September 15th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
A few months ago, I interviewed Tony Bancroft for the Netflix animated feature Animal Crackers, which he directed with Scott Christian Sava. Another one of Bancroft’s passion projects over the past several years is the animated film Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs (available on VOD this Friday September 18th). It’s a new spin on classic fairy tales and princess movies, including Snow White. Bancroft serves as Voice Director and shares stories of making the film and working with stars Chloe Grace Moretz, Sam Claflin and Patrick Warburton.
Jackson Murphy: When in the timeline of everything, including Animal Crackers and Mary Poppins Returns, were you able to squeeze-in Red Shoes?
Tony Bancroft: It was amazing. It came at a time when I was fairly busy, but it’s amazing how things kind of work out too. I was always able to plan around other elements – other projects I was involved in – to be a part of this. And I was so glad I did. I got on this project because I was friends with Jin Kim, who was a past Disney character design artist. He grew-up in Korea and went back to Seoul and worked for the [LOCUS] studio as the main character designer on Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs.
I went out to Korea for some other reason – another project, I think – and had lunch with him. We connected. He introduced me to the team that was making Red Shoes. I fell in love with the project from the pitch and seeing his designs. I liked where they were going with the story, and then I became involved as an on-the-side story consultant, but mostly the voice director. They called me in to help record their big-name, Hollywood actors that they brought in. I was so pleased to be a part of it. So I made it work!
JM: What pleasantly surprises me about the film is that it isn’t spoofing Snow White, Cinderella, Shrek and Beauty and the Beast. It knows it’s twisting them up without making it a farce. Were you surprised by this kind of tone in first learning about the project?
TB: Yeah, that was one of the things that impressed me the most when I first got the pitch. It was a pretty sophisticated way into it. For this little, unknown, Korean group to make this film, I was so taken aback from it because it was the kind of movie I wanted to make. It was the kind of movie I wish I would’ve made from Ground Zero. Director Sung-ho Hong also has a daughter, and he wanted to go into the whole body image [angle]. What we learned as westerners with our princess movies… the image that we’ve put out there of what a beautiful princess should look like… as opposed to what the world is saying now. So the film takes a modern twist from a social viewpoint… to a very ancient fairy tale. I think there’s something really unique about it, and yet it plays-off as a quirky comedy, too. So it’s everything that I love in an animated movie.
JM: Because you’re the voice director this time, not the main director, did you ever find yourself not wanting to step over the line of Sung-ho Hong’s vision?
TB: Not really because Sung-ho and also producer Su [Jin Hwang] were so open. They knew I had a Disney background. They admired the films that I worked on. So that was great and that was very humbling to me because they were always so good to me and gracious. But they also really wanted to know my opinions, so that’s why I was kind of a non-official story consultant on it because we talked so much about the story and developing it while it was still in a malleable situation in the process. I felt like I was able to give them my voice without having to do all the heavy lifting. It was a great role for me. Who doesn’t like to be able to go, ‘I have some opinions’ and know it’s gonna be heard and somebody else is gonna do all the changes and hard work?
JM: Chloe Grace Moretz voices Snow White/Red Shoes and was also recently Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family. Two very different characters; polar opposite personalities. What do you like the most about what Moretz can do with her voice performance?
TB: I first got to know her through Kick-Ass 1 and then KA2. I loved her back then when she was this young child actress. And now she has matured into this wonderful young woman. She balances so well between a gentleness, a sweetness (which obviously plays into the story of her being a princess and what we know in our own animation mythology about what a princess is) and she can also play hard and bold and get to the guts of a scene and be strong. I love that element about her performance in this movie because she literally plays two roles in this movie. She has to put on the persona of both of those roles, or at least what the character thinks these roles should be. And that develops through the story, too. There’s a multi-layered performance that she gives us, vocally, that I don’t know she’s ever experienced before, and I think it’s one of the things that attracted her to it, too.
JM: And could you tell in working with her that she had watched some of the princess movies when she was young and brought that to it. Did you share experiences or thoughts on those?
TB: Oh, yeah. I told her my background, and she grew-up with these Disney movies. She had two different perspectives: as a child just looking up to these Disney princesses and then being the empowered woman that she has now become and an influence now on social media for her stance against body shaming through her own viewpoints. There’s these two dynamics that she was dealing with, too. And it was great to hear her now very mature understanding of what a woman’s role is in society and how she connects with Snow and Red Shoes, but particularly the Snow character because she wanted that to be the character who was the winner of the day – who came out on top. It’s not about who you are on the outside (the theme of the movie), it’s who you are on the inside. And that’s where she really connected with this in a powerful way.
JM: And there are times where, visually, we quickly go from the seven male heroes as dwarfs to their human versions and then back again. Did you do anything with Sam Claflin [who voices Merlin] or any of the others specifically when it came to their voice performances for those back and forth moments?
TB: Not really. There’s some vocal change that happens. It’s more of a visual change in the animation. Vocally, the biggest performance thing that Sam and the rest of the cast had to deal with, was the attitude change. There’s always that surprise. He didn’t know when somebody was seeing him as human or when they were seeing him as this little dwarf kind of character. That was a layer that was added to the performance. Oftentimes we would have to explain… and really take them through the scene. That articulation was important for the actors.
JM: That makes sense. I’ve seen Sam Claflin in so many movies lately, including Enola Holmes.
TB: He was such a wonderful guy. It was a stormy weekend in Fiji. We literally flew out to Fiji because he was so busy. He was shooting the movie Adrift, and it all takes place on the ocean. So they shot that off the island of Fiji. We only had this one weekend to get his time. And he was scheduled back-to-back throughout the whole time shooting that movie. So he gave us a weekend. It was so scary just flying into this little island. And we recorded him in his hotel room. He was so generous. We thought, ‘He’s tired. He’s been shooting all week on the ocean.’ They had a horrible schedule to get that movie done. And yet he was so warm and so welcoming.
We hung out during lunchtime – we had a little break between the recordings. I asked him to do a drawing in my sketchbook, because he knew I was an artist, and he drew a little picture of Goofy for me that I still have. It’s one of my special memories of working on this movie. He loves animation. He has always wanted to be a part of an animated feature, and to be able to be cast as Merlin in this movie and have a starring role, was the biggest kick for him. And now he has young kids, too. So I think he’s really proud of being a part of this.
JM: Wow. That’s such a cool story. Patrick Warburton is an icon in the voice acting world. He was also in Animal Crackers. Did you put an effect on his voice because he’s speaking into his glass enclosure as the Mirror character?
TB: Yeah. That was more post-production. I can’t really say what was put on there, but there’s a little bit of an element on there. The producer and the director came to me and they were looking for ideas for that character. And they were looking at casting somebody else. I told them, ‘Oh, you gotta get Patrick Warburton.’ I’ve always been a huge fan, and he’s a friend of mine. I did push that character role onto Patrick. He was so loving and he loved the idea of being a part of this. I’ve worked with him now on like five different projects.
JM: Jim Rash voices Prince Average [pronounced av-er-auge], and his pitch gets very, very high at times when he’s emphasizing certain words. How high was Jim Rash really willing to go?
TB: That’s a good question. Jim was the only actor I didn’t get to work with, unfortunately, because he was recorded before I came-on as the voice director. But I love Jim Rash, and one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t get to work with him on this film because I’m a huge fan of his from Community. And I think what he does for Prince Average is that he’s got this cocky, self-centered, egotistical quality that he plays so well. He really nailed this one.
JM: I asked Jeffrey Katzenberg about this earlier this year: do you believe that there should be a voice acting category at the Academy Awards? And what would that really mean to you?
TB: I would love that! I think that means a lot not only to actors but all of us in animation. Being an animator, and the rule of the day when I was younger at Disney, is that a performance is really half of the actor and half of the animator. They’re both 50/50, and they both make 100% of the character. While you might have some animators who say, ‘Oh – if they get an Oscar or nominated, I should get nominated, too!’ But more than anything, I think it’s important that acting in animation gets recognized. So if this is the start, I would love it. And then if it builds into something where maybe the voice actor and the animator get a credit or a nomination together, that would be even more impactful. I think there’s steps, and this is a great first one if it happens.
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