I have a very close friend who is a brilliant clown, and I always wanted to do a show with him. So I did one year at La MaMa Theatre. I had not done stilts before that show, and I had about two weeks to learn how to do that, and they were just made with off-off Broadway money. The ones that I had in Rogue One were made by [Industrial Light & Magic]. So they were really easy. They were made with actual prosthetic feet on the bottom. They were athletic, in a way. I could run in them. There was a bounce to them that I could use.

Alan Tudyk

Categorized in : Years Two Running

The reason I got into acting was the audience is right there and if you did something great they were right there and you knew it.

audience acting reason

The wrinklier the raisin, the sweeter the fruit. by Alan Tudyk

The wrinklier the raisin, the sweeter the fruit.

raisins aging fruit

I wrote and directed and acted in it and produced it, every job I have since that - and Star Wars included - I look at it completely different now. Now that I've seen how it gets made, I can appreciate the jobs that people are doing, and it's also become a different learning experience for me to work on things because I'm watching pros at the top of their field do their jobs and just picking up on their tricks and all of their expertise and stashing them away in my brain.

stars jobs war

Those are always fun characters to play, the ones who are stupid... by Alan Tudyk

Those are always fun characters to play, the ones who are stupid but speak with authority.

stupid fun character

Gareth [Edwards] was very much about including everyone in what we were making, so he would cut together different scenes to show us what we were making. And the crew, cast, everyone would go into a theater there at Pinewood Studios and watch 10 minutes of what we were making. It was always so exciting. It looked amazing, and the music was huge.

cutting different together

It was great. We knew we were going back when we finished the movie. It was such a big movie [Star Wars].

back-when stars war

It's just like they approach things on every movie I've worked on, very much as if it was a live-action movie. The character you're playing, even though he's a rooster and is really stupid, you approach it in the same way you would approach Hamlet, which is exactly how I approached it. But they give you the circumstances. "You're on the boat. You didn't expect to be here. You just climbed in a boat to maybe sleep. You don't even know why you climbed in the boat. You're really that dumb.

stupid sleep character

I was going to be credited as Wray Nerely, my role in Con Man. It got cut in the reshoots. I was like, "Wait a second. I'm cut." It's a better telling of the story, but unfortunately, Wray Nerely gets cut, which is actually exactly right because if Wray Nerely was ever in Star Wars, he wouldn't make it to the final edit.

cutting stars war

C-3PO is flappable [in Star Wars]. [Kaytoo is] very unflappable compared to C-3PO, who is just flapping all over the place.

flapping stars war

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools... by Alan Tudyk

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with.

stage-actors tools play

It's amazing how much actual chicken sounds lend themselves to st... by Alan Tudyk

It's amazing how much actual chicken sounds lend themselves to stupidity.

chickens stupidity sound

It's closer to just acting in a film because it was a six-month commitment. We got to fly all over the world.

six acting commitment

[Making Moana] was like camping because we were all living together on the boat, and one night we came home and there was a whale shark. I got to go swimming with her. It was a magic, magic, magical time.

swimming home night

I'm there [on Moana] with the other actors, so you play off one another. It's not just your idea of what the character is and what the world is like it would be in an animated [film], where it all sort of exists in your head. It's all right there, and if Diego's performance is doing what it's doing, it affects yours.

play character ideas

Gareth [Edwards] was very open to just shaping the performances and the scenes to fit what was happening with the actors and the storytelling that was emerging.

storytelling fit actors

[Heihei] a really dumb rooster. You have to just turn the rooster so his head ends up hitting the grain. He's not smart enough to eat.

roosters smart dumb

[Heihei] is stupidest chicken on planet Earth and mascot. by Alan Tudyk

[Heihei] is stupidest chicken on planet Earth and mascot.

mascots chickens earth

I consider theater, this is a vacation for me from LA, I sort of view this as I get to have this vacation and during my vacation I get to work on acting. It's like an acting class. And if I go too long without doing a play, I just feel empty. Like approaching a role, I feel like the pool is very shallow, like I'm drawn from it. So I need to come back and do a play, fortunately I've been able to, every couple of years.

vacation couple views

You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.

film sometimes way

Reading is a heady thing. You can be into the action of someone's thoughts and take a whole trip down someone's ruminations while seconds tick by in the world that they're in, but you can't really do that in film. Some films can, but not too much.

rumination reading world