Interview with DreamWorks’ Voice Actors and Filmmakers of The Boss Baby – Out March 2017

The Boss Baby

20^th Century Fox & DreamWorks Animation

About The Boss Baby

DreamWorks Animation and the director of Madagascar invite you to meet a most unusual baby. He wears a suit, speaks with the voice and wit of Alec Baldwin, and stars in the animated comedy, DreamWorks’ The Boss Baby. The Boss Baby is a hilariously universal story about how a new baby’s arrival impacts a family, told from the point of view of a delightfully unreliable narrator, a wildly imaginative 7 year old named Tim. With a sly, heart-filled message about the importance of family, DreamWorks’ The Boss Baby is an authentic and broadly appealing original comedy for all ages.

We had a chance to sit down and speak with Producer Ramsey Ann Naito, Director Tom McGarth, and Alec Baldwinon last month at Comic Con. I have to say I am SUCH a huge fan of Alec Baldwin and was super excited to meet him in person. He is as dry as you’d imagine him to be with his feistiness just under the surface. He is perfect for this role and does a fantastic job as The Boss Baby. I don’t remember the last time I laughed at an animated movie like I did when I saw some previews for The Boss Baby. The filmmakers and voice actors really go for the punch every time in pretty much every scene. There is one scene that stuck with me was where we see a group of neighborhood kids who believe they are in a serious battle with each other and then we see it from the parents perspective, and it is just the kids riding around on their Hotwheels tricycles. I can not wait until this movie comes out and think the parents will enjoy as much as the kids!

Can you see my excitement to meet Alec Baldwin in person! He is so funny!

Blogger: It looks hysterical. So funny, I love it.

Ramsey Ann Naito: Yes, it’s for everybody.

Blogger: Do you feel it appeals to parents as well as kids?

Ramsey Ann Naito: Parents, kids, single people, dates.

Blogger: And I love the story and the apology letter to the younger brother or older brother.

Tom McGrath: Older brother, Yes.

Blogger: Older brother. You were the boss baby in your family then, huh?

Tom McGrath: Yes.

Blogger: Okay. Yes, I’ve got two that are like that and the younger one is definitely the boss. So it’s funny for all of us to watch that. I think all of us, as parents, could really relate to that.

Tom McGrath: Yes, we set it in a period, too. There’s a part of the story I don’t want to give away, but we set it in the ’70s, ’80s. It’s kind of in this period before cell phones and technology, kind of where kids went out and played and used their imagination. So the technology’s very old school.

It’s kind of interesting, because a lot of the artists who were designing the phones that, at least I know, from the ’70s, didn’t know what they looked like. And old dialup phones and stuff really.

Blogger: Yes, we recognized it.

Tom McGrath: That’s good.

Blogger: The little pop thing.

Tom McGrath: Yes, we went to Hasbro and found the toys that were really kind of iconic to the era, and they gave us permission to use it. But we really wanted to kind of go back to that, where there was no TVs on, no phones, no anything like that. And there’s a lot of this child’s imagination and a celebration of that, really. That’s why the baby can talk.

Blogger: Did you know what your character was going to look like? The baby?

Alec Baldwin: No. No, no, no, no, no. When you do these things, you just have to think about how you fit into the whole thing. Like the ones that write tone and how the goal was to make it funny and sweet, and you want to not go too far and make it too cranky or too much of anything. But when you work with the right people – I’m not just saying this for their benefit, because I’ve done not a lot, but I’ve done a few of these kinds of things, whether it’s a TV show or a feature.

And when you work with the right people, it just kind of reveals itself what you should do. It becomes pretty obvious how you need to play it. Because I’ve done other things where they’d say, “Oh, do this.” They’d have a very good idea, very strong idea of what they wanted me to do. And then when you watched the whole thing, it didn’t necessarily flow or fit together.

And when I did Madagascar guys, and then we did Rise of the Guardians and now this. Coming up with what you want to do that seems right is relatively easy.

Blogger: I have a two-part question. The first question goes to the producers of the movie. And how did you know that Alec was the right person for this role? And then for Alec, how did you know that this was the right movie for you?

Tom McGrath: Well, before we even talked about casting and pitching the movie, we both looked at each other and really at the same time said, “Alec.” Just because we had worked with Alec. Jeffrey [Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation] loves Alec and I had worked with him on Madagascar 2. And just to prove it, I had done a test of Alec’s voice, without your permission, sir.

It was a perfect match. There was never anybody else. It was just like, it wouldn’t be Boss Baby if Alec didn’t do it. It would be Boss Bunny with some lesser actor probably.

But it was great. It was sold, and all we had to do was play that clip. Because Alec’s voice coming out of this cute little baby was just hilarious, you know? And she’s [Author Marla Frazee] a fantastic children’s book author, was really supportive of the film, you know, and even after we had – she suggested Alec even after we had casted Alec.

This is her baby. She wrote this book, and it’s a very beautiful little metaphor about when a baby comes into your life, it’s the boss. And it conducts meetings even in the middle of the night, throws a fit, and it’s really a baby that comes up to these two parents, and we expanded on it and turned it into this sibling rivalry story, and the theme about love.

And she’s been a great kind of cheerleader for the movie. But it started with that simple idea. But back onto Alec.

Ramsey Ann Naito: But also I think that a really wonderful thing about animation is that it’s so collaborative, and so while Alec was the first pick for who we wanted to play Boss Baby over the course of two-and-a-half years, we’ve been collaborating. There were things that were developed and identified throughout the process.

And it was just, it was so fun. I have to say it was definitely – Alec is so generous with being able to find all the little idiosyncratic aspects of our little Boss Baby. And I think it’s probably also because he has quite a few children now. So he had some good reference.

Alec Baldwin: If I’m not careful. My poor wife.

Blogger: Number four was twins, so Yes.

Alec Baldwin: Oh my gosh. That’s incredible. I think that whenever people ask you to do a job, 99 percent of the time it’s who’s doing the asking. Some people will come to you and say, “Do you want to do a movie?” And even though it sounds like a worthy idea, you ask yourself, “Do I want to do that with them? How capable are they of achieving what they want to achieve?”

In the modern world, that can even mean about money. Some people will say, “Well, we’re going to do a movie and it’s this very powerful drama,” what have you, but they have a real micro budget and a very tight schedule, what have you. And fortunately, with companies like DreamWorks who have substantial resources to do – the people they have are the top people.

They just don’t give these enormous amounts of money to just anybody to make these films. You know you’re working with the best people. That’s a big part of it. It’s the role and do I think I can bring something to the role? I spent some time of my life saying to people, I’ll say, “You really don’t want me to be in this movie. You want,” I’ll name other names if I think I’m not really right for that role.

And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to tell people, “You need a younger guy to play this part,” or in some places. But with this, it was, you know, we thought we could make it funny and bring a little bit of the crazy. Because it’s a cartoon, so it’s a little nutty, a little zany in the scenes and so forth. And then I had worked with them twice before and it was a great experience.

And DreamWorks is a great place to work, and so I said yes. It was very easy.

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It was such a treat meeting this talented crew! When we were taking the group picture I had to let Alec Baldwin know how much I enjoyed his interview with Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Mr. Baldwin shook his head up and down and said “yes, that was a lot of fun.” I hadn’t realized how cerebral Mr. Baldwin is but if you look back on the really fantastic comedians, they do tend to be pretty cerebral, don’t they? They see the humor in mankind and bring it to the forefront for all of us to laugh at. He is the perfect Boss Baby! Wait until you see this in theaters friends. You might have to bring tissue because you’ll be crying from laughing so hard – I found it extremely funny.