Have you been following my Disney Planes adventures? I was very fortunate to be invited out to the #DisneyPlanesEvent. It was such a great time. We got to go behind the scenes and take a look at everything that went into making the movie. One of the awesome things we were able to do was interview a couple of the voice actors. One being Teri Hatcher who voiced Dottie.
Unfortunately, Teri was very sick on the day we were supposed to interview her and meet her in person. She felt terrible though so offered to chat with us via a conference call. While I would have loved to meet her in person, the fact that she took the time to talk to us while not feeling well was so great of her!
I don’t know if you’re anything like me but I tend to get a little star struck when talking to someone like Teri Hatcher. What was so cool though was that she didn’t act like a big Hollywood star. She was very much a mom just like anyone else.
Q&A with Teri Hatcher Voice of Dottie
I loved her answer to the question: I wondered what you thought about playing that role as a woman. (referring to the female mechanic Dottie)
TERI : … I consider myself fairly tough, I knew nothing about fixing cars, or planes, or mechanics, or anything else. Thank God for AAA. That’s all I have to say. … so that was interesting learning that language because especially in voice work, part of what I love so much is that, you know, you can play so much with the material and give the editor and the director so many choices to blend with the other characters. But when it comes to that sort of heavy duty, here’s how you have to say this, because, you know, the accent of a certain kind of oil, you know, is on this syllable, not this one.
It wouldn’t make sense. So I did really have to learn that but I love that she was or is that sort of tough, and smart, and capable, and also friendly and caring and for being in this ensemble I felt like it was an important piece to the puzzle of the journey watching someone that is going out of their comfort zone to reach something they really desire and dream for and part of you wants to support that, but part of you wants to protect from that and Dottie finding, balancing, not being too discouraging but not completely being without a voice that says I want you to be safe more than anything. And I think that was a point that needed to be represented in the film.
This was also a great answer to this question: What was your daughter’s reaction to hearing that you were doing this role?
TERI : Oh her first reaction is, I wanna be a voice animator. (Teri laughed) It’s a pretty fun job, I’ve gotta say. … I also did all the mom voices in Coraline, and so I guess that was really my daughter’s first exposure to seeing her mom, or hearing her mom put a personality behind the image of a character. And, you know, she’s just proud of everything I do.
It’s such a funny thing, I think- you’ll hear probably from most actress moms that your child sees you primarily as the mom which has nothing to do with your job and that’s the stronghold of our relationship. And then the fact that, like, I have this sort of crazy job with access to different fun adventurous type of work is just sort of extra.
I really enjoyed getting to talk to Teri even though we couldn’t meet her in person.
Stay tuned for my next post on my #DisneyPlanesEvent adventures! Coming soon!
