After sharing the interview with the cast of Inside Out yesterday, today is all about Kyle MacLachlan , the voice of Dad.
Kyle is known for The Good Wife, now it it’s 6th season, where he plays the oddball attorney Josh Perotti. He is also on season two of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where he plays the character Calvin Zabo, otherwise known as supervillain Mr. Hyde. With many other credits on his IMBd, one of my favorites being on Desperate Housewives, he has been in the business for a long time, but nothing like the role as Dad in Inside Out.
Kyle sat down with 25 bloggers including me to chat about the mentioned role and how this movie changed the way he thinks when he is hanging with his almost 7 year old son.
Who’s the Dad in Inside Out: Kyle MacLachlan Interview
So as a Dad yourself, how much of the character is you because this is kind of a normal character departure from what you normally play?
Pretty normal. They cut out all the other stuff I did.
Did they? So that’s gonna be on the Special DVD.
Pete and Jonas on DVD, yeah perfect. 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 know, 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.
You mentioned your son. How old is he?
He’ll be 7 in July.
Has he seen the Movie yet?
No, he’s seen trailers on it like the dinner scene. He loved the dinner scene. “He says, the foot is down, the foot”. He loves that part. So he’s seen a couple just moments but I’ll take him to see it at some point this summer.
Do you feel like you can see the emotions in his head? Do you see things differently now?
I totally see it in him. And he’s coming up on 7 so they’re still trying to figure out how they all work together. Joy is the dominant one for him as well but he can bring in some disgust with attitude, which I’m sure he’s picked up at school. And some of the others as well. But he has this silly gene from me. And from that comes from my grandmother in fact. But you begin to see and recognize not only in him but in other people as well. Like I was doing an interview earlier where the writer said “why don’t you take your hand off the anger button” to his son? And I was like OK, so maybe this will enter our consciousness in a whole different way.
You need a Babysitter for your almost 7 year old son. If you have to choose from the 5 emotions, which one would you want them to have?
Which Babysitter? Well the protective dad which they fear because that would keep him from doing anything but then he wouldn’t experience everything that I would want him to experience so, I think Joy. I think kids are pretty resilient, you know, and if they got into trouble, they’d figure a way out. Um, but I love watching him come to me with an idea like dad, can you just hold this. He’s got something in his hand or something cause I want to be able to. There’s something fantastical idea that in his brain, it makes complete sense, this sequence of things and I’m like, well if you know, if you do that, you’re gonna end up falling in the toilet, you understand that. And he’s like, No, No, No, No, cause he sees it a completely different way. And that is, that to me, is the fun of having a little kid, just to listen to them, listen to their logic because it’s so completely not logical. I love that.
Can you compare voice acting and standard acting?
Well you know, going to work, I always say, as an actor, 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 — in the drawings. But it’s a 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. You get exhausted doing that actually. But there’s only 2 hour sessions so that was OK, yeah.
Is there anything that you would have added to scenes where you recognize yourself?
There’s a couple of facial gestures that I see that I’m like Oh God, that resembles me but only for a split second. It looks so different. You know, when they gave you the folder and said here is the character, I was like he’s got a mustache I was like OK, that’s me, OK. I had to sort of get myself into that thing, that space I guess. And the same thing with Diane Lane, you look at Diane Lane, and she’s gorgeous and the Mom was kind of, you know, Mom, you know, and so it was like OK, that’s sort of like that. And then you hear Diane’s voice coming out of her mouth and OK, that’s different. Some of the monkey stuff that we did, they were filming right as I was doing it and that made it in as well. I felt like they relied on my contribution and and needed it actually and were grateful for it, which makes you feel good so.
What do you think the audience of dads will take away from this?
He is soft spoken kind of dad. He’s a gentle dad. And I think really attempting to connect with her, to understand what is going on in her brain, which of course, Pete. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to him but he talks about that inspiration of course was his daughter and trying to understand where this vivacious outgoing joyful little creature went when she turned 11. And so I think just giving your kids a little bit of space to figure it out I think would be good. And also I think, one of the things in doing the scenes with her, you know, I attempted to connect with her. Do you want to talk about it? And you realize with kids, a lot of it is about timing so if you come to them and you’re prepared to have a nice conversation, deep, they’re not ready. So you have to take them when they’re ready. You have to engage them when they’re ready. That could be at the most inopportune times. 4th quarter, you know, in a great football game, you just have to walk away from the football game and engage with them cause that’s when they’re ready. So maybe their understanding about that, it’s hard to do cause kids are masters.
What’s the strangest thing you had on Pizza?
Well 2 point answer. I like the Canadian Bacon Pineapple topping. But the more interesting answer, when I was in a Marine Biology Camp, 8th Grade maybe, 9th Grade, 14, 15, we had to make dinner, our own dinner based on the ingredients we found in water. So whatever we found in tide pools or in the water, we could catch, we had to make dinner, our own dinner based upon the ingredients that we found in water so whatever we found in tide pools or in the water, whatever you catch, we had to make our dinner. And so we made pizza with a variety of different mollusks and things on top of pizza and it was, we had to chew things that I didn’t really know what they were. And but we stuck it on a pizza thinking that, you know, we made it on a dough with tomato and then stuff on top. So it was challenging so that was one of the weirdest things. Yeah funny that I remember that.
One of the favorite parts of the trailer, I think I remember it throws me back to being a teenager is when her mom is trying to signal the dad…so I’m wondering first of all, was it a throwback moment for you too when you see something like that?
Funny, it was, yeah, you know, that moment is so perfect in so many ways because it’s recognizable from everybody. You know, it’s Universal whether it happens to be the dad or the mom but it’s funny that it’s the dad. But on a deeper level, you realize he is probably had like a crazy busy day where his brain is totally fried and he just wants to come home and sit down and sort of not think for a little bit and he chooses the wrong time to go into his fog. It’s challenging especially when you have little ones. You know, you really need to be present with them. I try to be present with my son as much as possible. Without being sort of intrusive, you know, and asking all sorts of questions and you kind of want to draw them out and kind of have to be…I think up for wherever that little brain decides to go and whatever they seen in class but you know, often times, it’ll be time like bedtime, I’ll be sitting down and we’ll be just sort of reading a book, tucking him in. He’s getting all his animals around him. And he’ll just pop out with something and then like OK. And I was like I’m tired, I’m ready. OK, hold on a second. And he just sort of, you know, you want them to be OK. You want them to feel A, that they can talk to you about stuff, and B, that if they have any kind of weird stuff that they’re holding onto that you know, you make it like that little bit better. It’s gonna be OK so that comes at any given moment in time so just being present I think is the one thing that the Dad in that particular moment wasn’t so…
Has being a dad shaped the way you take on new roles?
Definitely I think it’s added another dimension of consideration, you know. How is this gonna affect my family both in my being around or not being around and also just, is it something that I’m comfortable putting out there? Do I want to carry whatever remnants of that work environment back home with me, you know. I’m not one of those people that sort of does that, clings to stuff, that needs to be engaged in the part 24/7. That said, certain scenes require that when you get to work that everything else kind of disappears and you really stay in that focus for the run of that scene. And then when the scene is over, you can drop it. I like to just drop it all away, just let it go. God forbid they say, OK we got to go back and shoot something, then it’s like, it’s already been shed by me, you know. I’m thinking particularly of the scene where I meet, Chloe for the first time or Daisy for the first time and that was a very tough scene and a very long day. And those required me to be really in it and I can’t really pop out to have conversations and stuff. But those aren’t that frequent. It was just a couple during the filming where I had to be like that. But all those things, I’m definitely aware of now, primarily being away from him, you know, which was a consideration with “Shield”. Fortunately, they were very accommodating and I was only gone for 2, maybe 3 days maximum on that apart from 2 times. And we were to schedule out and the situation was fine. I just don’t like to be– He’s probably fine. I’m not. He’d say, Oh dad, I didn’t even know you were gone. But, yeah, I just hate being away from him so…
INSIDE OUT & LAVA (Coming 6/19/15)
https://www.facebook.com/PixarInsideOut
https://twitter.com/PixarInsideOut (#InsideOut & #Lava)
https://twitter.com/headquarters
https://instagram.com/pixarinsideout/
https://www.pinterest.com/disneystudios/inside-out/
https://www.youtube.com/user/DisneyPixar
http://insideoutheadquarters.tumblr.com/
http://movies.disney.com/inside-out
*Disney and Pixar invited me out to Los Angeles for the premiere of Inside Out. All opinions are my own.
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It’s imtviapree that more people make this exact point.
The next wave of economic stimulus will focus on internal security- snooping, spying, private security, private weapons, a militia. Also, work camps, team sports, propaganda mills (education), gambling palaces. There is enormous growth potential in the Army, FBI, CIA. Ultimately, money will be free to everyone; they will give it away at the post office. It is the ration books that will be important, the reason everyone will carry a gun. Don’t worry about the banks; worry about locating meat and cheese!