November 11th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
The latest feature from Cartoon Saloon, Wolfwalkers, is opening in select theaters this Friday November 13th and will be available on AppleTV+ December 11th. It’s the magical, powerful story of two girls destined to share in each other’s lives. Two-time Oscar nominated director Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea) and co-director Ross Stewart (making his feature directorial debut) are very proud of the movie.
As our interview began, I showed them some of the Wolfwalkers swag that Apple sent me, including a notebook, paper leaves that you can plant and paintable cookies of main characters, Robyn and Mebh. The guys were stunned to see them.
Tomm Moore: Where are my cookies? They didn’t send me anything!
Jackson Murphy: (laughs) I saw this movie two months ago through the virtual screening through the Toronto International Film Festival. How awesome was it to have it be a part of the virtual TIFF this year?
TM: It was cool. We’ve been at TIFF for Song of the Sea and The Breadwinner, and it was always nice to be there in person in Toronto with the red carpet. But at least we were able to have it as part of the virtual [festival], and I think more people got to see it that way. It was nice for fans… that were more tickets available for fans virtually than if we had been at the Winter Garden.
Ross Stewart: Tomm and myself had both bought these $50,000 tuxedos and ballgowns, and we just didn’t get a chance to wear them. (laughs)
TM: I just sleep in my ballgown at night after I walk the lonely halls of the castle… weeping.
JM: I’ve never been out of the country, so going to Toronto virtually was an awesome feeling.
TM: We’ll have to get you out of the country. You’ll have to come visit us at the Irish Animation Festival… for Animation Scoop.
JM: My last name is Murphy. We are so Irish. I’ve wanted to go to Ireland. Other family members have kissed the Blarney Stone.
TM: They call you, “Spud”. Anybody called Murphy gets called “Murphy”.
RS: My mother is a Murphy, so chances are we’re probably related.
JM: What?! That’s the biggest story to come out of this interview today is that we’re related. And we both love animation, so it totally makes sense. What is it about writing and animating child characters that appeals to you guys so much?
TM: I think that transition time that we’ve set all our movies in… that time when kids are just heading into adulthood is a really magical time to explore. And I think it touches on the transition periods that we all go through at different times in our lives. Even though it’s always a child protagonist, there’s something we can see in ourselves – even as young adults leaving college… or in middle-age. That time is magical because it’s the very first time you start to see yourself as distinct from the family and the society that you’ve just accepted. There’s an arc that you need in a good story, and that arc is really powerful.
RS: Also for Wolfwalkers, the fact that these two characters that are supposed to be enemies meeting and becoming friends… you kind of see that when kids play in a playground. They don’t have these pre-conceptions that society tells them, “Oh, that person’s your enemy and they’re different from you.” Kids from any age or any culture – they’ll just get together and start playing like that. So there’s an openness there that I think suited this story. Robyn and Mebh have a little bit of an argument at the start, but by the end of the day they’re best friends.
JM: And Mebh is a firecracker of a character. How was it working with Eva Whittaker on her voice performance?
RS: It was great. The one thing that we had to watch out for is that all the roaring and screaming and wolf howls – we had to leave that to the end of the day or else she’d be really hoarse and wouldn’t be able to do all the other stuff she needed to do. This is her first professional role. She had only done amateur dramatics before this. She was as excited as we were to get into the voice recording studios and start exploring all the things that Mebh has to do. And she brings this huge energy to Mebh’s boisterous character. But she also has this beautiful, sensitive side when she starts crying and talking to her mother about being alone. She really was able to explore her depth.
JM: As I was listening to her I was thinking, this is the kind of voice performance that will get her more and more roles down the line.
RS: I hope so.
TM: Her co-star, Honor [Kneafsey, who voices Robyn] is already quite busy and has done a lot of professional work. When we were talking with both of the girls, I think Eva would like that, to get more roles.
RS: What’s nice is that her whole family is very down to Earth and humble, and they’re not pushing her into the celebrity lifestyle.
JM: That’s good. I love the depth of the animation and especially what you do with the backgrounds.
RS: In terms of the backgrounds, we had a huge team of scene illustrators at the start. We were trying all different kinds of approaches: watercolor for the forest, a woodblock print for the town and trying to have two styles that contrast and also will work in the same world. When you have a really talented team… it’s always gonna have this richness and depth to it. In terms of the actual depth on screen, that would be the background color department, the line layout department and compositing would also play a huge part in that. With every stage of production, there’s more and more you can do. You can push backgrounds with mist or layering.
TM: There was a plan made earlier on… that we wouldn’t have true depth in the town. We’d have fake perspective. How flat things are and how characters would move over the backgrounds. Then in the forest there would be more depth and more freedom towards the edges. But the most depth would be when the girls were wolves and we either saw things from their point of view or in the song sequence. That’s when we would have backgrounds on many layers rolling past the camera.
JM: And speaking of songs, I was thinking that “Hungry Like the Wolf” doesn’t really fit with the tone of this movie. But “Running with the Wolves” by AURORA does. Is this a slightly different version?
TM: The first version, I discovered it by accident on a playlist one time and kept on listening to it when I went jogging. It was a little bit more poppy. Some people kind of raised their eyebrows when I suggested using it because it sounded a bit too contemporary. But then Bruno Collet, the composer, re-orchestrated it with some traditional Irish music. And AURORA re-recorded the words, slightly tweaked to fit the movie. So it’s an adaptation of her original song.
JM: It’s great. And the final act reminds me a little bit of my all-time favorite movie, which is the animated Beauty and the Beast – in terms of the “Kill the Beast” momentum at the end of that movie. Was Beauty an influence, especially on the final act of this?
TM: Gosh, I never thought of it, to be honest. Maybe subconsciously. Oh… it’s kind of inverted, isn’t it?
[Moore and Stewart then went into further details on some of the key final moments in the movie. For the sake of preventing spoilers from being revealed, they will not be included in this piece. However, they did share that they initially received a bit of “pushback” on how things play out.]
JM: Ross, this is the first film you’ve directed. What kinds of surprises did you discover in directing for the first time?
RS: I got to discover Tomm’s temper tantrums where he would start breaking everything and smashing windows when he didn’t get his way.
TM: You knew about that! You’ve worked with me before! You knew that part of the deal!
RS: We directed one of the segments of The Prophet… so that was a four and a half minute short in the middle of the feature film. We tested the waters with that and we knew that if it worked well then we could [make] a whole feature film. It was a huge learning curve for me. I’ve been an art director before and have worked in a few departments on feature films but never in a director position on a feature film. Luckily I had Tomm to show me the ropes. And I learned it was a lot of people management too and a lot of diplomacy involved… trying to keep everyone happy on a production and a lot of personal skills, not just creative.
TM: Ross has been such a key part… for me it never felt like “Oh, this is a first time director who doesn’t know what they’re doing.” Ross is a natural because Ross has been a key part of the studio since the very beginning. To me, it was just a slight expansion of the role, not someone who has just been thrown into the deep end.
JM: How do you feel about Apple making this their first major animated feature on AppleTV+ and putting up for Best Animated Feature consideration?
TM: I’m incredibly disappointed that I haven’t gotten any cookies yet. (laughs)
RS: Apple has been an amazing partner. They’ve done so much marketing and publicity and things we never could’ve dreamt of.
TM: There’s a big painting in New York of the poster. It’s crazy.
RS: Even in terms of the film’s production, they didn’t give us a lot of creative re-takes or stepped on our toes. They really allowed us creative freedom.
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