I love Diego [ Luna Cassian]. Diego is very funny. He's a very cool guy. I'm looking forward to doing all the press stuff and getting to hang out with him and everybody again.
Reading is a heady thing. You can be into the action of someone's thoughts and take a whole trip down someone's ruminations while seconds tick by in the world that they're in, but you can't really do that in film. Some films can, but not too much.
You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.
I wrote and directed and acted in it and produced it, every job I have since that - and Star Wars included - I look at it completely different now. Now that I've seen how it gets made, I can appreciate the jobs that people are doing, and it's also become a different learning experience for me to work on things because I'm watching pros at the top of their field do their jobs and just picking up on their tricks and all of their expertise and stashing them away in my brain.
I have a very close friend who is a brilliant clown, and I always wanted to do a show with him. So I did one year at La MaMa Theatre. I had not done stilts before that show, and I had about two weeks to learn how to do that, and they were just made with off-off Broadway money. The ones that I had in Rogue One were made by [Industrial Light & Magic]. So they were really easy. They were made with actual prosthetic feet on the bottom. They were athletic, in a way. I could run in them. There was a bounce to them that I could use.
Those in power at Disney, the very generous figures at Disney Animation, have convinced themselves I'm a good-luck charm for their movies, which is great. It's working out really well for me, and it seems to be a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Wray Nerely, the character in Con Man, he actually had a role in Rogue One, but he got cut. It sucked. John Swartz, the producer, is a big fan of Con Man. I even got to screen Con Man while we were shooting Star Wars. They had a theater there, and they let me screen one of the little 10-minute episodes for everyone. What sucked was I had to follow Star Wars.
It was a very interesting challenge [Heihei role] because he's limited to rooster-y, chicken-type noises, and he goes along on the whole adventure. It just becomes, "If that's how you express yourself, go for it.
Going back was like a reunion for all the cast. We were all there. It was weird to have been away from it for a few months, and then, "Hey look, here we all are. I can still walk on these stilts. Wow, we all still fit in our costumes." It was nice to connect again, and then we went to Star Wars Celebration right after that. It's neat.
[Making Moana] was like camping because we were all living together on the boat, and one night we came home and there was a whale shark. I got to go swimming with her. It was a magic, magic, magical time.
When we recorded [Moana], I would do all of the stuff and then save all the big screaming for last so that you can really blow it out and ratchet it up every time, get that perfect panicked pitch.
[Clowns] gotten a really bad rap in the last few years. People have really given into their own fears and have celebrated their fears in that way. American Horror Story didn't help.