In “The Garfield Movie,” Hannah Waddingham (“Ted Lasso,” “The Fall Guy”) voices Jinx, a maniacal villainous Persian cat with a subtle diva personality. The animated road movie sees the world-famous titular Monday-hating and lasagna-loving indoor cat reunite with his long-lost father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), to go on a hilarious cross-country high-stakes heist.
That’s It LA had a chance to join their fellow journalists and bloggers to talk to Emmy Award-winning actress Hannah Waddingham about her experience developing the role of Jinx, using her theater background to bring the character to life, and her connection to Garfield.
“I would say as a kid, my first kind of knowledge of Garfield was literally as a one-line cartoon,” Waddingham said of her connection to comic tabby cat. “So it was just a natural leap for me. When they approached me to join the cast, I genuinely couldn’t quite believe it because you know, Garfield. So when they showed me the rough sketches of Jinx I just thought, I mean, there’s no way I’m turning this one down.”
While Waddingham says the concept art didn’t hide the fact that Jinx was “unabashedly maniacal,” the actor believed the cat was always playful at heart but is justified being the film’s villain. “She had to right or wrong. And so you know, Vic had to pay. Yes?”
The actor fell in love with Jinx after seeing concept art and then her character started to take shape after they added to it. “They started animating her a bit and gave her fluffy white fur. Then they added some black eyeliner like I do in real- life. And the more and more they put it together. I just thought well, ‘she’s gonna have to have a pretty big dramatic voice. And also because he’s not very happy with Vic, Garfield’s dad. I thought well, you know what, ‘there’s only one way I can go with this, and that’s big and loud and venomous.’”
Given that Jinx is a villainous diva, it is no surprise that she loves to be the center of the spotlight. And what better thing to do when being in the spotlight than sing. “When I signed on for the movie, the song wasn’t on the table. And part of the way through the process Mark [Dindal], the director just said to me, we’d love to write an original song for you,” Waddingham said. “When they gave it to me, they just said: ‘do what you want with it. Let’s just go and play with her. And we went to Abbey Road Studios, which was incredible. And spent a few hours just I mean, I was all over my voice today, all over it every single note in every single octave. But I think Jinx deserved it.”
Having appeared in a number of West End shows, including Spamalot, the 2010 Regent’s Park revival of Into the Woods, and The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West, Waddingham used her theater background to help inform everything about Jinx. “When I do any other voice work, I find that I’m far more contained. But with Jinx, I mean, look at her, I need to serve that feline,” she said. “ So I made a point of – when you’re when you’re smiling, it changes your voice. And so I was often I had such an overly animated face while I was playing her. Because I think one feeds into the other feeds into the other.
Waddingham describes the process as a ping-pong effect of working in the booth and having to adjust accordingly based on what they’re seeing her doing in the booth. “It was just a beautiful partnership of finding who this cheeky monkey is,” she said.
“My 22 odd years in musical theater, there was some grand dames of musical theater both in the West End and on Broadway,” Waddingham added. “I think I borrowed a little bit of their energy. The way they hold themselves, the way the chest is always raised, and the chin is always up. The way there’s always a smile in the cheeks.”
Then there’s the fact that Waddingham loves diving deeper into the character she plays, especially the kind of villains who don’t see themselves as villains. “I would say that the other thing that attracted me to her is the fact that she’s literally just trying to right or wrong,” she said. “I like characters where I can kind of bite into what makes them tick, and what makes them feel like they need to go down the roads that they do, even if they probably shouldn’t.”
Actors spend many hours in the recording booths recording lines of dialogue, various other efforts, and even improv. However, Waddingham says she mostly stuck to the script. “It was more about what part of my voice I was using at any given time.”
Waddingham says being a singer all her life helped inform where Jinx needed to go and how much she needed to put into the character. “I’m a singer first and so that instrument, the way you play it around with how Jinx looks and where we need to get to by the end of the scene, where she needs to dominate the scene, and where she can be playful,” she said. “So in terms of that, I was given very much carte blanche and total carte blanche for the song. But the script is so brilliant. I didn’t need to add anything at all other than the odd cheeky sound.”
“The Garfield Movie” opens in theaters on May 24, 2024.
