Not that I expected him to do jumping jacks with his dick in a box, but I found Andy Samberg to be a really chill and laid back dude. Yesterday, before waiting in the awful Hall H line, JoBlo.com chatted with the star of Saturday Night Live as he was at Comic Con to promote his new animated flick
CLOUDY
WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, eh?
Yeah!
Who’re you voicing in it?
I’m a character named Brent who’s kind of a doofus. He starts off in the movie as a kid who’s kind of like the poster boy for the sardine company that runs the town. So he’s kind of a local celebrity and then grows up to be kind of a weirdo, obnoxious blowhard. (laughs) And then Bill’s (Hader) character Flint creates the food machine and everyone forgets about Brent and he realizes he has no identity.
So does he become the villain or antagonist?
No. He’s a little bit of a nemesis to the main character but he actually just turns into comic relief who needs to revalidate himself.
Have you done voice work before?
Yeah, I did the movie Space Chimps and obviously tons of voiceovers just for other projects but not specific to animation other than Space Chimps.
How was the experience on Space Chimps and then doing this? Was it the same or different?
It’s fairly similar, you know. You’re going into the booth and reading lines. This character was a lot more screamy (laughs). Although I screamed a lot in Space Chimps. (laughs) Lot of screaming in animation. Yeah, it was cool. Although I became friends with the director of Space Chimps, this one from the beginning [directors] Phil (Lord) and Chris (Miller) are good friends of mine. So they kind of asked me to do it as friends as well as creators. They kind of tailored the part to me. It was pretty cool, pretty mellow.
Doing comedic things like Saturday Night Live where you’re doing live sketches, do you find it difficult to do voice work in animation and to get a line off and you don’t have that immediate reaction?
Not really. It’s a smaller audience, but you can generally feel the rhythm of it. If I’m doing a line, voiceover—this is kind of a weird thing to say–a lot of times I can tell if it’s a funny take or not. Like I know what the joke is supposed to be so I can feel if the timing and pitch came out in the way that will make me laugh. And also, Phil and Chris are there and they’ll laugh when it gets crazy. So yeah, it’s the same basic dynamic but you’re trying to make two people laugh instead of 300 or…
The nation?
(laughs) Yeah, millions!
So what do you have coming up? Are you sticking with comedy or are you going to venture out and do some more dramatic things?
I’m planning on sticking with comedy, I’m open for anything though. I’m going back to SNL in September. I finished the MTV Movie Awards in May, so I kind of been decompressing because we had a crazy SNL season and I did an album, then I did I LOVE YOU MAN, and press for that and press for the album. It was a lot jammed in to want to stretch. So after the movie I wanted to collapse.
Taking a break for the summer.
Yeah, and now I’m just kind of coming back up for air.
Do you get antsy then, if you’re off for a little bit too long?
Yeah, a little bit. I’m trying to teach myself to not be again. Since we got SNL we kind of just been going non-stop and it’s incredibly gratifying to produce so much but my parents are like, “Just stop and relax, you owe it to yourself to relax. “ (laughs)
What other projects aside from the new SNL season do you have coming out?
Nothing really planned to be honest. I’m talking about a bunch of stuff to a bunch of people, nothing’s really set in stone.
Do you like it better that way? Instead of just planning out the future, you see what opens up day to day?
Yes and no. Just like I was saying, “oh this is great, I can relax.” And the next second you’re like “what am I going to do? What’s going on? What’s everybody else doing? Oh, they’re doing a movie? Damn, I gotta do something!” I don’t know, it’ll be something, I’ll do something.
Are you liking Comic Con and seeing all the costumes?
Oh yeah, I love Comic Con. I wish the 8 year old me could be here.
How great would that be being a little kid and seeing all your heroes dressed up.
But also just like I wish this existed when I was kid. I mean, it’s the same thing now and I have that excitement or whatever, but I would coming here to hang out instead of doing press and panels. I’d prefer to do it both ways, it’s fun to sit there and flip through comics and see clips from awesome new movies. But I’ll take what I can get.