This past Friday was the first day that Pixar’s new movie Inside Out hit the theaters. It was a huge hit with the box office numbers too and I wasn’t surprised. This new film that Pixar has finally released is amazing and full of emotions. This month during my trip to Los Angeles for the #InsideOutEvent our group had the opportunity to interview Kyle Maclachlan who voices the dad in Inside Out.
Some of you might already know Kyle MacLachlan from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Desperate Housewives, Law and Order and The Good Wife. MacLachlan also had roles in some films from the 80’s like Blue Velvet, The Hidden and Dune and even played Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks from the early 90’s. Now he has taken on a new role as the voice of “Dad” in Pixar’s exciting new film Inside Out which is a much different role than many of you are used to seeing him play. Only this time you won’t see him, you will just hear his voice.
In Pixar’s Inside Out, the movie is based upon an 11 year old’s different emotions that include Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust and Fear. When we sat down with Kyle this month, the first question that was asked was which identities would control him. His response brought some laughter into the room.
It would be, Wino would be one. He controls me after 6. I don’t know if Pete Doctor and Jonas and those guys thought of that one, and it maybe not appropriate for Riley, for that maybe. Coffee would be another one. They’re pretty much the same. Don’t you think? I mean, I was thinking to myself what emotion sort of rides Gain on me, you know, as the dominant but still joy, I think for me. And I would put underneath that silliness, just because that’s just kind of my nature. And you know, the rest of them would be secondary so I still have I don’t know, I’m pretty silly still so yes.
Since Kyle is a dad himself, we next asked how much of the character is him since the roles that he has played in the past are unlike this one.
It was fun to do this guy because being a Dad myself, I was able to bring a little bit of my relationship with my son in and it was encouraged actually by Pete and Jonas and Ronnie, they wanted my personality so I was happy to try different things. Some worked, most didn’t but it’s always good to throw them out there just ideas.
But the process is strange cause you’re sitting with a Microphone and you don’t have anything visually to work off of so it’s all of the, you know, Pete would feed me all the information and kind of what was happening in the scene and I would read it and then I had to kind of go into my head and play it out in my head as I was doing it so it was like I was shooting my own little movie as I was saying the words and so walking into the room and sitting down on the edge of the bed and saying things got a little hand, you know, out of the hand and I was like well now, you start asking questions like would I say that from the doorway or would I knock? So you begin to just put it together in your brain about well, let me try it this way and then let me try it starting it here. And so that was the process which I find fascinating.
Most people I think would be bored to tears but I love just how to interpret those words, in the most interesting way, hopefully so that’s the difference between doing it in front of the camera where you’re actually just walking through it and you can feel it yourself to just playing it out in your head as you go so I hope that answered the question but that’s the process.
We asked Kyle if he could compare voice acting and standard acting and if he could relax in voice acting.
Well you know, going to work, I always say, as an Actor, you know, they sort of tell you what time, they pick you up sometimes. They feed you, they tell what to wear. They tell you what to say. They tell you where to stand. They tell you when to stop, they tell you when to go. They tell you where to sit and you’re waiting. They tell you where to eat lunch. So it’s pretty nice not to have to do a whole lot. Voice Acting is nice because there’s not a Camera that you have to be aware of necessarily. Although they did film all of the stuff that I was doing just to capture the physical gestures and mannerisms and a little bit to incorporate I think in the role or in the drawings.
But it’s different, and challenging because as I said earlier, I run the scene in my head so I’m recreating, cause I don’t see all the stuff. It’s sort of described, he’s at the door, he’s at the bed. I’m like, when does he get there? And how does that work and when is his line when you reach out and touch your hair, would you like pat our hand? All that is running in my head as I’m doing it, trying to recreate it up here. And that takes. You get exhausted doing that actually. But there’s only 2 hour sessions so that was OK, yeah.
We asked Kyle if he had any specific challenges in the making of Inside Out.
No it was all challenging just to capture the reality to get him, that the voice would have enough going on in it, you know, enough emotion, enough intensity, would match the visual, the levels, trying to get the levels just right and I didn’t know if I was like. As I said, I’m playing him in my head but I’m not – I’m not seeing him to match my performance to him which you would do an ADR so in a way, I would walk away a session and be like OK, I think that was OK, I hope it’s OK. They’ll tell me if it’s not OK. I hope they don’t fire me. But it was one of those where there was a little bit of uncertainty each time.
And I relied them to let me know OK, we need more here, less here, move this around a little bit so they really were instrumental in guiding the the levels of the performance.
We all had to know this question. We asked Kyle MacLachlan how did he get involved in this project in the first place.
They came to me through my Commercial Agent actually. It was Dahling and they talked to her and she had this for me and I was like, that sounds very interesting and Pixar of course, I was so happy. And didn’t really know what to expect and what they needed. And I had such a lovely first meeting with Pete Doctor and Jonas and Ronnie DeCarmen. They just were very grateful and I was grateful so it was a good — good mix. So yeah.
These were just some of my favorite questions that were asked during our interview with Kyle MacLachlan. For more coverage on this interview, follow the #InsideOutEvent hashtag on Twitter!
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