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Q&A with Lee Isaac Chung, Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, and Yuh-Jung Youn

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Minari.

Jacob is such an interesting character. He makes some decisions that the audience could read as despicable, but the way you play him is so sympathetic so that even if we don’t end up agreeing with him, we at least understand every choice he makes. Steven, how did you conceive of him initially?

Steven Yeun: When I read Isaac’s script, it was really honest from all perspectives and that was really the foundation of it all. To have renderings of all these characters that are told from not just a role place, to not only describe them as a function of their role or the place they occupy. They became greater than the archetypes they could have easily fallen into. To start from that place, you could see Jacob’s intentions and the duality of his choices. When a man is emigrating from a country that he knows to go somewhere brand new, and then to further go from California to find his own plot of land and find something brand new, what is that motivation? Is it ego? I’m sure it is, but at other times it might be wrestled with something larger than him, something to define himself. I think that’s something that we’re all looking for to some degree. In playing Jacob, I thought about how as an actor there aren’t that many roles for Asian Americans so that seems like new territory and I can reflect on that to some degree—charting a new course and making your own choices and living and dying by your own sword. When Jacob came around to an understanding, it was the lesson of humility that he needed to come into, to understand the people around him and that he is not an island but rather sharing this experience with everyone. But sometimes he’s a little blinded by his own perspectives.   

They became greater than the archetypes they could have easily fallen into.

Isaac, you’re not only depicting Korean American immigrants, but you’re also depicting people of your parents’ generation. That generation is typically regarded with great nostalgia. How did you grapple with those elements in the script and your own memories and obligations you might have felt to that generation of immigrants?

Lee Isaac Chung: For me, it was important to not only simply honor my parents. The idea was to humanize them and understand them. You and Steven were talking about the decisions that Jacob was making in the beginning. In some ways, those decisions might seem despicable and I might agree with you; on the surface level they appear that way. But the role I needed to play in writing this story was to figure out the humanity behind those decisions. If he does something that does seem despicable to many people, why does he do that? And it was the same for every character, including Paul [played by Will Patton]. In some ways, someone like that can be very alienating but I wanted to find the thing that causes the person to do that in a way that we can all understand. That was the goal for me, not to make them into archetypes or someone to honor, but into human beings.

Yeri, Monica doesn’t seem driven by the same needs Jacob does, to appear accomplished in the eyes of their children. Can you talk about that aspect of your character?

Yeri Han: I thought Monica’s biggest strength came from the love she has for her family and this love that she has is what binds them together and prevents them from falling apart. That was the most the important thing for her. Because Monica got married at such a young age, I think she thought Jacob’s dream was her own. So when he talks about going to the US and finding success, she takes that goal as part of her own motivation. She supports him and follows him out of this faith for him. For her, it was kind of taken for granted that she would follow him and this strength is what allows her to raise her two children and stay behind Jacob continually. You could say that Monica is the person who supports Jacob the most as he tries to find fulfillment and follow his dreams; she stays next to him and continues to support him. It’s not an easy process but that’s what Monica wants for him and for herself as well. I think this is why until the very end she never talks about going separate ways despite the struggles that they face and this comes from the strength she has. At the end, I think you can say that Monica just loved Jacob more.

Yuh-Jung, Grandma Soonja is phenomenal and profane and funny and kind. How did you work with Isaac to key into the character?

Yuh-Jung Youn: First I asked Isaac about his own grandmother. I asked if I should imitate his grandmother. He said no, you don’t have to do that—he gave me the freedom of playing my own thoughts. I really appreciated that as an actor. I’m a grandmother myself and the loving… there’s no question. When you’re a mother, you’re trying to correct your own kid, telling them what not to do. Trying to make them right. But when you become a grandmother, you can just enjoy the kids and know that they will grow. That part was easy for me. Once I questioned Isaac “did you really give your pee to your grandmother?” and he said yes! You’re so mean, Isaac!

The movie is shot in a simple and naturalistic way that brings out the beauty of the locations and supports the characters and story. Can you talk about your process of working with your DP Lachlan Milne?

LIC: Lachlan is just a beautiful cinematographer and one of the things that stood out to me when I was looking at different cinematographers and their work was that he had a way with natural light that I found to be both realistic and poetic, so he wasn’t just relying on it in a broad way. He was really shaping it and he was creating a feeling with it, and that was what I was hoping we could do with this film. Once we started working together, we shared stills of different films back and forth with each other. Our influences were all over the place. We looked at old Hollywood westerns, we looked at Yasujirō Ozu, we looked at comedies because this film has a lot of different things going on tonally. Once we figured out what we were really going for—a sort of natural elegant look—I just trusted Lachlan a great deal. He was a real partner and collaborator in the look of this and Minari is what it is because of him. He was a phenomenal DP and I can’t say enough about him.

I love the way he and the production designer Yong Ok Lee worked together to make this world that is incredibly specific and has a lot of thoughtfulness and dignity but is also impoverished.

LIC: I need to add one thing that Yong Ok said about the actual clutter of the house, and this was how I knew she was a genius. She said that a lot of Korean households might not have a lot of money, but the way that they show their agency and their dignity is that they keep it clean and neat. So she had a very particular sense about how neat the family was going to keep the house and even that was by design and meant to be a characteristic. It was a delight to work with her and see how detail-oriented she was in regards to everything in the scene.

Q&A with Regina King, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr.

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of One Night in Miami.

Can you describe the origins of the story as it is portrayed on the screen?

Regina King: I would say that none of us were there that night. With Kemp [Power’s] research, he discovered the night through reading a book — I think it was a book on Muhammed Ali — and he discovered that this night took place. And he began to do a deep dive with the intention of writing a book about this night. And so he did a lot of research, and collected a lot of information on each of the men individually, and their journeys that they had experienced that lead them to this particular night. And Jim Brown being the only person that is still alive… I don’t know how much Jim actually remembers about the night! So I believe, for Kemp, this was something of an imagining of what four iconic men, who all in this moment were having discussions about what their personal responsibilities were, to themselves, to the Black community, and to the progress of Black people as an artist… and what is their responsibility just as men. And this film is an imagining of what that conversation would look like, and how much this conversation might have mirrored the one that all Black men were having at that time, regardless of their economic background or their social status. These conversations are conversations that have been had ever since the beginning of Black Americans building America, and just hearing these conversations through the voices of iconic individuals. What are the similarities, or differences? In my opinion, Kemp humanized all four of these men in a way that we don’t get the opportunity or time to take in or remember. They’re men first, but they’re also fathers, they’re complex, they’re vulnerable, they’re strong… and as Kemp wrote, I think his words are for all Black men. So that’s the not-so-short version of what is “true” and what is “not necessarily true.” The night actually happened, but no one was there but them. But based on what we know about these men, we can imagine that some of these conversations may have taken place that night.

It felt like we could all contribute and create each moment together.

This is an incredible ensemble cast. How did Regina bring your performances together?

Leslie Odom Jr.: It’s the director’s job to get everyone into the same movie. To make sure everybody is in the same film. When you read a script, you inevitably visualize a particular thing. So we all show up to the shoot on Day 1, our planes land, and we have some version of the film in our heads… and the director’s job is to get us before (hopefully before!) cameras roll, to get the same movie in everybody’s head. And obviously a great deal of that is done in pre-production. Actors are some of the last people to come onto a project. Costumes are already done, the sets are already done, they’ve had all these conversations. So, you know, Regina was so exceptional at giving us our marching orders. We very quickly gelled as a little family, and we knew what the mission was.

Aldis Hodge: As far as feeling in the correct mood — because this is very much a period piece, we’re back in the ’60’s — there’s a different rhythm, a different kind of vibe to it — I remember early talks about character development, you know, when we’re really trying to form these men. And Regina was very specific about, you know, the costumes, the color tones… it was a collaborative effort, but all of it was pointing towards building out what the world of the film would be. And she really guided us in terms of keeping in the timeframe, which helped us sort of stay in the energy of pushing forward. When it came to things like… subtle things, like how we addressed each other. When we’re greeting each other, it’s not so much, “yo what’s poppin’ man,” it’s, “what’s happenin’ cat? What’s happenin’ daddy-o?” Little things that we got to have fun with, but we stayed in it. And everybody on the cast was so dialed into that, and so dialed into who we were playing, and so dialed into the time frame, that it just became sort of a normal thing. I was almost saying “daddy-o” in real life!

Eli Goree: One of the great things about having Regina as a director — as an all-time great actor and her working with us — is that she was in the deep-dive with us. Like when we did the table reads, and we did the stuff to prep for the next day’s shooting, she’s there at the table discovering with us, being curious with us, challenging us… you know, there were several back-and-forths where we’re trying to figure out character, and she speaks that language because she is who she is; she gets it. So that was one great benefit of working with someone who has acted at that level, and is also a director, is that she’s right in there with you, whereas normally, it’s just you and the other actors… and you’ve got to figure it out amongst each other. And then you’ve got to go to the director and see if you can explain what you just figured out to that director. On other ensemble projects I’ve worked on, that’s what it’s been like. But with this, she was in there in the trenches with you, figuring out how it’s going to work. What’s the best movements, what’s the best blocking, where are you when this is happening, and those types of technical actor things. It was a real benefit and a blessing to have someone of her caliber directing and right there with you in the rehearsal.

Kingsley Ben-Adir: There were so many great actors. You’d do your preparation, and then you’d find things each day to come in and be excited about, to share and play and show. And Regina would always have something equally as exciting and fresh and surprising to bring to the scene that I certainly never would have thought about. Like the prayer scene, and Regina’s idea for that… and how much excitement she’d get from those moments just like we would. So there was just a real collaborative feeling of excitement, really, for each scene, and getting to see what everyone else was going to bring that day. It felt like we could all contribute and create each moment together.

Q&A with Jessie Barr and Nicole Holofcener

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Sophie Jones.

What was it like developing the script with your cousin Jessica Barr after she had written the first draft?

Jessie Barr: We did a lot of talking and a lot of sharing; there were intimate conversations about what we’d gone through when we lost our parents. Those were conversations that I hadn’t had with anyone before. It was really intense and intimate. After that sharing, it was also me looking at how to make this a film, how to draw upon relationships Jessica actually had with people in her life, and how to work with her as an actor. There was this idea that we were crafting a character even though it was her folded into Sophie, and me folded into Sophie, but since it was a character Jessica was playing, she needed the space to explore her safely as well. It was so important to create a safe environment where she could go to these emotional places. And that went for all of the young actors—there was so much that was required of them from the amount of commitment and vulnerability.

Script-wise, we started writing and flushing out the relationships with her and her family. Sophie felt very clear but I wanted to widen the scope of the world. Jessica grew up in Portland so once I went there and started scouting, I wanted to fold the place into the narrative. That wasn’t originally in the script. Going to the Bridge of the Gods, Short Sand Beach, just seeing the natural world and trying to find a way to link that narratively to Sophie’s mother became an essential part of developing the script.

what is the cinematic structure of grief—what does that look like, what does that feel like?

How did Nicole come on as EP to the project?

Nicole Holofcener: I was doing a Tribeca alum talk and Jessie came up to me afterwards. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I didn’t think she was a lunatic, which was a good thing. She could’ve been! Or she could have made a really uninteresting movie. Do you remember Jessie?

JB: I was thinking about this because it sounds insane. I never do things like this. I just remember that talk you gave was so inspiring and your films have always made me feel so seen, especially the parts of me that I always thought were really unlovable. This story, and this film, I was so on fire to tell it. It made me really bold because I think it came from such a pure place, so I just felt compelled to go up to you! Which again, I have never done in my life.

NH: I seemed nice, right?

JB: You were really chill. We chatted for a minute and I said I had a cut of my feature and I would love your notes or thoughts and I think I gave you my broken phone so you could type in your email.

NH: Sometimes I’m open to that, if I get a sense of a certain competence or like I said, she didn’t seem crazy. Of course I wouldn’t really know if she was crazy or not, but I was intrigued! I watched the movie and was so impressed. I expected it to be rough, but I was so happy to see a good first film, directed by a woman and so personal. It was such an intimate story that allowed the character to live and for us to live through her grief with her in extreme close-up. I was moved by it. So I gave Jessie notes and watched a few cuts and eventually I said I can come on as EP, especially if this will help more people watch this film.

Was there anything that changed significantly after Nicole became involved?

JB: The big thing was her belief in me and her vote of confidence. Because I’d been so close to the film for so long, I had lost some perspective. To hear that it affected her and she was moved and able to connect felt incredible and made me believe more. Some of the notes that were really helpful pertained to the family—I wish I had more time and resources to go back and shoot more with the family but one of the things I really remembered note-wise was that even though we start with Sophie, as she evolves in her grieving process we start to open up to her family and see more of them and their experiences. Even in terms of the cinematography, we went into wider shots as the film progressed.

You use a lot of oners of this film and move the camera around quite a bit. Did you have footage in case you wanted to intercut those takes?

JB: It’s funny, I had an overly ambitious number of oners planned. Coming from the theater world, there’s something about seeing bodies interacting in real time in the frame that I find really compelling and fascinating… seeing the energies bouncing off the characters versus crafting that with classic coverage. There were some that I did have some coverage for, but for the most part it was committing to that choice and then also playing with the juxtaposition of jump cuts to make it feel fragmented. I wanted to play with, what is the cinematic structure of grief—what does that look like, what does that feel like?

Jessie, you mentioned that Nicole’s films made you appreciate the parts of yourself that you thought were unlovable. Can you both speak to that and how those ideas might relate to Sophie? She can be a challenging protagonist.

JB: As I was growing up, I internalized a need to perform and be likeable, smiling, pleasing, saying yes when I didn’t want to. It’s really been writing and directing that has freed me to really be the fearless eight-year-old girl that I was and to be the woman I want to be, which is someone that doesn’t smile if she doesn’t want to smile. I think for Sophie, what I found so compelling is that there is this deep inner life and this confidence and this willingness to be in this space that is not always performative or pleasing for the sake of others. For young women especially, I wanted there to be a reverence and non-judgment because so many times young women are dismissed because there is a power there that people fear. I wanted to drive straight into the heart of that power and those complications and difficulties and show that we’re all still worthy of love.

NH: To me, the character of Sophie was like a person from another planet. First of all, I was the opposite of her, like what Jessie was saying. I would never be so blunt with a guy—I’d be so worried about making sure he understood why I ran out of the bathroom and that I had an anxiety attack and I would have apologized and apologized throughout the whole film for being such a bitch, but she’s really just taking care of herself. It’s all very foreign to me; my characters talk all the time. They talk about their feelings and what they’re angry about, what they hate about themselves, and here’s this character that doesn’t really say anything! She just tells the story of where she is and why she is there, and we get to know her that way. It doesn’t mean she’s more competent because she didn’t speak much, it’s just the way she copes. It was very unique for me to see this girl behave this way and I wish I had some of that when I was sixteen, that I hadn’t been so worried about other people’s feelings.

Q&A with Jayro Bustamante and Gustavo Matheu

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of La Llorona.

Can you tell us about the evolution of this film?

Jayro Bustamante: Well, you know, at the beginning we were thinking about making a triptych, and that that triptych would be about three insults that are common in Guatemala and that people are accustomed to hearing all the time. And those insults, in my point of view, increase discrimination and separation between different circles of society. So the first of these insults is “indio,” and we know that in Guatemala that most of the population can trace their ancestry to indigenous peoples, the Mayan. It’s very… sad, to understand that for us, the product of our origin is something we are supposed to be ashamed of when we’re called “indio.” The second insult is “homosexual.” And it’s not only because we are a homophobic society, but it’s also intended to be an insult because they are essentially saying that if you are gay you are feminine, and therefore if you are feminine you are a lesser person. So at the end, the insult is towards all women as well. It’s very misogynistic. And the third insult is “communist.” And that insult is not about the fact that you’re part of a specific political ideology, it’s more coming from the 1950’s, when the United States had a lot of influence in Guatemala, and to be “communist” was to be the enemy. Even in the present day, it’s still a big insult to level at someone— it’s saying you’re an enemy of the state. Today, all the people who defend human rights, or social rights, or independent rights are called “communists.” So we wanted to talk about that third insult in La Llorona. The other two would have their own films. But in La Llorona we wanted to talk about that third insult. We were thinking about the fact that the world perceives a country that doesn’t respect human rights was finished by a genocide. So we started thinking about how to talk about that subject if my country doesn’t want to talk about it. And we made a kind study of which films Guatemalan’s were going to the theater to see. We found that they were consuming two main kinds: Superhero films, and horror films. So coming from that, we decided to use the legend of La Llorona as a way in. For us, La Llorona is a kind of cultural icon, and she comes from the horror universe. So it was very… I think very smart! To use that mythological character to talk about Guatemala’s recent history. 

We ended up editing the film, which is not normal for a director and a producer

Gustavo, as a producer, how did you figure into the creation of the story, once you’ve decided to very intentionally make it accessible to a commercial market?

Gustavo Matheu: It’s something I really loved being involved with, because when Jayro invited me to collaborate originally, it was not only to work on films (which is obviously what I love), but it was also to use cinema as a tool to address issues in out country and in Latin America in general. And this was Jayro’s idea from the beginning. He did it with Ixcanul and with Tremors, and now with La Llorona. It’s not only about making films as a way of entertainment. For me, being involved in those projects that are not only aimed at making money in a theater, but are also intended to make people talk about things that are actually important, inspires me and makes want to be more involved in every aspect of the filmmaking process. And La Llorona was a film where we both got very very involved. We ended up editing the film, which is not normal for a director and a producer! But we knew the story, and we wanted to get it to the end. So we were very hands-on with the film the entire time. It was a beautiful experience and an honor.

How aware is the current generation about the atrocities that occurred in Guatemala?

JB: We wanted to talk about that in the film— we wanted to represent three different, or even four different generations in the film. And the generation represented by the character of Carmen, which is the generation that really lost the empathy for the suffering of all the Mayan people, of the victims, coming from the war. And I was thinking about the fact that this is a generation of people who lost that empathy, and how it would be appropriate if a ghost came to haunt them, to show them how the other people suffered. And the second generation is the one represented by Natalia in the film. And she’s kind of my generation— we really grew up with fear, and we’re still living with fear. So we have a lot of questions. And we start opening doors, but we don’t have the courage to go through them afterward. And the third generation is represented by the character of Sara. I don’t know if her generation will be like Natalia’s; I hope it won’t be. Maybe I’m unfairly putting the responsibility on that generation. But I think they will open and go through those doors, and they will look for answers. And the fourth generation — that I really like — is represented by Valeriana, the other Mayan who works in that house. And that’s the generation that has suffered the worst, because they are people who are living in those kinds of houses, serving those kinds of people, even if they know what those people have done and what they think. And in a way they are forced to love them and say ‘thank you’ anyway. So all of that is what we wanted to show in the film.

Q&A with Pete Doctor, Kemp Powers, and Dana Murray

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Soul.

Can you talk about the design of the film and how it’s another evolution for Pixar both in the extremes of realism and surrealism that it achieves? It’s a New York film, but there’s also the astral plane.

Pete Docter: One of the big joys for me in working in this business is to embrace stuff that is perfect for animation. It’s a bit of a subjective term but it was the thing that drove me to think about the concept for Inside/Out… how do we personify emotions as abstract as that? In this film, we learned pretty quickly that souls generally are thought of by various religious traditions as ethereal and non-physical and vaporous and invisible. So this was a real challenge. I also think that, particularly in the U.S., we are conditioned to think of animation as something for kids. There’s no reason for that; you don’t go to a museum and say “oh, oil paintings, that’s for kids.” It’s capable of anything and we’re so lucky to work at a place that allows us to push the boundaries of that box. This film was definitely doing that for us!

Jazz is the perfect metaphor for the central themes of our film

Kemp, the story about how you came to co-direct this film is pretty remarkable.

Kemp Powers: Yeah, I was brought on as a writer about two years into the process. And I think that in the process of making Pixar films, there are often several writers that come on throughout—it wasn’t unusual. I think the fact that I got made a co-director was unique. A lot of that came from where the film was at that point. I was definitely looped into to lots of other elements of the film that writers aren’t typically involved with, everything from casting to character design and set design to our culture trust, both internal and external. It was probably eight months to a year into the process as the script was really getting tight that Pete and Dana actually asked me to become co-director and of course I asked “what does that mean?” and I found out that I had kind of been doing that the whole time! There were a lot of things that we learned in the process of making this film. This was a slightly unusual creative process even within the realm of Pixar films.

You mentioned this phrase “culture trust.” Can you expand on that?

Dana Murray: We have an internal culture trust which is a group of some of the black employees at Pixar that we bring along during the entire creative process of the film. We’d have screenings where we put the reels together, the storyboards, dialogue and music and all that and then we have typical notes session with our brain trust. But then we also have a notes session afterwards just with our culture trust, to see if there are things that don’t feel right or how we can make scenes feel more culturally authentic. They also review characters and sets as well and they really contributed quite a bit to this film. It was great because it was such a diverse group even within the culture trust. We wanted to make sure there was a lot of gender diversity and age diversity, a range of where people grew up. That was kind of the fun of it because everyone has a different opinion of things! Trying to figure out which direction to go after those note sessions could sometimes be tricky but was also really rewarding.

The music is so integral to the story. To me it was such an incredible sonic experience—it became apparent how tightly the Jon Batiste work was intertwined with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s work in a way that’s not just score, but part of the story.

PD: Ren Klyce—who did our sound design—is amazing. It was through him we hooked up with Trent and Atticus. What we learned in working on their music with them is that sonically it’s not just played on speakers up front. It becomes part of the experience; you’re in this scene. The music becomes part of the sound design and the ambience of the world. So that was new, as well as the way they worked. We’re used to having our temp music up until the picture locks, and then you hand it off to the composer, and then they write to picture. In this instance, they were giving us cues as we were still re-writing and editing, so we would cut it in and do a lot of editing and mucking around and then return it to them to polish. They were much more involved in the process in a very organic way. And of course with Batiste, we needed to record him before the animation so we could match. That’s the way dialogue is done. You record the actors and then the animators listen and they’re looking for these ways to synchronize the sound with the picture that just completes this illusion that the sound is coming out of the character. By recording Batiste first, the animators could match every finger, every gesture and even push it further than real life. Music was a huge part of this movie. Maybe someone else wants to talk about the thematic elements of jazz.

KP: Jazz is honestly the perfect metaphor for the central themes of our film. Its’s improvisational, like life itself. You have to take whatever is thrown at you and turn it into something beautiful. Which was always a good argument to have whenever someone would ask “really, a kids movie about jazz?” and we always said no, we need it, it’s core to the central story we’re trying to tell. Fortunately, when we tested it out on kids, they really leaned in on the performative aspects of jazz. It’s alluring to children, seeing someone playing the saxophone and fingering or banging away on the piano keys. It actually really drew kids in.

Can you talk about developing the look of the film with your Cinematographer, crafting the lighting and camerawork, and also the contributions of the great Bradford Young?

PD: The way we work is that we have two DPs, traditionally. We had Matt Aspury, our DP of layout, and Ian Megibbon, who was lighting. Those guys came to us and said the ultimate New York films are those iconic ones from the 70s. So let’s try to approximate the same film stock, the same lens choice, so we had anamorphic lenses which you can kind of tell from the way it sort of blurs in the background. It was important and really fit into the overall design because we wanted the ethereal world to be clean and soft and fuzzy and this world is gritty and hard-edged. So there’s a really great opposition and contrast.

KP: Bradford is known, among many other things, for how well he lights black skin and black characters. We had a great variety of black complexions in the film so it behooved us to have him on board as a consultant, and Ian is a huge fan of Bradford. Bradford actually came in a few different times and didn’t just discuss lighting black skin but some other techniques of lighting that he uses that we hadn’t really used before. Like Bradford does this wonderful thing with single source lighting, where sometimes there will be light coming from a single source and it will cast a character in a shadow in a way that previously we wouldn’t have done in a Pixar-animated film. But he gave these great discussions about lighting and the subversive things that lighting can say about wealth versus poverty. He put this all into an incredible historical context. Our lighting team really took it to heart. It’s so funny because we hear people say that the film looks photorealistic, but it’s not. I think some of those lighting techniques are responsible for what appears to some people to be a photorealistic look.

What makes for a great voice actor? Is it just about the voice or is there something else?

DM: Our process is that first we design a character and spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they look like. Then as we get closer to needing to cast with the casting department, we ask them to provide a ton of voices but we don’t want to know who the actors are, so we can listen to these while we look at the character design. Sometimes you can tell, obviously, if it’s someone super recognizable. But for the most part you don’t know. You want the voice to fit with the design you have. I think what makes the best voice actors are the ones that can go in and not just deliver what’s in the script, but have fun and deliver lines that aren’t on-script, because those tend to be the funniest.