Jay Baruchel won an Annie Award in 2011 for his voice performance as Hiccup in DreamWorks’ beloved How to Train Your Dragon. He also won a Daytime Emmy in 2019 for voicing the character on the Dragons: Race to the Edge TV series. It’s been three and a half years since Baruchel last played Hiccup, on NBC’s How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming holiday special.

I had the chance to interview Baruchel for his new live-action drama BlackBerry, which IFC Films is releasing in theaters this Friday May 12th. Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, the co-founder of BlackBerry, in a thrilling saga that chronicles the rise and fall of the cell phone giant. At the end of our conversation, I asked Baruchel what Hiccup and Dragon have meant to his life and career. Here’s what he told me, in this Animation Scoop Exclusive:

“Oh my God, man. How much time do you have? Three movies, eight seasons of a TV show and some specials. You know, it was just an audition. I walked into a f—ing audition and fell a– backwards into my Star Wars. Rare is the day you go into an audition being like, ‘You know what? I bet you I book this, and I bet you it ends-up meaning everything to a generation of kids across the world.’ That doesn’t f—ing happen ever!

I have nothing but love for Hiccup and nothing but respect and admiration for all the people for whom he’s a hero. We’re very lucky. The Dragon franchise… I hate using words like ‘franchise’ when I’m talking about something as special as a movie meaning something to people but… the series, the epic, the saga of How to Train Your Dragon is a lot of people’s favorite thing. And I remember… The thing you love when you’re a kid, you will never love anything in your adult life as intensely. And that will drive you to a thing.

Astronauts all the time say, ‘It was ’cause I loved Star Trek when I was a kid.’ There’s going to be animators — there already are — enough time has passed. People working in animation and storytelling… probably people working in biology… all of whom got that spark, that bug, initially off of something of a movie that I was lucky enough to do a voice for. So yeah, really special.”