In typical Pixar fashion, the voice cast of “Hoppers” is ridiculously stacked, including Piper Curda (Mabel), Bobby Moynihan (King George), Jon Hamm (Mayor Jerry Generazzo), Kathy Najimy (Dr. Sam), Dave Franco (Titus), Eduardo Franco (Loaf), Aparna Nancherla (Nisha), Tom Law (Tom Lizard), Sam Richardson (Conner), Melissa Villaseñor (Ellen), the late Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Bird King), Steve Purcell (Amphibian King), Ego Nwodim (Fish Queen), Nichole Sakura (Reptile Queens), Meryl Streep (Insect Queen), Karen Huie (Grandma Tanaka), and Vanessa Bayer (Diane). Daniel Chong shared a fantastic story about asking if the legendary Meryl Streep if she’d be down to voice the Insect Queen, which inspired me to ask him what it was like to approach actors about joining the film to voice animals that might be less-than-ideal comparisons to their personality.
“I mean, the weird thing is, sometimes they immediately had some weird kinship with that animal,” Daniel Chong told me during our exclusive interview. “For example, I remember Nichole Sakura, who plays the Reptile Queens, she was like, ‘I have all these snake tattoos!'” In fact, Meryl Streep even expressed a kinship with beavers, and during their Zoom call about the role, pointed out a pond on her property that was inhabited by beavers. “There was just something that all of them sort of just immediately had an alignment with already, and it just kind of worked out very naturally,” Chong explained.
And if the actors didn’t have an outright connection with the animal, they picked up on the vibe. “I don’t know that Eduardo Franco had a kinship with beavers per se, but the attitude of Loaf? He just nailed that out of the gate,” producer Nicole Grindle told me. “We’re like, ‘Yep, that’s Loaf.’ He got it.”
