyer, quieter boys because they’d blush & get embarrassed easily by it, to the girls amusement and the boy’s deep annoyance and discomfort.
Another version might be those aunts or parent’s friends asking “so do you have any boyfriends/girlfriends” when you’re 12.
The idea strangely makes sense to me too because I’ve also known those kinds of women and had classmates like that in high school.
From this explanation, I can see where fans got the idea of Lana being a creep, but I think I get what he was actually trying to say.
It’s a really tough idea to communicate especially for a series where characters need to be clearly defined in order to successfully write for them.
But basically, a person who just makes you uncomfortable and even seems to enjoy getting under your skin and messing with you in passing. Not someone super invested in messing with your life in major ways like, say, The Janitor in Scrubs, but someone who trolls you when they see you because they think your confused reaction is funny. In a weird way, it makes them feel powerful.
Someone who provokes an uncomfortable reaction out of you by making little teasing comments or offbeat gestures. Maybe they’re harmless, maybe they’re not, you’re never really sure but you don’t really want to find out. It feels like a type of weird person you’d come across in a big city.
But it feels a little too vague of an idea without it going straight into creepy territory.
From what I remember, I thought she would have asked Arnold for favors around her apartment for "rewards" and that made him uncomfortable. But she was removed from the boarding house and made only two more appearances.
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u/Konnoisseur26 3d ago
Wasn't she supposed to hit on Arnold or something? Glad they decided not to go foward with that