November 5th, 2018 
Jackson Murphy 
It all began with the classic Dr. Seuss book. Then came the iconic TV special, followed by a popular live-action film (and even a Broadway show!). Now The Grinch is back – in the form of a feature-length animated movie from Illumination Entertainment. Directors Yarrow Cheney and Scott Mosier had the responsibility of making this latest version as beloved as the previous ones.
Jackson Murphy: There’s been the iconic short story and 22-minute holiday special. How did you approach making this feature-length material?
Yarrow Cheney: There was the book, and there were other iterations – the Chuck Jones cartoon is such a wonderful re-telling of the story. I think what we really wanted to do was rather than tell a story based on all of the versions of “The Grinch”, we really went back to the book as the starting point – so we could be as authentic and purely Dr. Seuss’ original intent and his vision for the story and the characters as possible. We kind of made that its foundational DNA. And then we had to expand from there and create a full-length feature film.
Scott Mosier: We wanted to not only to stick to the emotional core truths of the book and the heart and spirit of the book – but also modernize the film and make it more relevant to today’s audience. And to really dig into… “Why did The Grinch Steal Christmas?” and to understand the reason why he stole Christmas – looking into his past to give an audience the sense of why he hates it so much. This gets into this sense of loneliness and isolation that he experienced as a child, and how it’s affected him as an adult. And building on that… and building the emotional arc of the character through some of this new stuff, while also sticking with the highlights and ideas of what’s in the book.
JM: And a lot of people have been posting photos online of the marketing ads and the billboards around Los Angeles with the different phrases – The Grinch’s sarcastic one-liners. You talk about trying to modernize this. It seems like you guys wanted to do that when it came to the marketing of this movie as well.
YC: The spirit of how we were making the movie – the marketing team picked up and ran even farther than we ever imagined. The LA billboards are hysterical. We’re in New York now, and they’ve got one with “Good luck getting those Hamilton tickets.” My friends in Chicago sent me one that says, “I’ve seen windier cities.” They’re doing an amazing job. It’s brilliant. It’s so incredible.
JM: Yeah. They’re really funny. So in working with Benedict Cumberbatch, how did you guide him in making sure the voice was a little bit different in style from Boris Karloff and Jim Carrey?
SM: A lot of credit goes, immediately, to Benedict. When he showed-up to start this process, it was important to him to create a voice – and to create a character. Not in isolation. Not the voice and the character. Doing it all together. And we were lucky to have him on early, and it was intentional to bring him on early so we could start doing recording sessions – and develop the voice and the character at the same time. And to find the right tone that Benedict was feeling really good about – and also felt distinct for our film.
It took like 2 or 3 sessions. I remember there was the moment where he did, “I’m going to steal their Christmas.” He did that line, and it’s one of those moments in animation where we took that line and did a quick animation to it, and it clicked for everybody. That’s it. From that line, and doing that very classic scene of The Grinch, he nailed it so perfectly that from there, that’s where the voice landed and we did the rest that way.
JM: The Grinch does mean things, but, like in the classic cartoon, we have to grow to like him over the course of this movie. How exactly would you describe The Grinch’s personality?
YC: There is a fine line. The word “Grinch” has come to define very specific characters. What you want to do is have fun with his Grinchy nature. On the surface, we have a lot of fun with the fact that he hates Christmas – all of the Christmas decorations, the music, all of these things that should be wonderful things. We start the film out where we kind of have fun living through his point of view of all of these things. But through the film, it also has to be built into this character that there’s something broken about The Grinch that makes it so he can’t enjoy these wonderful things. The holiday season with the joy and togetherness and family. It’s fun to watch The Grinch react to these things. But we needed to be able to go deeper with him and realize that there was something wrong with him – something broken with his heart (it was smaller, right?) So we had to play both sides. We wanted him to come around and heal those wounds that defined him and made him this almost villainous character.
SM: We’re riding this fine line because we wanted him to be The Grinch that people know – that malicious wickedness that people love so much. But we also didn’t want people to disengage from his emotional story by going too far in one direction, because you really do want the audience to be with him at the end of the movie.
YC: And to really feel that transformation. It’s the transformation at the end of his journey that we’ve all taken with him. At the beginning of the film, we want to be in his corner as he’s struggling against all that stuff. It’s that timeless Grinch character. That’s why we want to watch these films because of the richness and subversiveness of this character. But we had to make sure that we were able to go further – and go further with him. We wanted to have everybody experience that entire arc with him.
JM: And I love that Angela Lansbury is in this movie. She voices the Mayor of Whoville. This is her first film appearance in more than 7 years. She, of course, voices Mrs. Potts in my all-time favorite movie, “Beauty and the Beast”. Did she feel really comfortable getting back in the booth voicing this character?
SM: Yeah. I was lucky enough to be able to be in LA for the first recording. At first she comes in, and it’s like royalty arriving. She’s so sharp. She’s so present. She’s so professional. Everything you’re thinking about when you’re asking the question of what you want it to be, it was exactly that. An amazing experience for everybody. She drove herself there. And when we cast Benedict, it was because we all saw his name or were like, “That’s it.” And when we were trying to cast the Mayor, it’s not a big role, but it has some weight to it. We need somebody to be this voice of Whoville. Who’s voice could really push through? And somebody mentioned Angela Lansbury, and once again it was an immediate, “Yes. Absolutely. That’s perfect.”
JM: And Yarrow, I know you worked on “The Lorax” – another Illumination CGI movie based on a classic Dr. Seuss hand-drawn book. So were there any challenges in adapting “The Grinch” to CGI format?
YC: Yeah, definitely. Anytime you take a very iconic hand-drawn 2D… Dr. Seuss, his style is so unique. You can tell a Dr. Seuss drawing – out of the millions of drawings in the world – you know exactly who authored that drawing. And built into that is black ink lines and sparses of color. The only color that’s used in the book is red for his costume, when he puts his Santa outfit on. The challenges that has been so masterfully drawn in 2D… how do we take all of those design cues and artistic stylization and translate it to 3D… to what feels like a real-world space.
Personally, what I do is I take these drawings and dissect them. When he draws hands, he uses lines that curve this way and taper this way. And of course there are all of these wonderful shapes that you can find in The Grinch’s pear-shaped body. His head. The Whos tend to have that kind of big jowl area – smaller cranium. Seuss is also very loose with his depictions of The Grinch and Max in the book. There are little differences in all of the drawings in the book. What that allows us to do is give us a little bit of freedom to say, “This shape works with 3D this way and that way.” And the fact that all of the characters in the film are covered with hair – that also allows us to take these design cues, the way that Seuss would design the contour of a character and re-enforce that with the fur.
JM: This movie is destined to be a huge hit over the holiday season. Is there any way to attempt to do a “Grinch 2”? Any further adventures that you see down the line?
SM: Oh, wow. I can say after four years on “Grinch 1”, my brain hasn’t wrapped around the idea to do that at all.
YC: The thing about this kind of story…. (And who knows. I’m sure there are lots of people in the world that would have a brilliant take on a sequel.) But I think this story is such a singular kind of… How do you tell another story about The Grinch’s life that’s bigger than this one? He starts out in such a bad, difficult, lonely place – and we span such a wide range of bad to good, from loneliness to togetherness, fullness, family and joy. So how do you tell another story in that guy’s life that spans that distance?
SM: I never thought that anyone would ever bring it up, but I will admit – I saw somebody the other day who saw the movie and they’re like, “I never thought about this. I just want to watch The Grinch and Max more.” People have said that. And then I’ve heard people say, “What about a prequel?” How Grinch meets Max.
JM: Maybe another holiday special in the future. There have been so many of those on NBC recently. You never know!
YC and SM: Yeah!
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