In Madagascar, the latest computer-animated flick from DreamWorks, four New Yorkers–a lion, a zebra, a giraffe, and a hippo, to be exact– trade their pimped-out Central Park Zoo cages (complete with built-in heaters and all-you-can-eat steak) to get all Survivor on a lemur-infested island in South Africa.
Alex (Ben Stiller), the pampered lion and master showman, loves his city so much that he incessantly sings “New York, New York” to his best friend, Marty (Chris Rock), the zebra. But when his stir-crazy buddy stages a zoo bust, the pair finds themselves washed up in the wild with fellow zoomates, Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), the take-charge hippo, and Melman (David Schwimmer), the accident-prone giraffe. The foursome quickly discovers that unlike in the song, if you can make it in New York, you can’t necessarily make it anywhere.
To see how the wild ones live, we interviewed Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith. Plus we got some commentary from DreamWorks head honcho, Jeffrey Katzenberg, along with directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, who also voice the leader of the pretentious penguins.
Chris Rock
On nabbing the role of Marty, the restless zebra: [He laughs] “They wanted David Chapelle for me! It was originally Dave Chapelle!”
On tapping into his inner zebra: “How’d I get into my zebra? [Jokingly] I didn’t even know it was a zebra until yesterday! I thought it was a muskrat. Jeffrey cut it. It looks great…My character bores very easy. I was just a guy who wanted to get out of Brooklyn immediately as a child, so the same thing that takes him out of the zoo took me out of Brooklyn.”
On relating to Marty’s mid-life crisis: “Oh no, I’m not [too young to have a mid-life crisis.]. Ben’s going through it. I just turned 40, and you know, not what it used to be. It feels old. I’m old. I’m old. 40 is old.”
On going soft for his kids: “Uh, it’s nice to have something my kids can see. I let them see anything, but they can’t see my movies now till they’re 30. It’s nice that there’s something they can see right now. That’s an attraction. Hmm, all my clean jokes are in the movie. All the dirty ones are in a factory.”
Director Tom McGrath: “Chris is very smart. He has very much control over when he’s dirty and knows when he does his stand-up routine and when he’s doing a voice for us. In fact, he helped us in so many ways find words that weren’t swear words. He knows all the words like ‘dagnabbit,’ ‘crack-a-lackin’,’ ‘this place is off the chi-zang!’ He never had any foul language when we recorded at all.”
On how his role in The Longest Yard, which teams him up with SNL alum Adam Sandler, differs from his role in Madagascar: “They’re very similar. Just in The Longest Yard, I actually had to wear pants. I don’t know. I’m a guy. I get hired. [I say] ‘What do you need me to do?’ I’m like a fix-it man. I don’t ask any questions. It’s like, ‘Okay, huh what? I’m a zebra? Okay, I’m a zebra. What’s a zebra, say? Okay, I’m gonna say it. You like that? I’ll do it again if you need me to do it again. Higher? Lower?’ Jeffrey directed me in a couple of scenes. I do whatever they tell me to do, and then I go do The Longest Yard [and I say] ‘Huh? I’m in jail? Alright. I’m in jail. Whatcha need?'”
On total box office dominance with The Longest Yard and Madagascar coming out on the same weekend: “Everyone will see Madagascar in the morning, in the afternoon, and then at night, they’ll see The Longest Yard.
Jeffrey Katzenberg: “We think it’s going to be the biggest opening weekend for any one actor in the history of the movie business. We refer to it as the Chris Rock Memorial Day Weekend.” Rock adds, “Until the new Will Smith movie comes out!”
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Ben Stiller
On if he auditioned: “I wouldn’t have gotten my role if I’d had to audition.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg: “They were picked. Each one of them. That’s the great thing of having, in this case, actors and actresses who are so distinctive and accomplished. And the directors and producers and myself, we wanted what they had. Each one of these actors were actually our first choices, which almost never happens in the movie business. At the beginning we used test animation. We said, ‘Here’s a little piece of animation so you can see what we’re talking about doing.’ So we took something from each of their work that they’ve done before and animated it, hoping they’d look it and go, ‘Oh, well that’s cool.'”
On tapping into his inner diva to play Alex, the metro-sexual lion: “[I could relate to] the creature comfort. Alex is sort of a creature of habit. He likes the status quo. He likes being in his element, likes familiarity.”
On working alone in a recording booth: “To me, that was probably the toughest part, just being alone all the time. But that’s just tough anyway…It was a weird process because it does go on for a long time, and in the beginning I felt sort of like [it was] trial and error. You try these sort of things out because you’re alone in the studio with a microphone and nothing exists yet, except for some pictures that you see.”
On picking up on his mannerisms during the recording sessions: “I realized how much I do with my hands because I was like standing there in front of the microphone, and I realized the microphone wasn’t picking up on the [hands].”
On seeing his first animated feature come together: “Like 6 months, a year into the process we start to see scenes coming back. Then it really helps because you start to see what the character is. For me, it didn’t really start to come together until I started to see the scenes because it was sort of like I was out in space doing it and not knowing what was working and what wasn’t working. And when they started to bring back whole scenes and actually hearing the other actors and seeing the Marty/Alex friendship, for me Alex became a character. It wasn’t me just doing a voice. That’s what I liked about these characters. They all are real characters that aren’t just characterizations of our voices. Like when I watch Marty, I don’t think of Chris; I think of Marty. And so it was fun to sort of start to see it come together and then go back and redo the stuff because you could see more of what the actual character was.”
On whether he is giving a shout-out to his Zoolander character when Alex, the zoo’s main attraction, struts onstage with major model ‘tude for his daily show appearance: “Some of the people picked up on that and that might mean a lawsuit. Yeah, it’s homage. Yeah, but I didn’t even know. When I saw the movie, I was like, ‘Oh wow, they did that.'”
Jeffrey Katzenberg: “My kids who are seniors in college have honestly seen Zoolander maybe 1,000 times. Every week, week in, week out, [I say] ‘What are you doing tonight?’ [They say] ‘Oh, we’re watching Zoolander.'”
On his vocal talent, evidenced in the scenes where he sings “New York, New York”: [Hamming it up by crooning a line from Aladdin‘s “A Whole New World”] “‘I can show you the world!’ My lack of talent in the voice department? I mean that [“New York, New York” recording session] was probably one of the most uncomfortable days. That was horrible, and they kept on putting it off. I think for months and months, they kept on sayin, ‘Aw, no, this is the “New York New York” scene. We’ll do that next time. We’ll do that next time,’ and then it came the day to do it, and it was like [I thought] it could be bad, and it was bad. [I thought] It could be horrible. And I guess everybody’s kind of singing together in the movie, right? Sort of? But when we were recording it, it was totally alone and different.”
On whether the on-screen friendships carry on off screen: “Oh, the friendship behind the scenes? [Deadpanning] Well there’s nothing [sexual] going on, if that’s what you’re asking. Andy [Richter], Chris [Rock] and I go back. We all sort of go back like 10, 15 years, something like that. I’ve known these guys for awhile, and Jada’s the only person who I’m starting to get to know now, and I enjoy it.”
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Jada Pinkett Smith
On if she was offended when asked to play the more-to-love hippo: “It never occurred to me when Jeffrey showed me the picture of Gloria that, yeah, she’s a hippo. I’m playing a character, you know. I thought she’s adorable, you know, so it just never occurred to me there was something I should be like [offended by].”
Director Eric Darnell commentary: “Once we have our story, we know who our characters are. Just listening to the voice and the quality of the voice and finding that actor that’s going to provide that character for the animation to work. And that’s how you can end up with someone like Jada Pinkett Smith, voicing this 800-pound hippo because when you listen to her voice separate from her body. She’s got all this incredible power and attitude and strength and confidence, which is just what we wanted for Gloria the hippo. So it doesn’t matter that she’s petite because her voice is so wonderful.”
On taking care of the boys in the movie, much like she does in real life as a mother of two kids and wife of Will Smith: “For Gloria, I really liked how maternal she was. She’s kind of like a mama that has a tough-love approach, but still very sweet. I really liked [that] she was so maternal.”
On never seeing her co-stars in the process of making the movie: “It’s a pretty challenging process just ’cause there was no one. We don’t have any sets or props or anything. Just trying some different lines, different interpretations, and then they put it together really fantastically.”
On telling her kids about her latest role: “Well they [my kids] actually told me. I didn’t say anything. They saw a clip of Madagascar on a video. ‘Mommy, you’re playing a hippo!’ I was like, ‘Daggit!’ I was planning on waiting to make it a surprise. So they’re very excited. I told them I was coming here today, and they thought that we were having a premiere. They were all upset. [Her kids said] ‘You’re supposed to be taking us!’ And I’m saying, ‘It’s just press. It’s not going to be the movie. It’s next week!’ So they’re very, very excited.”
On how to make it in showbiz: “You know, I always tell young people, make sure they’re serious about their craft so that when the opportunities come along, you’re prepared. I was lucky enough to know at a very young age that I wanted to be an actress, so I attended Baltimore School for the Arts, and I attended North Carolina School for the Arts, came out to Hollywood and I was ready, you know. I always tell young people: be prepared, work at your craft. Because this generation, a lot of people feel as though it’s supposed to just (she snaps), you know, come.”
