Viva Kids’ new animated feature Grand Prix of Europe opens in theaters this Friday Nov. 7. It’s about a mouse named Edda who meets her racecar driver idol Ed (voiced by Emmy nominee Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and actually races in disguise as him in a high-stakes competition. Brodie-Sangster, who also voiced Ferb on the first four seasons of Phineas and Ferb, talks about being part of this turbocharged movie. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: You voice racecar driver mouse Ed. How did it feel taking on this character, who is a symbol and an icon of the Europa-Park [in Germany], which is celebrating 50 years?

Thomas Brodie-Sangster: It’s quite a privilege to voice this character, to bring a voice to him. Something I really looked forward to. And we tried lots of different voices, and fondly enough we ended-up just settling for my voice. So I am Ed. Really good fun. It’s a fun movie.

JM: You do a terrific job. And you actually race cars. I’ve seen some footage of you on the track.

TBS: There’s something I love about racing… you’re doing something inherently quite dangerous. You’re going very, very fast and close to other cars and being competitive. And the way to do that successfully is by actually remaining very, very calm, almost going to a place of zen. And that’s what really interested me about it. I love cars. I love racing.

JM: And on the heels of the release of “F1”, this is fantastic timing. How did you want to approach the dynamic of Ed meeting Edda? At first, they don’t really get along. He doesn’t want her around. But there’s a nice arc to these characters over the course of the film.

TBS: When you look at Formula 1 drivers, they’re all very self-absorbed. They all believe that they are the best driver in the world, and that’s what gets them to where they need to be. And they are the best drivers in the world. Ed is a four-time world champion, so he is the best, but he knows it too. When Edda first comes along, she’s a little bit annoying. She steals his car. He’s a bit frustrated with this very enthusiastic but slightly annoying other mouse that’s come along. It’s only as the film progresses and he has to take the backseat and start… views his own life in the way he approaches the world through the eyes of a spectator. And he lives his life vicariously through Edda and coaches her and guides her. He’s able to really see where he could perhaps learn to be a bit better as a human, well, as a mouse.

JM: Yeah, he goes from being a lone wolf to a team player. You’ve been on a lot of sets for film and television where being a team player is so important. And even if you’re just in the booth and it’s just your voice for a movie like “Grand Prix of Europe”, that team player spirit really comes through as well, I’m sure, in collaborating with the director [Waldemar Fast] and all the people involved.

TBS: Yeah, it does. It could be tempting to think you could do things all on your own and you rely on your own talent to get things done. And you only trust yourself to do it. But it’s when you actually open up to others and get their input, that changes things, mostly for the better. You learn from one another and it becomes a collaboration. A collaboration is actually when it becomes artistic and interesting. You have to bounce off of someone else and their ideas, and that becomes far more interesting than just… doing it by yourself.

JM: Very true. Speaking of artistic, the visuals in this are so cool. All these traps that the drivers have to face over the courses. What do you love about the visuals?’

TBS: It’s so strange because when you’re voicing it, you don’t have any of that. Sometimes you’ve just got very, very basic, hand-drawn animation, and it’s very quick sketches. To try and figure out what the thing’s gonna look like… Maybe you come-in and do little pick-ups and ADR and you’ll actually start to see the film as a whole. But the whole process takes quite a long time to be as polished as it is. So I was very impressed when I saw how shiny and how polished it actually looks.

JM: I completely agree. The movie has a lot to say about fame and how Ed deals with it. You have been famous for a long time, broke through in “Love Actually” in 2003. [How] do you think 12 or 13 year old Thomas would’ve felt about voicing the main character in an animated movie?

TBS: Well, 12 year old me is kinda like 35 year old me in some ways. He loved people and he loved characters, and he’d be very excited. It’s an opportunity to put a character to something — to add something from yourself and put it into a funny, little mouse and make it come alive. That’s wonderfully exciting. But when it comes to the fame thing, it was never really anything I was particularly interested in. In fact, I never saw it as a job at all, until I kind of had to. I saw it purely as something fun to do. I’m very lucky to be given the opportunities to act. When you’re working, acting’s brilliant, it’s a wonderful, fun thing to do, and quite often when I get too caught up in my own head I’ll remind myself that this is a very fun thing to do.

JM: You’ve had a great career, especially when it comes to family content: “Nanny McPhee”, which came out 20 years ago, with the great Emma Thompson, “The Maze Runner” franchise for teens, voicing Ferb… and now this. What do you love about being a part of family content?

TBS: You can all gather around the sofa and watch an experience collectively and take away different things from it depending on your age. That’s a great thing to do. To bring families together is wonderful.

JM: Are you gonna get a Lifetime Pass to go to the Europa-Park?

TBS: (laughs) I don’t know! I’ve never been, and I really want to go. I’ve heard a lot about it. I’ve seen pictures and videos. It looks really good. And now I am… ‘I’m the man of Europa-Park.’ (laughs) I hope so.