What If...? Composer Laura Karpman on Scoring Animation and Starting Season 2

09/21/2021 03:39 pm EDT

Laura Karpman won her fifth Emmy last year for her work on Why We Hate, and was nominated for her 15th award this year for scoring HBO's Lovecraft Country. One of her latest projects has been for Marvel Studios and What If...?, where she's been hard at work scoring Marve Studio's first-ever animated series.

Though the vast majority of Karpman's work has come in live-action, this is her biggest animated project to date. Even then, the difference in mediums didn't change the Emmy-winning composer's workflow on the process.

"It was more like a movie with living, breathing people that just happened to be living comic book characters," Karpman tells us. "It was all about character, action,and about feelings. And, you know, tension and suspense and all the things that you deal with."

Also unique about What If...? is that it deals with different characters and genres with each passing episode. The composer tells us that element of scoring was equally more challenging and liberating than a standard project.

"The Watcher theme is the connective tissue here," she adds.  "So you're sort of focusing on that, but also having the fun and the pleasure to really be dealing with all these different elements. I think it's a gas. I think it's super fun. And it's interesting, you know what I mean? It's like, it really keeps you on your toes. This is not, this is not like scoring. The show is not a laid-back experience. It's a lean-in experience."

Karpman also confirms she's scoring the show's second season as well, though she has yet to officially start work on the next batch of episodes.

The first six episodes of Marvel's What If...? are now streaming on Disney+.

What What If... storylines do you hope to see in the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!

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Cover photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

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