Big Hero 6 releases on Blu-ray today, & with that I have a special treat to share with you..my exclusive interview with the voices of Hiro & Tadashi…Ryan Potter & Daniel Henney. Watching them at the interview table together, it was sorta like they had known each other their whole lives, even though they had just met at the premier…they had a fun back and forth that made us all giggle. It’s fun hearing how much they are like their animated counterparts.
Q : Ryan, how excited were you to work on this film and did you geek out over all the science.
Yeah, it wasn’t necessarily a love for robotics and science. It was more for just a love of creating and, you know, within robotics, there’s so much you can create, and I had the Lego robot kit,
I had a lot of models and robot builds and all these different things that I just loved piecing it together. So, it wasn’t necessarily a love for, like, robotics and science, but more just wanting to be able to kind of put the things that were almost trapped in my mind.
– Ryan Potter (Hiro)
Q : You’ve been in a Wolverine movie already, and now you’re in the Marvel Big Hero 6. Were you a big comic book fan as a kid?
I mean, not huge, but I was definitely into them. I was into, like, Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, stuff like that. It’s still very surreal, though. It doesn’t get, like, oh, this is my normal Tuesday, you know, fighting Wolverine and dying in a helicopter. That’s not normal for me. I mean, it’s still very surreal. This movie was very, very special. It didn’t, I mean, it felt like it- you could feel the, the Marvel influence, but it was just a whole, just a whole other beautiful experience. It was just bigger than anything I’d done before. – Daniel Henney (Tadashi)
When asked about how they are like their animated counterparts, they had some interesting answers.
I dress just like Tadashi. I always have. I don’t usually wear suits, so like there’ll be days when I, like, I walk out of my house and I’ll take a look in the mirror, and I, I look just like Tadashi. I wear a cardigan and a baseball hat. – Daniel Henney (Tadashi)
I didn’t go into that room acting at all. I went into that room simply being myself and living in those circumstances, I mean, a lot of the emotional stuff, it was just like, the creators of the film made a really comfortable environment, so I just revisited a lot of things that I felt before. – Ryan Potter (Hiro)
Being Disney’s first multi-racial, multi-ethnic character was a huge honor for them to be chosen to play the roles..
Like, we would’ve, we would’ve paid them to, you know, cast us – Ryan
You didn’t pay? – Daniel
Daniel talks about how it’s a more personal experience for him…
I grew up in Michigan. When I was growing up, there was no one on TV that looked like me. If there was, they were a martial artist, and they had very heavy accents and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My father’s Caucasian so I had that connection, but yet, I was very much Asian. So it’s very satisfying to know that we can do projects like this now, that can give children that little moment, where they say, ‘Oh, I can do that because they can do that.’ – Daniel
And while Big Hero 6 celebrates family, it’s also about so much more..
The characters are all geniuses. The film does celebrate science and robotics, and just being a smart person, but what it really celebrates is being yourself, and these kids just happen to be very smart. Every single one of these kids are all brutally honest in who they are, and they’re proud of it. They don’t shy away from who they are,. So yes, it does celebrate robotics and science, but it also celebrates just being a nerd. It celebrates being an outstanding young man and having high morals, and being a strong independent woman, and it celebrates simply being yourself. – Ryan
So what’s next for these guys?
A TV show here in the states for Daniel, & & college for Ryan. I see big things for the both of them and can’t wait to see what they do in the future!
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