June 28th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
DreamWorks The Boss Baby was a box office smash hit in 2017 and earned longtime studio director Tom McGrath (Madagascar, Megamind) an Oscar nomination. Now comes sequel The Boss Baby: Family Business, which opens in theaters and debuts on Peacock this Friday July 2nd. McGrath discusses what inspired the follow-up, some of the smaller detailed moments and how he enjoyed working with stars Alec Baldwin, Amy Sedaris, James Marsden and the iconic Jeff Goldblum. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: How soon after the first “Boss Baby” opened did you get started on this sequel?
Tom McGrath: I took some time off because I had done five movies back to back for so long, and then the studio approached the idea of a sequel. I was just rolling it around a little bit. And then I called my writer, Michael McCullers, and we just started talking. Since they started doing a series based on Tim and Ted when they were kids, we needed to do something different. So we thought, “We have an opportunity here.” The first movie ended with Tim as an adult telling his daughter how he met his brother. We had this little baby in a crib with a suit wink at the camera, which wasn’t to set-up a sequel, Jackson, as much as it was to say, “Oh maybe Baby Corp. is real!” to the kids.
Tom McGrath: The first movie was very boy-centric. It would be great to have a new Boss Baby with a strong female presence. And someone who could play really well off Alec but be the exact opposite. Enter Amy Sedaris, who helped us create this really wonderful character [Tina], who’s more of the voice of the millennial generation. Positively charged. Embrace teamwork. Have good family/life balance. That was our springboard.
JM: Nice. You did do a lot of movies back to back. All those great “Madagascar” films and “Megamind” and then the first “Boss Baby”. I love the moment in this where Tina has the xylophone and she does the NBC jingle. That was a fun little nod – the fact that this is a Universal movie this time.
TM: Yeah. We didn’t even think about it. I was working with the editors, “We need to find a little… sound”, and the only one we had in the sound effects library was the NBC logo [jingle]. And then we just kept it in there for so long, and then at the Universal screening they loved it. So we kept it in.
JM: I’m sure they did love it. Now I also noticed a moment early on in this film with Wizzie the wizard clock, and it says 3:31 on it when everything goes crazy. Was that a direct nod to the fact that the first movie opened on March 31st, 2017?
TM: It was. That was our release date. We feel fortunate [for “Family Business”] to come out in July. People are starting to feel safe about returning to the theaters. It’s a holiday weekend and hopefully we can play through the summer.
JM: I think you’ll do very well at indoor theaters and Drive-Ins.
TM: Drive-Ins are great!
JM: Drive-Ins are awesome! I was talking with Elaine Bogan, the director of “Spirit Untamed”, about drive-ins. She remembers seeing the first Spirit movie at a drive-in. Do you have a specific animation-related drive-in experience?
TM: I remember seeing “Herbie the Love Bug”, because I’m that old, at a Drive-In. And it was one of the first movie experiences I had. I remember that vaguely. But mostly you remember being in your pajamas and looking out at the little park you can play on and the rides. I think drive-ins are great and I hope they make a big comeback because they’re really fun.
JM: I remember seeing the most recent Herbie movie with Lindsay Lohan about 16 years ago at a drive-in! And speaking of “Spirit”, there’s also a moment in this movie – and I saw it in a promo on TV the other day – involving the first “Spirit” movie. You kind of break the fourth wall in a sense with DreamWorks animated movies there.
TM: You know Jackson, it’s one of those… scenes you keep adding to it. It originally started off as an A to B scene. [Ted and Tim] are riding the pony to school. And then we kept adding more and more jokes into it. It was a brainstorm pass with the comedy team and they go, “It’d be great if they went through a theater and Spirit was playing.” So we actually put it in and used “Spirit”. It’s a fun little nod to DreamWorks. It cracks me up that there’s only one person in the theater.
JM: Hopefully there will be many more people… who go see The Boss Baby: Family Business. Every scene in this film has so much movement to it, and it’s an unbelievable achievement with what you do with the animation and story of so much movement of the characters. How difficult was crafting the screenplay and getting the story right, as well as doing the storyboards for all of these scenes?
TM: Storyboarding is great because it helps with coming-up with rough ideas. But it’s also working with camera like you would on a live-action shoot and what lenses would be great. We figure out the energy of the camera in these scenes – even into the intimate scenes. But the action scenes are the most fun to play with and do a lot of camerawork. Rather than being so compartmentalized in departments like old studios: Story Department, Layout Department, Animation Department… we brought all the departments together to collaborate. I started working that way on “Megamind” and it worked out well. Everyone has really good ideas. If you get everyone together in a room early enough… or on Zoom… everyone can add to it. It’s like the rules of improv, “Yes and…” You can do this and we can do that. You create an environment where everyone on the team can feel like they contributed an idea.
JM: Definitely. You mentioned this movie coming out for a big holiday weekend. With your story set around Christmastime, it’s like a Christmas in July experience. Do you consider “The Boss Baby: Family Business” to be a Christmas movie, or a Christmas – Setting Only movie? Are we going through the “Die Hard” debate with “The Boss Baby: Family Business”?
TM: Yeah, you could go the “Die Hard” debate or the “Gremlins” debate. There’s a few of those. I would just say it’s a Winter movie [coming out] in July, which will be good because… we wanted this movie to be different than the first movie. And snow provides such a really great cinematic background for everything because it reflects light really well. Plus the theme of the film is that usually winter’s when families usually come together over some holiday, and it was important to our story to show how disperate our family was during the holidays. The Winterscape was really beautiful to play with aesthetically as well. It’s an interesting argument, so we’ll see.
JM: James Marsden voices the older Tim. It’s great to hear him sing again. He sings, “If you wanna sing out, sing out” and that’s been in my head now for three days, but it’s good because I loved hearing him sing in “Enchanted” and “Hairspray”. Was that one of the reasons why you chose him for this role?
TM: Yeah. We knew we were gonna have original songs in there. At the time we weren’t sure if we were gonna use the Cat Stevens song. But we were looking for someone who could sing and… James came right into mind. And he’s also so funny. He was also Tina Fey’s boyfriend on “30 Rock” where he sang a song. We just approached James – also because he’s so charming. His voice is so charming. When you’re thinking about voice talent, you’re putting together a band. If Alec is the bass, then Tim [James] needs to be the guitar. And Jeff Goldblum is the drums. You’re putting this band together with different voices that play off each other. Alec and James played really well together.
JM: And you mentioned Jeff Goldblum, who voices Dr. Armstrong. The character almost reminds me of Jeff Goldblum’s Apartments.com guy, “Change your life. Change your world.” and that whole vibe. I feel like Jeff Goldblum is one of those guys where you have a lot of outtakes and things you could’ve put in the movie and a lot of funny things. Was that the case?
TM: We have it with all our actors, but Jeff in particular… is the most original actor. He’ll read the lines but then he’ll never look at them again and he’ll find his own words to do it. Since he was playing a teacher… he just got into this mode because he’s so smart. He was quizzing everybody in the soundbooth of trivia between lines. He would roll into his character. What’s fun about his delivery is that it’s so unique and provides so much fun for the animators to animate expressions in between the lines. He has these really great pauses that he does. It’s great for the animators to fill those in with some kind of quirky acting like Jeff would do in his live-action movies.
JM: It’s almost like a game show at one point in this movie involving his character. Maybe you could have [Dr. Armstrong] host a trivia game show for a spinoff short.
TM: Yeah. And in talking to Jeff, Michael McCullers and I really wanted to shine a light on the way schools are now – new age schools – and how competitive they are. I thought, “Oh, it should be like Hollywood Squares – like a game show.” And Jeff really liked that idea. And he also liked that his character is addicted to sugar, which he really got into and made the most of. It’s watching a great actor bring a character to life off the page.
JM: As the director of both of these movies, over the last four or five years, have you seen a lot of photos of babies dressing up as The Boss Baby for Halloween?
TM: I’ve seen a few that my friends have sent me, which is fun. But I think based off of Marla Frazee’s book, there’s a truth that babies run the household and that they are the boss and they boss the parents around in their own manipulative, baby way. It’s kind of the core of our movie and it’s great to see that it affects culture so much that people dress-up their babies in suits.
JM: While I have you, since you co-directed the “Madagascar” movies and also voiced Skipper in those… when I saw “Madagascar 3” for the first time… towards the end of the movie when they get back to New York, I thought, “Oh my gosh, they’re ACTUALLY getting back to New York.” I was so surprised by that after all that we’ve been through with everybody. Did you always know going into “Madagascar 3” that you wanted the characters to come back to New York towards the end?
TM: We were hoping we could do a third one because any trilogy – they have to go back to where they started. Now that they’ve been on this big adventure around the world, is a zoo everything they missed when they first left the zoo? We felt really fortunate to be able to have that third movie to close that chapter on the zoo.
JM: Absolutely. So to wrap things up, what’s the best thing about being the boss of the “Boss Baby” franchise?
TM: I’d probably take a page out of Baby Tina’s book, where she embraces teamwork and collaboration. As a director, you learn on every movie you do. You should just have enough confidence to know you can reach out to your team and let them participate and add ideas and join in. At the end of the day, it is a group effort. It is a team sport – the three and a half years it takes to make these things. And good ideas come from everywhere. That’s what makes the best animated movie.
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