Actor Keegan-Michael Key voices Toad in the upcoming The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but how did he find the little creature’s voice? In an interview with Fandango, Key said he tried to channel a friend of his, and brought that to the movie’s directors as a jumping off point.
The idea was to “almost pretend like I was sucking on a helium balloon,” with the aim of feeling like he was “pinching” the sound of his voice to make it higher. After testing the voice out, Key received a note that it should be even higher, so he kept going and going.
“Trying to get as high as we could and still have a certain comfort level within the voice. It was a really fun, exploratory experience to try to find the right spot and try to get those rhythms in a place where it felt like it would be Toad, but kind of a new version of Toad at the same time,” Key said.
The full interview is a fun watch and also includes the actors who play Mario (Chris Pratt), Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen), Bowser (Jack Black), and Luigi (Charlie Day) talking about their experience making the movie. Black and Day joke about channeling Christian Bale to get into character, and the actors also discuss some of the video game Easter eggs that viewers can look forward to.
The newest trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie arrived on March 9 and teased a lot of action and mayhem to come.
Following a delay from 2022, the movie hits theaters on April 5. The current highest-grossing video game movie of all time is Warcraft with $439 million. There are no tracking estimates available for The Super Mario Bros. Movie yet, but given the star power and the popularity of the Mario series, it’s expected that the film puts up big-time box office numbers.
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