On the heels of CBBC commissioning a second season of Boat Rocker Studios’ The Next Step: Cheer, showrunners, writers, and executive producers Matt Huether and Courtney Jane Walker tell ScreenMDM about the origins of the hit series, the opportunities in the tween/YA space, and never talking down to young audiences.
The Next Step: Cheer is a spin-off of The Next Step, which ran for ten seasons between 2013 and 2025, created by Frank Van Keeken.
“In terms of structure and format, we’re honoring the original The Next Step,” Walker, who developed the show with Huether, tells ScreenMDM. “It’s this mockumentary feel; we do a lot of talking heads, where we cut from the action to the characters speaking directly to the camera. As we were developing it, we wanted to honor what everyone loved about the original, but then think about how we could use those pieces and make them feel slightly different as we moved into this world of competitive cheerleading. It has similarities to the dance world, but also meaningful differences. You’re talking about a team of people who are all doing this thing together all the time, versus dance, where it is a team, but then you’re breaking off into individual routines. It was really about taking the things that people loved about the original and finding ways to use those pieces to tell the stories that we’re telling in our show, which, while similar in terms of the audience, are different just because of the nature of the cheerleading world.”
Beyond its success in the U.K., the show has sold widely for Boat Rocker Studios, landing on CBC in Canada, ABC in Australia, YLE in Finland, SVT in Sweden, DR in Denmark, RTÉ in Ireland, and HOT in Israel. “The documentary format allows us to cut to the feelings a lot more quickly,” says Huether on why the show has struck a chord internationally. “International audiences are never confused by what’s happening in the narrative because in the talking head they say, ‘I feel this about this,’ and you can get right into the story. It’s clear as a bell and lets us be more personal and funnier. I just think it’s appealing and it’s easy.”
Walker also points to the franchise’s aspirational nature. “It’s the dream of doing something that you’re really good at with an amazing group of people, and having that core group of people to move through the world with,” she says. “The experience of being a young person and feeling isolated or like you’re struggling to find your place in the world is probably true no matter where you are.”
In the writers’ room, the emphasis is on making the show feel “new and real,” Huether says. “This is kind of a dumb word, but we want it to be ‘crackling.’ We challenged our writers to come up with new jokes and moments and things that don’t feel well-trodden. And once they’re up on the screen, and they get promoted by the Instagram accounts or clipped on TikTok, they feel new. We’ve done a lot of YA teen/tween television. One thing we’ve learned is never to talk down to the audience. The themes, the narrative, the plot are age-appropriate for 6, 7, 8, up to 12, but we think the show is appealing far beyond that because it never talks down [to viewers]. We’re just trying to delight ourselves, and we know that that will delight the audience.”
Even fans of The Next Step, who are now in their late teens and early 20s, have resonated with the show. “There’s a nostalgia piece for them, but they’re also finding something new to enjoy in it,” Walker says.
The team is bringing lessons learned from season one to the new episodes, including leaning more into comedy and deepening the emotional character arcs. “Our incredible cast unlocked a lot of things for us in season two,” Walker says. “We felt like, OK, we can go here, we can do these things, we can tell these kinds of stories because we know how capable all the performers are. In season one, we were finding our feet in terms of how the actual cheerleading action was going to play into the show. We found some creative ways in season one to make sure we felt the action, and we build on that in season two.”
Huether and Walker are longtime collaborators, having worked together on several shows, including Home Sweet Rome, over hundreds of episodes. “It would be boring doing it alone!” Huether says.
“We’re always just trying to have fun, delight each other, enjoy it in the moment, and I think enjoying it in the moment translates through to the finished product,” Walker adds. “We empower our writers to bring in their own ideas and to have fun and to surprise each other and themselves. That carries all the way through preproduction with our department heads. We want everyone to show up with things they’re excited about and new ideas, and we want to empower everyone to contribute to the final product. That shows in the end. The other thing we pride ourselves on is a great set culture. We want everyone to feel good when they come to work. We want everyone to be having a good time. The fact that we achieve that is also a testament to our collaboration.”
As they share creative responsibilities on the series, they’re able “to deal with the hard stuff between the two of us,” Walker continues. “So we don’t have to bring it to our writers. We don’t have to bring it onto set. If there is a challenge, we can come into the writers’ room or onto set with a solution. That also helps with keeping the environment positive for everyone we’re working with.”
That on-set culture is mirrored in the types of stories they want to tell on-screen. “There’s a global vibe of anxiety,” Huether says. “We want to talk about warmth. We want to talk about connection. In the world of The Next Step: Cheer, when you’re in that gym, there’s conflict, there’s tension, but it’s overwhelmingly positive and supportive between our characters. We try to push the idea that you can do comedy without being mean. You can do drama without evil villains. We try to create this warm world in which to tell a story.”
