Angry Birds 2 is a loose reunion for many of the cast members of SNL, including Jason Sudeikis, who was one of the principal cast members, and Rachel Bloom, who says she was an “unpaid intern” who read the script and got people salads. Joking aside, neither of them actually got to see each other during the production of the film up until the press rounds and the premiere.
Bloom said she was really proud to play a female character in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math), someone that little girls can look up to. But one thing that she wants audiences to take away from the film are the ideas of “empathy” and “radical compassion.” “There is no straight-up villain in this movie,” she said. “You understand where everyone is coming from, and I think that is how we should all live our lives. Everyone wants to be the hero of the story; everyone is afraid of abandonment; and everyone is afraid of rejection, and I think the angriest characters like Red, you go into his head and understand that his anger and not wanting the truce and his stubbornness doesn’t come from wanting to be stubborn for stubborn sake, it comes from fear.”
“It’s especially important for men and young boys to be open with their emotions and not necessarily resort to just anger,” Bloom said. “That anger is coming from a place of a fear of being hurt, and that is okay.”
Sudeikis agreed. “Sometimes even people’s positive attributes come from him wanting to be a hero, which we would consider a positive thing,” he said. “But it is still coming from a place of pain, so it is a little bit inauthentic. So to be deprived of it makes him angry and scared.”
He said that it was nice to see that the sequel could address complex issues while still being a “badass action movie.”
One of the bigger themes in the sequel is adversaries putting their differences aside to achieve a common goal. For Sudeikis, he wants kids who are trying to deal with frenemies to know that “if someone closes the door on you, to not take it personally.”
“They might be dealing with something,” he said. “Maybe try and knock on the door a little later, a little softer.”
“Then a little louder,” he joked.
Red (Jason Sudeikis) and Leonard (Bill Hader) in Columbia Pictures and Rovio Animations’ ANGRY BIRDS 2.
“There are some people who just don’t want to be friends,” Bloom chimed. “That has nothing to do with you. At a certain point, if you try to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to be your friend, it’s okay to walk away and put up that boundary and say ‘I am going to step away from this person to protect myself.’”
“The old cliché that there is plenty of fish in the sea need not only apply to romantic relationships,” Sudeikis added.
The two are naturally talented improv comedians, and as such, they can go off-script rather easily. “A lot of times improvising, especially for me in this day and age, just comes,” Sudeikis said. “This is a little bit different. A lot of the times it is just fast writing. So you’ll do your lines and then you’ll say, ‘oh, let me go back and do that one.’
He adds that whenever he improvs, he does a lot of lateral moves, he feels bad for the person holding the boom mic because they would have to follow him when they just want him to read straight off the script.
Sudeikis also warns about doing too much improv because it would be treading onto inventing new characters and a new story, something of which costs money. So for him, its all about what is going on in the script. “A lot of the times it really helps, it always helps, it is the only way I know how to do it, is to have the person there,” he said. The comedian compares the process to getting to recording a song, as you have to know the notes the other person in signing so that you can be in harmony.
And not all recording processes are the same. Sometimes there is someone to bounce off of, but in Bloom’s case, she would see some of Sudeikis’ takes, so she could understand what the “rhythm was and play with it.” For her, she says it is like being “scene partner pen pals.” “You are communicating with each other months apart as if you are in some sort of beautiful time travel,” she said.
