Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Even though I was in Orlando for the Zootopia junket I ended up chatting with lead voice actress Ginnifer Goodwin over the phone. She's kinda preggers so I imagine that's why she couldn't travel, but we had a fun chat anyway.
Since I was there with my nephews I ended up recruiting the oldest, Rocco, to help me with this interview. We saw the movie together and after we talked a little about it and about how animated movies are made, so I figured I'd start with him asking Ms. Goodwin a question about that. She was super sweet about it and he did a good job. Proud Uncle alert!
We talk quite a bit about her work on Zootopia and how well-rounded and strong her character, Judy Hopps, is. Hope you enjoy the chat!
Quint: I have my 8 year old nephew, Rocco, here with me and if you wouldn't mind I'd like for him to ask the first question.
Ginnifer Goodwin: Amazing.
Rocco: Hi.
Ginnifer Goodwin: Hi, Rocco. How are you?
Rocco: Good. What's the difference between animated acting and regular acting?
Ginnifer Goodwin: It's so different! When you are voicing an animated character you are in a sound booth. In my case I was very lucky to have, in that sound booth, two directors plus a writer who are all great actors and with them I could kid around. I believe that's not usually the case.
When you only have your voice to express yourself you actually find yourself a lot more physically exhausted because you do a lot physically to add great expression to voice since you no longer facial expressions or body language or costumes or props. You don't have any idea what anything's going to look like, so you have to do a lot physically to help make your voice completely expressive.
Rocco: Thanks!
Ginnifer Goodwin: Thank you!
Quint: We were talking a little bit about this process after the movie and I don't think he quite understood, so thanks for answering his question.
Ginnifer Goodwin: No problem.
Quint: I'd actually like to expand on that, if you wouldn't mind.
Ginnifer Goodwin: Sure.
Quint: With a movie like this the comic timing really has to be spot on, it has to punch. Did you have to try to nail that timing by yourself or did you have Jason Bateman or any of the other actors actually recording with you?
Ginnifer Goodwin: I was lucky enough to work with Jason, I think, three different times. I think Disney put the kibosh on it without telling me they put the kibosh on it because I probably wasted a lot of everybody's time because Jason's so funny that I would laugh. Everything he would do was so funny I would forget the acting and laugh over his takes, ruin his takes. It was great fun for me, but ultimately not productive.
I did always have in the booth, like I was telling your nephew, two directors and a writer. I don't know if that's normal. I've only recorded for a handful of animated projects and before I had always been alone. This was magical because I could just perform scenes and my directors and my writer were all great actors.
So the dynamic onscreen between Judy and Nick is mostly the dynamic between Ginny and Byron, Rich and Jared. For instance, that sloth scene. I think we recorded that once. Some things we recorded, like, 400,000 times, but they made me so crazy in speaking so slowly, performing the sloths... without even thinking about the comic timing, they were just making me crazy. I was pulling out my hair they were speaking so slowly. I started speeding up to overcompensate. It's like being in yoga and they tell you to clear your mind, all I can think about is “I need to go to the dry cleaners, I didn't eat enough broccoli today, I forgot to call my grandmother back.” I speed up when I'm told to slow down and that's exactly what happened when we were recording the sloth scene. I truly think we only recorded it once.
It's the magic of editing, too. To me the big difference between voice over acting and on-camera acting is that on-camera is really, to me, about controlling and voice-over acting is about liberating. You relinquish all control over to your animators and your editors, knowing that most of the performance is going to be what they construct.
Quint: What's really interesting to me about the character is that she has such a strong arc. It made me start thinking about recent animated movies, especially from Pixar and Disney, and how the character work is so spot on. Simplified, but strong and it punches. There's a lot of live action characters that pale in comparison to the strong arcs we're seeing in animated characters. Have you noticed that?
Ginnifer Goodwin: I completely agree. At one point there was a song that young Judy Hopps sung. It didn't make it into the final picture, but we had been joking around about whether or not I was going to get to sing it or whether the young actress was going to get to sing it and someone made a joke about “Well, at the Oscars you can sing it.”
I realized they weren't kidding. That actually happens. There days you just know if you're part of a Disney or Pixar film you're going to the Oscars. That's crazy that you can know that, but you can!
I left a screening with my primary agent, my film agent, a couple weeks ago. I've been with her for thirteen or fourteen years and she was like “Ginny, I don't know what we get you after this. You just played the best female character on film. She may be animated, but I don't know of a better written female character.” I was like, “I don't either.”
I didn't realize that at the time. I was having the most fun I'd ever had, but seeing her put together... I mean, all I did was provide pieces to a puzzle and they put the puzzle together. I added one piece and they added a million pieces on their end. They constructed the performance, the animators, the directors, the editors. But I agree. She's the coolest, most well-rounded dynamic female character I've seen in a film in a long time. And she's a rabbit. (laughs)
Quint: What's great about her is she can be a strong female character without her gender being her defining trait, which is what so many people get wrong when they try to construct their lead. “We have to put a strong girl in the lead because Hunger Games made a ton of money.” You can tell when the creative minds behind a project understand that and when they don't.
Ginnifer Goodwin: Yes. The thing that sort of surprised me the most when seeing the final product was I hadn't realized, until I saw it, that they had created a butt-kicking action hero who was good and girly and kind and generous and uncompromising, but didn't need to have any stereotypically masculine qualities. She didn't have to be a tomboy. She didn't have to be jaded. She took responsibility for her actions, but it still didn't make her cynical by the end of the movie.
She's infinitely kind and gives every being the benefit of the doubt, even at the end! I don't know the last time I saw an action hero with those qualities.
Quint: Thanks for your time and thanks for fielding a question from the little jerk over here.
Ginnifer Goodwin: (laughs) Thank you!
And thank all of you guys for reading this and putting up with me having a little fun with my nephew and showing him what his dear ol' Uncle does.
Now to try to prepare for the insanity that is SXSW...
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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