Back in August, I got to share with you an exclusive first peek into the world of Wreck It Ralph. I was introduced to the many worlds inside this holiday season’s hottest animated film by the team that created them and a few weeks ago I got to talk to the actors that make the characters come to life.
John C. Reilly plays Ralph, the video game bad guy who is tired of his job and sets out to win a medal so that he can be the good guy too. When Reilly walks into a room, you can see lots of the inspiration in Ralph’s onscreen animated movements , but when he speaks is when you really can see… Reilly is Ralph. “I sorta became Ralph and Ralph became me through the process of doing it,” said Reilly, “I think one of the reasons it ended up seeming like such a personal character or, at least, personally connected to the way I sound or am, is cause Rich Moore, the director, and Jim Rearden and Phil Johnston, all brought me in for story meetings and solicited my ideas and let me improvise and… they film you when you’re recording the voice. So all this stuff I was doing to get myself into character, they ended up using to animate [Ralph].”
In fact, when you look at each of the main characters and their voice actors, you can see a lot of each within the character, some seem to be made for them. Jane Lynch said of being asked to read for the role, “I showed up and ‘did my thang’ [sic] and I said is that what you want? You want me to do a voice? They said no no… you’re here cause you do that. I was like… all right!”
Others just clicked with their character immediately, when asked how she found Vanellope’s voice, Sarah Silverman said “It just came. There was very little searching for that voice it happened in like a minute, I just looked at her, and the character and she’s so scrappy. I just kinda sped up my voice like it was a record player and (in Vanellope’s voice) talk like this and I gave her kinda a permanent cold.”
Lynch’s Sergeant Calhoun was given a backstory of losing a loved one on an important day to one of the deadly cybugs her character battles every day, and it adds a lot to her character and Lynch loved finding her character’s vulnerable spot and related. “Personally, now I see vulnerability as a great strength,” says Lynch, “and she of course, isn’t sold on that, she is too deeply wounded. but certainly I know what its like to be deeply wounded and not wanting to let anybody else in there and kinda have a chip on your shoulder, and punishing anyone who comes in your way for what you did wrong.”
The recording of the voices in Wreck It Ralph worked a bit different than most animated movies. In most animation, each actor is recorded in a booth on a separate day, with no interaction with anyone else. When John C. Reilly was approached to be Ralph, he had some reservations…that led to an interesting, and fruitful request.
“One of the prerequisites for doing the movie, at least for me,” said Reilly, “I heard how animation worked, and I thought, well that doesn’t sound fun at all. I said to Rich, if we do this, we gotta have everyone in the same room.”
What came of all that talent recording scenes together? Silverman said, “ just be able to look at each other and improvise and talk over each other you know…to be able to overlap and digress and improvise and go in a completely bizarre direction really I think it helped. What they took from it gave it that dynamic between us a little. The subtle nuance that you wouldn’t get if we were just alone in a booth.”
The magic that was created in Wreck It Ralph with these talented actors shows because they are all storytellers who use their voice as an instrument to bring these video game characters to life. Reilly summed it up best, “if I could have an office at Disney and just do this (voiceover and motion studies) all day as a job, I would be perfectly happy. I like just being creative and telling stories and using my voice to do that is really satisfying.”
Wreck It Ralph is out in theaters everywhere tomorrow.
Disclosure: No compensation was received. I attended a press event to facilitate these interviews. All opinions are 100% my own.
I bet this game is loads of fun! Those are such fun people.