Calgary and the surrounding areas have been the backdrop to numerous films and television productions over the past several years.
Shows like Billy the Kid, Last of Us, Under the Banner of Heaven, and My Life with the Walter Boys, as well as the latest Predator movie, Prey, have all been filmed in the area.
Not only that, but Apple TV+'s Fraggle Rock reboot, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, was filmed in a studio in Calgary and has recently won some awards.
According to Executive Producer, Director, Writer, Puppet Captain, and Puppeteer Johnny Tartaglia for Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock was nominated for ten Emmy awards for its second season.
"It's a crazy amount. We won for the Creature Shop, for all the puppets and for all the beautiful costumes that they make. And we also won the best Family and Children's Series award, which is the greatest honour. It's like the biggest award you can win."
He adds that he loves that they won the 2025 Children's or Family Viewing Series Emmy Award, because it recognizes every department, everybody, and every contribution.
Tartaglia also oversees the Fraggle Rock brand for the Jim Henson Company, puppeteers Gobo, Sprocket, Barry Blueberry, and Gunge in the show, and says that he has been wanting to make a Fraggle Rock reboot for some time.
"I have wanted to do Fraggle Rock again since I was a kid, literally," Tartaglia says. "I used to tell people when I was growing up. When they would say, 'What's your dream job?', I would always say, it doesn't exist anymore. And they would be like, 'What do you mean?'"
Tartaglia says he would tell them his dream was to work on Fraggle Rock, but it was filmed in the 1980s, and for decades it was believed that it would never come back.
When he was 16, Tartaglia began working for the Jim Henson Company, and he would bring up Fraggle Rock.
"I would always, kind of, bring Fraggle Rock up at different things," Tartaglia explains. "What about if you have the Fraggle's do this? I was always trying to find ways to, kind of, get [the Fraggle's] in, because I wanted the show to be present or back, somehow."
Right before COVID shut things down in 2020, Tartaglia says that Apple TV+ began talking to the Jim Henson Company about Fraggle Rock, because Apple was curious about what was going on with Fraggle Rock.
"We were, of course, very excited about that."
So, they began talking about how they wanted to approach the show.
Did they want to do a whole new series? A reboot? A reimagining?
"And then, of course, the world shut down and everything kind of stopped for a while."
While Tartaglia was in lockdown, he decided to take some of the Fraggle puppets home with him.
"They were sitting in my office, 'cause we were doing some tests with them, and stuff like that. I just had this gut feeling. If you go back to the beginning of Covid, everyone was like, 'Oh, it'll probably be two or three weeks, right?'"
Tartaglia says something inside of him told him it was going to be longer than that, so he brought the puppets home.
During the lockdowns, Tartaglia and Halle Stanford, who was the Head of Television at the Jim Henson Company at the time and is one of the Executive Producers on the Fraggle Rock reboot, received a call from the Head of Apple TV+'s Head of Children's Programming, Tara Sorenson, who was concerned about the effects of the Covid lockdowns on children.
During that call, Sorenson had asked them to create a series of short films with the Fraggle's about finding connection, even while alone.
"So, that's how we created this short series called Fraggle Rock: Rock On! Which were these series of six shorts, and they were all, like, five minutes long and they, basically, were about the Fraggle's being in separate caves in the Rock, 'cause they couldn't be together, but they were connecting."
They had celebrities, such as Alanis Morissette and Neil Patrick Harris, involved in the shorts, which were all filmed in their homes.
These shorts marked the first time the Fraggle's were filmed in almost 40 years, and they were a big hit.
Tartaglia credits this to helping the first season of Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock be created.
"People went crazy for them and that's what really made the first season happen," Tartaglia explains. "Apple TV Plus was like, 'Okay, there's obviously a lot of love for these characters. We need to make a series.'"
Tartaglia says it was within a year's time that they went from creating those shorts to being in production for the first season.
He adds that while the shorts and the first season were being filmed at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, there was a feeling of helplessness, but in that dark time, they were still able to create something new.
"I always believe that in the darkest times, some of the best art comes from that."
As part of the reboot, they kept a lot of the original characters from the show, but made some changes, such as changing the Doc character.
The actor who played Doc in the original series, Gerard Parkes, had passed away before the reboot happened, so they were forced to replace him.
After deciding to find good representation for women in science, they went with Broadway star Lilli Cooper to take over to role of Doc and have her character study for a science degree.
"I love hearing parents say that their kids now look at Doc as someone that they could be," Tartaglia explains.
On top of that, they expanded the Fraggle world and added new characters, such as Pogey and Icy Joe.
So, how did Fraggle Rock end up being filmed in Calgary?
The original Fraggle Rock series was filmed in Toronto, and Tartaglia says that Canada has become part of the show's DNA, and when the reboot was being made, Apple TV+ said they wanted the reboot to be bigger and better than the original, in terms of scope.
"The size of the Great Hall had to expand, and the number of puppeteers had to expand and the Gorg's garden. Everything had to be bigger."
Because of the size they were striving for, there were no soundstages or series of soundstages in Toronto that were able to hold what the creatives behind Fraggle were striving for.
They also looked into filming in Vancouver, but when they were looking for places to film in the earlier part of Covid, Calgary and Alberta were becoming known as the place to film.
"It just got recommended to us as a place to be and we, kind of, pre-scouted and came up here and saw, not only the wonderful soundstages we filmed in, but just the city itself had so many resources and there was so much talent here," Tartaglia says.
Not only that, but Tartaglia added that there is a strong puppetry community in Alberta.
"Also, on top of all that, it's a gorgeous city and it's just a wonderful place to spend half a year creating the show."
On top of the show being filmed in Calgary, they made a decision in their Night of the Lights episode in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, to determine where Fraggle Rock is in the real world.
When they were first creating Fraggle Rock, they didn't want to say exactly where Fraggle Rock is, because they wanted everyone to feel like they could relate to the show.
At the end of the Night of the Lights episode, though, the camera pans to the sky to see the Northern Lights and mountains, and Tartaglia says it's indicating that Fraggle Rock could be somewhere between Calgary and Banff.
Tartaglia says it was their tribute to Calgary, because at the time of filming that episode, they weren't sure if they were going to do any more episodes, and they wanted to do a nice 'Thank you' to Calgary.
Listen to the full interview.