THERE’D BEEN superheroes. A perennially doomed kid named Kenny. Even a prehistoric family with a pet brontosaurus. But in the long history of television animation, there had never been a show about African-American women friends.

Until recently.

Best known for its award-winning Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, Watertown-based Soup2Nuts — a division of Tom Snyder Productions — has produced two seasons of Hey Monie, an animated comedy series about a single, professional black woman and her exploits in big-city America, for the Oxygen cable network. Now the show is expanding its reach, becoming the first animated comedy to air on Black Entertainment Television (BET).

Hey Monie creator/producer Dorothea Gillim’s path has been similarly unique: the Soup2Nuts executive producer, who joined Tom Snyder Productions in 1994, began her career not as a TV-production assistant, but as a middle-school English teacher. It’s a job that’s proven surprisingly relevant.

Q: What kind of special skills did you need in order to make the switch to animated television from teaching? I would imagine this is very different than teaching English.

A: You know what? It’s not all that different. Organization, inspiration, flexibility, innovation. I always loved creating my own curriculum, and so there’s a lot of creativity. And team management. And sometimes it can be a little unruly bunch. Boisterous.

Q: What was the genesis of Hey Monie?

A: Tom Snyder, my boss, gave me my first big break and said, " [Oxygen is] looking for shows for women, so whatcha got? " I thought, well, what isn’t on TV right now? And to me, one of the things that leapt out is that I hadn’t seen a show that really captured female friendship in a way that was real and true to me. My best friends have been equally as important to me as all the many boyfriends I’ve had, and certainly more long-lasting. And also the other thing that wasn’t on TV at the time was animated black women. So I based the show, actually, on my real-life best friend, Tracy, who at the time lived on the floor above me in my apartment building. We used to joke how we had this kind of Mary-Rhoda relationship. I based the character of Yvette on her. So it’s like a black Mary Tyler Moore.

Q: How did the BET connection come about?

A: Geraldine Laybourne, who’s the president of Oxygen, brokered the deal. It was really groundbreaking in the sense that it’s the first time a deal has ever been made between two networks who are not in the same parent company. So she approached Debra Lee, who’s the president of BET, thinking this might be something that they’d be interested in, and they bought it.

Q: This is BET’s first animated comedy. Are you worried about how the audience will react to and accept an animated program?

A: Nooo. I think there’ll be a real interest in animation on BET. I wouldn’t be surprised about that.

Q: Why’s that?

A: Well, frankly, I’ve heard ... this is a demographic that I got from Oxygen, where they said more African-Americans [than women] watch cartoons. So we’ll see how that plays out. They may tune in and not like it.

Q: Have you made any changes to the show, now that you’ve been gearing up to run it on BET?

A: No, not at all. I’ve never thought about the show as a black show, actually. I just think of it as a funny show that happens to star two black women. And my mantra has always been, race is not a plot point. Because this is a comedy, and it’s 22 minutes, and you can’t really tackle big issues in that format without completely trivializing them.

Q: I hear the actresses who voice Simone and Yvette are best friends in real life, too. How do you think their friendship affects the direction the show takes?

A: It has an enormous influence, actually. The show is very improvised, so we try to tailor the stories, gear the stories, towards areas that we know Frances [Callier] and Angela [Shelton] will feel comfortable in. For instance, they once got kicked out of a seminar on sexual harassment, so we wrote an episode where they get kicked out of a class about sexuality and self-discovery, that kind of thing. We try to play to their strengths, and also the fact that they just bring their chemistry to it, and that they, through the improv, will sometimes take us in surprising directions.

Q: For people who don’t know how the production of an animated series works, fill us in. What comes first: is it the animation or the voices, and how does it all come together?

A: We work a little unusually, a little unconventionally, here. We start with the audio. Well, we start with the script. We write a script, and then in the recording, we’ll go off-script a lot. And then we take this raw, improvised material and edit it into a 22-minute show, and from there, once the audio is locked, then we turn it over to the storyboarders, who then draw the scenes, and then those scenes get animated.

Q: That’s sort of the reverse of how a lot of animated movies and TV shows do it, isn’t it?

A: Yeah, many will start with the storyboards, and then they’ll record off of that, or sometimes even the full animated version. But because we’re improv, we never really know how an episode is going to turn out until after it’s been edited.

Q: Is this process more challenging for the animators than it would be if the animation were done before the audio?

A: I don’t know. I think in some ways it gives them more information, because they have the sound of the voice, so they can draw a character that will really work with that voice, and also the scene. You know, they don’t have to think about the timing of the joke; the joke is already there. So it frees them up to just think about what kind of funny visual gag they can add to enhance the story.

Q: Do the animators spend much time with the actors to get a sense of who they are and what their mannerisms are like?

A: You know what? They don’t. They have little mirrors in front of their work stations, so they have to act it out. And it’s really hilarious because we actually have a lot of male animators, and to see them do those kind of " Girl, whatchoo mean, girl? "

Q: How do you convince people that animated shows are as hip and as real as any other shows on TV — that they’re not just Saturday-morning cartoons?

A: I think for me you do it with the humor. For me it’s not about the fact that it’s not real representation, it’s just the kind of funny that we get. I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, but I almost don’t even think of what we do as animation; I think of it as character-driven comedies that happen to be drawn.

Q: That’s how I felt when I was watching Hey Monie, and I was surprised to feel that way, because I don’t normally sit down to watch animated shows.

A: Well, neither do I! See, we’re women! You don’t have to work quite as hard with men; guys are more likely to tune in to animation. It’s kind of like a chicken-and-egg question, where it’s like, is that because most of the animated shows on TV are aimed towards men, adolescent boys, whatever, or is it because there’s something intrinsic about the format? I think it’s just that we haven’t seen the kind of characters, like strong, leading, funny women, in animation the way we have for men.

Q: How did Oprah’s participation in an episode of Hey Monie come about?

A: Oh, man. That was a fluke. I wrote that episode thinking, they’re never going to buy this. I actually threw it in as an extra, and they came back and were like, " We think it’s great. " And I was like, " Omigod, I’m going to meet Opraaaah! " And then Oprah’s people said, " Just fax us her lines. " So that’s how it came about; it was just an idea I had that I didn’t even think they would think was realistic. Oprah ... already was a fan of the show. I knew that. So I knew I had kind of an in.

Q: What do you think makes a good animated show? How much do you think is the cleverness and sophistication of the drawing, and how much is about the voices and character development and all these other factors? Or is it just a total-package thing?

A: Well, I think it’s got to be a total package, but for me, and this is just my sensibility, I like things that are a little out of the ordinary, so when you have humor that’s kind of off-center, interesting, quirky, not your typical, standard sit-com fare. And when you have a look that’s different from the kind of Disney stuff that you associate with animation, or even now there’s this new aesthetic of cartoons looking really kind of flat and ugly, which I think is really starting to get old. So I think there’s not just one thing that works, but when you’re doing something that’s different, which is what everybody is striving for, but not so different that you freak out the networks.

Q: Do you ever have any desire to work on a live-action show?

A: Sometimes, yeah. I’m just curious to know, do people sit around as much as they talk about? Because here there’s no makeup, there’s no wardrobe, we just throw ’em in the booth. So I am curious to know how the process is different. And I’m curious also about the differences between television and film, because in TV, it really is as if you’re running in front of an oncoming train. It’s just a sprint from the start to the end. And I just wonder what it would be like to work on one thing for a very long time.

Q: Any plans for Hey Monie to become a film?

A: Oh yeah, Monie’s going to Paris, definitely. No, I’m kidding. I mean, yeah, it would be great if we got to that point where we could do something like that. They did films for [MTV’s] Daria. And it would be fun to take her out on the road. That would be a blast.

Q: So what’s next?

A: We’re just going to finish out the season and get ready for season four, fingers crossed.

Q: Can you draw?

A: Nooo. God. Literally, I draw the same way I did when I was in second grade.

Q: Stick figures?

A: Basically, yeah.

Hey Monie currently airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. on Black Entertainment Television. The season will re-air on the Oxygen network this summer. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com