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Mike Nawrocki met Phil Vischer, CEO of Big Idea Productions, in college. They worked together in a St. Paul Bible College puppet ministry and became roommates. That is, until they were kicked out of school for missing too many chapels.

Nawrocki and Vischer then worked on a single computer to create the VeggieTales series. Nawrocki is writer and director for Big Idea and a father of two young children. But he is perhaps best known to VeggieTales fans for lending a voice to Larry the Cucumber, the goofy sidekick to Vischer's Bob the Tomato.

As the Big Idea staff was putting the finishing touches on Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, Christianity Today editor at large Edward Gilbreath talked with Nawrocki about starting the video series, creating Larry, and why he isn't a doctor.

Did you and Phil know in college that you wanted to work together?

Yes. We met on a puppet team while there. Every student coming in was required to do a student ministry, and they had a bunch of different ones to choose from. I was from Denver; Phil was from the Chicago area. I had been involved in puppeteering and drama in my home church in Denver.

There were probably about five or six of us on the puppet team. We just traveled around doing our puppet shows. Phil and I did the majority of the writing and we just had a great time writing together. We had this creative chemistry that really clicked in terms of writing and performing.

Back then did it have that sort of VeggieTales humor?

It did. Really, it turned out both of us were really influenced by Monty Python. Mel Brooks was another kind of a big humor influence. We had a real similar sense of humor, and that kind of came through our writing at that time, and later with VeggieTales. Larry's voice is a voice that evolved from a puppet that I did at the time. It was called "Soupy."

You were planning at that time on going into medicine, right?

At this point I was still planning on it. But by this time we actually started to talk about VeggieTales too. We'd come up with a concept for the show, and we were looking for somebody to fund it, basically. I had come to the point where I was ready to go out of video postproduction. This was probably in the early nineties.

I thought, "If we're not going to make VeggieTales I need to go ahead with my plans in life and go to medical school." I applied with the Peace Corps. I was going to go teach biology in Africa for a couple of years. I got in, and I had my acceptance letter from the Peace Corps and funding for VeggieTales came through.

So I was at this real crossroads in my life. I really did feel a calling from God that I needed to serve him with whatever I chose as my vocation. And for me, what that looked like in high school was medicine. But as I got to that point, I really had to do a lot of soul searching and think, What is it really that God wants from me? I prayed and I asked a lot of people around me and kind of told them my situation. Looking back on it, I think I wanted to help others by showing them God's love.

Did you originally think that you would do some of your creative stuff on the side when you were a doctor?

It didn't even click for me. For me, theater and art was a passion, but I never equated it with a vocation. My mom was a nurse; my dad was an engineer. So I thought, okay, when I go get a real job maybe I can do something like this on the side. It never dawned on me growing up that this would be a possibility for my life. Nobody thinks growing up that they're going to be a cucumber.

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46