Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Interviews With Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey And Angela Bassett
‘Soul’ cast members Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett, Phylicia Rashad, writers/directors Pete Docter and Kemp Powers, and producer Dana Murray discuss their new Pixar movie in this interview with CinemaBlend Managing Editor Sean O’Connell.
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00:00 My kids watch it, you know, my kids, super critical,
00:02 you know, 'cause they watch a lot, you know,
00:04 dab, you know, the third act, you know,
00:07 so they have that type of,
00:08 but they just watch it and loved it.
00:09 And so I think it's a beautiful Christmas gift
00:12 that we can continue to unwrap for days to come.
00:15 - You're still alive?
00:17 - Can you help me get back?
00:18 - No way!
00:20 - There I am!
00:21 What are we waiting for?
00:22 - Wait, not me!
00:23 (screaming)
00:29 - The relationship between Joe and 22,
00:31 to me, is so extremely special.
00:33 I'm curious, did you get to voice with Tina at all?
00:35 Or was it all stuff that--
00:36 - Yeah, I actually got a chance to be in the same room
00:39 with her and I was just blown away, man.
00:40 Just looking at Tina Fey, like, wow, that's Tina Fey.
00:43 And, you know, as a comic, you know, she's a technician.
00:46 I mean, you know, she knows how to, you know,
00:49 she knows how to get it, get the characters,
00:50 and I know her history as being a writer
00:52 and things like that.
00:53 So just being able to have that, man, means everything,
00:56 you know, for the experience of the movie,
00:58 to be able to meet someone that you really respect
01:00 and admire and are a fan of.
01:02 - What do you wanna be remembered for?
01:05 - Probably for doing this funny cowboy dance.
01:08 - I need to start with this rumor that's going around,
01:12 that you and Amy Poehler are trying to destroy me
01:15 emotionally through your contributions to Pixar's library.
01:18 - It is not a rumor, it's true.
01:21 - It is?
01:22 - Mine too.
01:23 (laughing)
01:24 - Which line?
01:25 - Sean.
01:26 - There's a line that made me laugh
01:27 where you talk about using her voice
01:30 and it says, "I just use this voice
01:31 because it annoys people."
01:32 But yet it's your voice.
01:34 Do you ever stop and say, "Wait a second."
01:36 - Yeah, when we talked about that,
01:38 I think I was, maybe, I don't wanna misremember,
01:40 but I think that was something
01:42 that we all talked about together of maybe naming,
01:44 finding a joke way to name the fact that like,
01:47 why does this unborn soul sound
01:49 like a middle-aged white lady?
01:50 - You can't crush a soul here.
01:52 - That's what life on Earth is for.
01:53 - Everyone's least favorite kind of person.
01:56 - Right.
01:57 - I universally despised middle-aged white lady.
01:59 And that was kind of the joke that came out of it.
02:02 - The music that Joe plays is so pivotal to the character.
02:05 I'm really curious, at what point in the process
02:07 did you get to hear the music they were gonna use for him
02:09 and was it important for you as you figured him out?
02:11 - Well, you know what?
02:12 They let me hear some of it here and there,
02:15 which, you know, I mean, Baptiste is just,
02:18 I mean, come on, man.
02:19 You're in high grass right now.
02:22 You're in high grass.
02:23 So anything he touches is amazing.
02:25 Just being able to sort of take that music,
02:28 use it as inspiration, use it as a mindset
02:31 so that when we're saying those words,
02:33 you know, they really mean something.
02:34 You know, Joe is really passionate about this, you know.
02:37 You start out on a goal or a dream
02:39 and then your dream turns into something else
02:41 that is just as fulfilling.
02:43 So it was amazing.
02:44 - I'm curious if you got to hear any of that music
02:47 as you started to prepare to play her.
02:50 - Not one note.
02:52 - You're kidding me, really?
02:54 - I kid you not.
02:56 And that's so insightful that you would say that.
03:00 Now I'm wondering why not?
03:02 Well, no, no.
03:04 I only heard it when, you know,
03:07 when I was able to see the film
03:09 and I was surprised and blown away.
03:10 It was lovely.
03:11 It was beautiful to see Dorothea get into the groove,
03:14 into her own song.
03:16 - In order for your story to start,
03:18 you need to kill your main character.
03:20 And I don't imagine that that's something
03:21 that a lot of animated features get to say.
03:23 So I'm just really curious what kind of conversations
03:25 you had about how do we kill Joe and how much can we show?
03:30 - We had a couple of thoughts of maybe he was so
03:32 into rehearsing that he gets hit by a truck or something.
03:36 It needed to be kind of comedic
03:37 'cause you don't want to horrify people right off the bat.
03:40 - We talked about a piano falling on him.
03:43 - Yeah, yeah, that would have been good.
03:45 - Well, we had the one boarded version.
03:47 Remember when he banged his head on something dangling down
03:50 and didn't know he was dead?
03:52 So he was still walking, then turned around and looked back
03:55 and he was dead behind him.
03:57 So he just got knocked out
03:59 and kept walking down the street.
04:01 - Is this heaven?
04:02 - No.
04:04 - Is it H-E double hockey sticks?
04:07 - Hell? - Hell?
04:08 - Hell? - Hell?
04:09 - Hell? - Hell?
04:10 - Hell? - Hell?
04:11 - Hell? - Hell?
04:12 - Hell? - Hell?
04:12 - Hell? - Hell?
04:13 - You know, the consensus is that the brand of Pixar is,
04:17 you know, whenever they come to you and say,
04:18 "We'd like you to do this,"
04:19 you would immediately say yes.
04:21 I'm curious what your relationship was.
04:22 Have you been trying to do a collaboration
04:24 with them over the years?
04:24 Is this something you were actively pursuing?
04:26 - I mean, in my mind, yeah.
04:28 I was pursuing it with like Jedi mind tricks.
04:31 But I was thrilled, you know, years ago,
04:34 I was asked to revoice the American version of "Ponyo,"
04:37 which I was thrilled enough to have been a part of that,
04:40 which is another incredibly visually beautiful film.
04:44 And I'm just a general Disney park nerd.
04:46 So other than me just kind of telling anyone I met
04:49 at the parks that I would be open to working
04:52 on any Disney project.
04:54 - Right.
04:54 - It wasn't something I was seeking out.
04:56 However, it was something that I wanted.
04:59 And I've wanted to voice in an animated feature.
05:03 Oh, I've wanted to do that for so long.
05:06 And this is my first.
05:07 I loved it.
05:08 I'd go in the studio.
05:09 Of course, you know, well, I'm in the studio
05:14 and everybody's on the West Coast
05:16 and I'm on the East Coast.
05:17 We're talking to each other
05:18 and we're seeing each other through a screen.
05:21 And the lines are there and, you know, you read the line
05:24 and because they're so expert, Peter,
05:27 and, you know, they're so good at what they do.
05:30 They hear things, subtle things.
05:32 - Okay.
05:33 - Like subtle intonations that give another clue,
05:37 that give another feeling,
05:40 that give another indication of what's happening.
05:42 And I didn't find it tedious at all.
05:45 I really enjoyed it.
05:46 - I'm curious, what aspect of the afterlife
05:49 was the hardest visually for you guys to conjure
05:51 or to settle on?
05:52 - Well, I mean, one of our board artists, Trevor Jimenez,
05:56 boarded a lot of these kind of surreal scenes
05:59 where he's falling through these weird spaces.
06:02 And they just seemed like that clicked pretty quickly.
06:05 On the other hand, the great before,
06:07 this area where we all get our personality,
06:10 our sense of who we are,
06:11 that took a couple of years really
06:16 to be able to nail down.
06:17 - This isn't the great beyond, it's the great before.
06:20 - The great before?
06:22 - Because we wanted it to feel non-specific culturally,
06:25 because everybody in the world comes from this place.
06:28 It should hopefully be visually obvious
06:30 what's happening here,
06:31 where we're being bestowed, you know,
06:33 different kinds of, you know,
06:35 adventurousness, resourcefulness,
06:37 whatever kind of personality attributes we have.
06:40 So that was very hard.
06:41 - I'm curious if you had a Dorothea yourself in your career,
06:44 someone who you felt like you needed to impress
06:47 or wanted to impress
06:48 to almost prove your talents to yourself.
06:50 - So we're down to middle school band teachers now.
06:54 - Oh, I always wanted to impress my dear aunt in my life
06:59 because she would say,
07:02 "Don't waste that education on theater.
07:04 Don't do that."
07:06 You know, so every time I got a job,
07:08 it's like, "I'm eating, auntie, I'm eating, look," you know?
07:10 So she was much like, you know,
07:12 Jamie's mother, the mother character in there, the Libba,
07:15 but she was supportive,
07:17 but she wanted you to be practical.
07:19 She wanted you to survive.
07:20 - But certainly for members of our community,
07:23 I heard that speech,
07:25 "You gotta have something to fall back on.
07:27 Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
07:30 Oh, that's not really a solid career.
07:32 Well, that's very nice that you like to do that,
07:34 but you know, you gotta face, people don't really,
07:36 it's a toss up, you know,
07:39 but that's not why artists engage in the work
07:44 that we engage in.
07:45 We engage in the work because the work is in us to do.
07:49 - This morning, I was able to pause on something
07:52 'cause I figured there'd be an Easter egg buried in it
07:54 and it's all the, "Hello, my name is" stickers.
07:56 - Oh, yeah.
07:57 - I saw Joe Ramp's name in that.
07:59 That was a very beautiful tribute.
08:00 - Joe was one of our great, great Head of Story collaborators,
08:05 great actor, and we all learned a lot from him.
08:08 I do feel like he's one of my mentors.
08:11 (piano music)
08:13 - Sorry, I zoned out a little back there.
08:17 - This movie visualized something
08:20 that I've been able to experience a couple of times
08:22 playing music, the idea of the zone.
08:24 Have you experienced the zone before in acting or comedy?
08:28 And how does it come about?
08:30 What does it feel like for you?
08:32 - The zone is amazing.
08:33 Like, you know, acting, of course, Ray Charles,
08:37 doing standup, doing standup in Oakland, California, 1991,
08:42 comedy competition.
08:45 I go up and it was a magical moment in Oakland, California.
08:48 I will never forget Oakland for that.
08:50 At the, I think the Paramount Theater,
08:52 and it was just a moment, you know?
08:55 - Yeah, I mean, I think it's such a real thing.
08:56 I think of it as a writer, too, of being in the zone
08:59 and you're like, "Oh, I'm finding some stuff
09:01 "that I didn't expect to find,"
09:02 and then you kind of lose sense of time.
09:05 As an actor, as an improviser in comedy,
09:07 I would say there's a moment where you're like,
09:09 "Oh, I'm improvising with this person
09:11 "and we're kind of mind-melding," or whatever.
09:14 I think it's a very real thing.
09:16 I think so much of creativity is knowing
09:18 that it's gonna come and go,
09:19 and then not panicking that you're not
09:21 in the zone all the time,
09:22 and that you can work with other people
09:24 to help keep you afloat when you're not in the zone.
09:28 But yeah, I think it's a really real thing
09:30 that they've tapped into there.
09:31 - Is that something you've experienced acting?
09:33 Have you been able to find the zone acting?
09:34 - Oh yes, and that, I guess, is what kept drawing me back,
09:39 drawing me into it, you know?
09:43 Going into the zone, you just feel at one with it.
09:46 You feel so peaceful and powerful and out of the way
09:51 and in the center of it.
09:54 It's the most glorious of feelings, and it's rapturous.
09:59 - It happens, yes, it does.
10:01 And it's magical when it happens,
10:06 and you can't describe it, you know?
10:10 You can't quite put it into words,
10:14 but it's a place of stillness.
10:18 - This weed?
10:18 - What is it?
10:19 - 151,000 souls go into the great beyond every day,
10:23 and I count every single one of 'em.
10:25 That counts off.
10:28 - Huh.
10:30 ♪ And they love me like ♪