The Growing Ice Age "Family"

We chat with Queen (Ellie), John (Sid) and Ray (Manny)

by Lynn Barker

In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, (in 3-D) Queen Latifah, John Leguizamo and Ray Romano, are voicing their characters Ellie the elephant, Sid the sloth and Manny the mammoth for the third time. This time around, Ellie and Manny are having a baby and Sid becomes a surrogate "mom" to a group of just-hatched T-Rex babies! We met with the trio at a beach-side hotel in Marina-del-Rey, California to find out any new challenges they faced this time around and what are this talented family of performers' hopes for the next Ice Age film (Queen would like baby Peaches to be a teen.)

AGW: Since this is the third time for you, voicing these characters, were there new challenges?

Ray: Well, it was the same challenges as always, just recording without the other actors being there. We had to do one scene particularly, the laughing scene, because Manny had never really laughed before. That was a little difficult. But the hardest part is just the physicality of it, standing in front of the microphone and pretending that you’re wrestling a dinosaur, it’s kind of weird, you got to get used to it.

Queen: For me, this go-round was a lot easier than the last one, because I just kind of came on board on the last film and it was kind of rough at first trying to figure out Ellie’s voice and match it with their idea of the character and what the animation was supposed to be. I also perform, I sing, I do shows, and so sometimes I’m coming in and my voice is kind of hoarse and then I’ve got to come back and do it again when my voice is better. I’m always fighting that challenge of being in the right voice because I’ve been somewhere singing or rapping or whatever. For this one, once we found who the character was, it was pretty smooth.

AGW: So, in your opinion, who is Ellie?

Queen: Ellie is sweet and she’s funny and she’s nurturing and she really cares about the big family, like she’s part of this family.

AGW: And Ellie is different now than in the last film.

Queen: Ellie has grown so much since the last movie. She’s married now and she’s got a baby on the way .

John: You got married?

Queen: Yes.

John: When did you guys get married?

Ray: I don’t know.

Queen: I just assumed we were married. I’m going to go with tradition on this and say they got married first, mammoth style, and we’re hitched for life. That’s my baby daddy right there (we laugh). But, anyway, she grows so much between the last film and this one, because the last one she thought she was a possum, and she was kind of like a big kid. She wanted to play with her brothers all the time, she hung from a tree by her tail for that matter, and now she’s a little more mature.

AGW: So you reflected that with your voice?

Queen: It's really about kind of making sure she has that nurturing warmth in her voice and she seems to be a voice of reason, pushing him to go make up with Sid. And, if things are wrong, she’s always trying people back together. So it was really just trying to bring that love to the character.

Ray: What’s funny is the dynamic. Not to bring up my show, but in 'Everybody Loves Raymond', I was the voice of reason because there were crazy characters; the brother, the mother, they were all nuts and I kind of had to keep that crew together, but then the wife was really the overall voice of reason then I was the crazy one, which is kind of the same. (to Queen) You kind of reel us all in.

John: Everybody loves Manny.

AGW: John, you are still doing Sid's lisp all the time and Sid takes on some new responsibilities. How tricky was that for you?

John: The whole thing is pretty tricky. I mean, in this one I was a single 'mom', representing single moms all over the country; two jobs, three kids, T-Rexes are a lot like teenagers. You think you’re going to ruin the kids. I’m trying to make them vegetarians. I mean it was trying to find that vulnerability and it was kind of embarrassing to be that soft but it was cool to go that far. It’s like what Ray said, it's always really hard to make that voice really pop on the screen so it feels alive, like, when you’re getting hit and choked and all that, to get yourself really in that physically, agitated state, so that [the voice] really doesn't get flat.

Queen: Probably the only difficult thing for me was trying to be pregnant and in labor and hide it from these guys at the same time. It's like, 'Ooooo' (she gasps in pain), everything's okay, just go on'. I would fake these labor sounds and the difficulty of the pain that’s involved in that. Other than that it was good.

AGW: So that teens aren't confused and think their natural history teachers are nuts, there were no dinosaurs in the ice age. They'd already lived and died. But, in this film, your characters discover a lost underground world where they are still living, right?

Ray: Yeah and animals don't really talk either. We're pretending. 99 percent of the population doesn’t know that dinosaurs didn’t exist during the ice age, so don’t tell anyone.

AGW: Too late. John, did you see yourself in the character at all, and also Ray and John, you do stand up comedy or a one man show, did that help you when you have to be isolated in doing this kind of work?

John: Yeah, I think doing one man shows you’re used to being alone and having to create the whole thing by yourself, so it made it a lot easier. At first it was kind of shocking, you were like, 'So, where is Ray and where's Denis? Are they late? I’ve been here for a while' and they said 'Nope, they’re not coming'.’ There’s no film, it’s just this script that you’ve got to make it come to life, and then you start going, 'Oh, wait, maybe this is kind of fun, I don’t have to be worried about being embarrassed or being humiliated, I can be here in my underwear and nobody’s going to care'. And you just have a great time.

Ray: But you’ve got to get used to it also as a comedian. There's nobody there laughing at what you’re doing, so you’ve got to believe that it’s funny. You’ve got four of them (directors) behind the glass, so, hopefully, you just see them laughing.

AGW: Since you guys were being filmed, did you ever see yourself in the character?

John: You see little gestures, you recognize little bits that you did when you said the line, but the rest you’re not really watching yourself so it’s hard to tell.

Ray: If they’re filming you. On occasion they would film us.

AGW: Is it easy to get into your character again right away or hard to get out of it?

John: It’s harder to get out of character than it is for me to be in the character. I end up leaving, talking like this (does a lisp) for about a week, and I realize, 'oh, shoot!' I forget that I'm still Sid. I even hear myself right now sounding like that. So that’s what happens to me.

Ray: Well, like I said, I just do a couple of lines and I get into that voice that I think Manny is like. (He's actually doing the Manny voice now). In your head you hear your voice and you’re doing your character. You hear your voice different, and maybe only for your ear but you are doing it. Does this sound like Manny right now?

AGW: Yep. What would be next for this little extended family? What are your hopes for your characters in the next film?

John: A wife for me! There is their [mammoth baby] Peaches. Then there'll be Prunella.

Ray: Peaches won't have anything to do with me. I guess that’s the natural progression. The kids will get older and I guess Sid will find a woman finally.

John: I get a couple I hope. I hope I get to go to a Hot Springs with a couple of slough females. That’d be hot.

AGW: Well, little Scrat gets a girl in this one.

Queen: I’d love to see Sid with a woman. I really would. I could handle two lisps in the movie. I really would enjoy seeing that. I don’t know, I’d love to see something happen with Peaches growing up.

Ray: Whoa! We don’t want to be grandparents yet.

Queen: No, but I’d like to see her hit those teen years and start wilding out a little bit, and see what happens. She’s going to drive me crazy one way or the other, but I think there’s a lot to play with us having a daughter now. Kids grow up so fast in these movies, so I definitely would like to see some fun happening around that.

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