We sent a reporter out to cover the Ralph Breaks the Internet press conference earlier this month in California. The movie will open domestically on November 21st, 2018. The press conference participants were John C. Reilly (Ralph); Sarah Silverman (Vanellope); Taraji P. Henson (Yesss); Jack McBrayer (Felix) as well as Director Rich Moore, Director Phil Johnston and Producer Clark Spencer to talk about the new film. We have the full press conference – about 45 minutes – on video along with some highlights below.
The host asked how they visualized what the internet would look like. Johnston said that “after several horrible ideas that didn’t make sense, we finally thought of it like an old city like Rome or Istanbul, where the ancient city is buried deep beneath and then they build a newer version on top of that. And that’s kind of what the internet is.” They envisioned a city that is multi-layered where the newest and biggest websites are at the top and the forgotten ones are down at the bottom.
Reilly talks about the video games as representing childhood and then the internet as “the larger world beyond” as they mature. He continued, “Ralph works so hard to get a friend in that first one…Vanellope starts to grow and mature and realizing she wants to feel she belongs somewhere and it’s not her candy game”. He continues on that same theme saying that both children and adults will find things in the film that they can relate to “in terms of the way relationships evolve”.
A question was asked of Silverman and Reilly about their chemistry on screen and if they got to record together. That is generally not the way voice acting goes anymore, often actors record their dialogue separately. To a lot of “awwws” in the audience, Silverman said, “We did it together”. She expounded, “we get to record together, these guys and Pam. We get to improvise, they give us a lot of freedom. We get to collaborate a lot….I think they always book about, maybe an extra hour of time than we need because we get real chatty”. She continues that there is probably an R-rated comedy album within the footage.
Reilly said that “It was a real treat to get into the studio again with Sarah”. He said that his friendship with her has aged the same time – 6 years – as in the film, so it lent itself to working together and an intimacy that they didn’t have the first time around. Reilly said he was the one who said that he pushed for working together, he’d worked in animation previously where he never even met the other actors. He said that it gave the film a soul to be able to work together, to be able to look into each other’s eyes while acting.
The subject of the princesses in their comfortable outfits is discussed near the end, with Silverman taking it into real life situations and saying that women “don’t need to be uncomfortable to deserve love…I love that Vanellope kind of sheds light on these grown-up princesses that are uncomfortable”.
The press conference is both interesting and entertaining, the actors clearly enjoy working together and there is 45 minutes of it to enjoy.
