Let's start at the beginning. How is the audition process on an animated project different than on a live action film?
I've never had another audition process quite like it. The way it worked, for me anyway, is that Dean [Deblois, the director] was a fan of Game of Thrones and my work on it and he approached my agents and asked if I'd be interested in doing this. At which point I watched the first How to Train Your Dragon and really enjoyed, said "Yes, I would." But it was all contingent on meeting Dean and doing one recording session and trying out some voices. I did that session, they liked what I was doing and so we went ahead and I had the part.
Is there anything from that first session in the finished film?
No, the first few sessions we were experimenting with who the character was. We started off quite Scandinavian and Swedish, and he had quite a silly voice. That worked but it didn't work opposite other peoples voices, it didn't work with Jay [Baruchel's] voice. So we went back to the drawing board and I thought about it and how this film has a lot of Scottish accents and a lot of American accents but it could do with some more regional British accents, really.
I didn't want to do Northern like Jon Snow, and I thought this character is quite boisterous, he's a bit of a lad, so a bit of a London accent might help that along. Dean listened to it, and it sounded right to all of us, and I think I may have explained why I think it was the right thing but, mainly, they're just very skilled at listening in to voices and seeing what's good for the character.
In your early conversations with Dean about Eret, what were your discussions of the character? How did Dean personify him to you?
He started out not totally different but quite different to how he ended up. He started out as a real buffoon. He kept making jokes that no-one got. He had this group of friends but he'd crack a joke but he wouldn't know how to do it, or he'd come out with a comeback to Hiccup that nobody understood. He was physically tough but just a buffoon. There's an element of this in the final film but we smartened him up and made him a bit more adept at his job.
Once you'd worked out who he was how many recording sessions did it take? And how far apart were they?
I think we did about seven or eight sessions, about an hour or two hours long, maybe a little longer at times. That was over a year and a half, I think, quite evenly dispersed. It was a nice, long process that felt quite bizarre when it was finally finished, it felt like something had gone forever.
It seems like it might be difficult to get back into the mindset again and again, and to put the character down and then keep coming back to him.
What they try to do at Dreamworks is show you all along the way how the character is developing, both in animation terms and with what you recorded on a previous session. You can listen to them in advance, revisit them, practice them and they will remind you if you're going slightly off course and play you something to show you where you were before. It was an interesting exercise to see how long a character stays with you, and as I was leaving him for so long, I guess he does.
As Eret is so fond of telling us, he's the son of Eret. Did you have an idea of what his father was like in your mind?
I saw them all as orphans, as lost boys, these men in this ice world who don't seem to have fathers or mothers or children. I feel like Eret is one of those people who gathered them all together under one cause and was now looking after them. When he says, "Eret, son of Eret," I don't think he's ever met his father, or it was just a long, long time ago that he did, so that's all just for show, that announcement.
You're only half of the deal with an animated character. Do you feel ownership of the performance, or that you share it with the animators?
I definitely share it with the animators. The credit pretty much all goes to them. What I bring to the table is a certain character I had in my head, and a way of moving that they can look at. They look at me in the studio and film it and then use some of what I'm doing physically with the character. It's a real collaboration, more so than you'd ever create with a director on another film. The animators, let's face it, do the bulk of the work, but I enjoy that process.
Did you ever discuss the character with the animators, or was it just that you saw some of their designs and footage and they saw tape of you performing and the character flowed back and forth through that?
They work very hard behind the scenes in looking at what you're doing and listening to your voice and making sure that what they bring to it matches what you've done vocally. That side of it was definitely out of my hands, and I'd definitely not turn around and say "I don't think he'd move like that." That's not my job.
Animated films go through so many versions, so when you saw the finished film was there anything you missed from the recording sessions? Anything conspicuously absent?
No, not really. Pretty much everything I expected was there. They'd tell me at every session "This bit we didn't like so we're going to change it to this thing" and that happened all the way through. The final product was very close to the last few sessions and all of those scenes were in there.
This clearly requires a very different type of acting but is there anything you can take away and apply to your on-camera work?
I think there's a bravery that goes with this work, a liberty to go big. You have to big. Your vocal work has to be larger than life because that's what works. My tendency a lot of times is to underplay things, to go small and, hopefully, be detailed in a small way. It was nice to be given free reign to be quite theatrical and to make bold choices. That's what I take away from it. I enjoyed not having a camera crew watching my every move, not feeling constricted by cameras, marks, hair and makeup. It was nice to have that freedom.
There's this, there's Game of Thrones, there's the Arthur and Lancelot thing you almost did with David Dobkin... do yo think people just come looking to you, now, for this kind of medieval, viking or fantasy stuff, or is it something you are somehow responsible for?
I'm definitely responsible in many ways. It's true that after the first couple of years of Thrones a lot of what was sent through to me was very period in its style, and still is sometimes, but I think I've got less of that recently because I've turned a lot of it down. I've not wanted to audition for it because I've enjoyed that side of things, but I have it once a year with Thrones but it's more important for me, now, to do as varied projects as I can. I've done an animated film, I've just wrapped on a modern day spy thriller, I've done a period film set in World War I, I've done a comedy with Andy Samberg. I've got a great amount of different things going on. I'm just trying to discover what I like most and where my passion lies at the moment.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 is available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital November 11th.
Share This Article
