There’s a small movie you probably haven’t heard of coming out in a few days. Called Moana 2, or something like. Like I said, I’m sure you haven’t heard of it. Well, some corporation from Disney invited me to the top of the Space Needle to interview one of the voice stars and a producer from the movie, so, with my six-year-old daughter I ventured into the rainy skies to sit down for a few minutes with Hualalai* Chung (who voices “Moni”) and Christina Chen (producer).
*For some reason, my website is messing up an accent mark in Hua’s first name and I have yet to figure it out. I acknowledge his name is misspelled as a result, which pains me to no small degree.
Since I’m an amazing interviewer I began by asking “how are the other interviews going?” (response: “We’re so excited to share. Yeah. We were cooped up for so long. Like, not being able to talk about the film, so it’s nice to kind of brag about it now.”) and proceeded to talk about the weather (“This is this is exactly the weather in my hometown of Kaneohe, so I’m used to it.”).
Hey, at least it’s better than the time I was doing a group interview with Aubrey Plaza and some dude asked her when the release date was for her movie.
Questions have been edited to make me sound more sophisticated than I am. Answers have been edited for brevity.
I’m interested in the recording experience. Hua, what was your experience like making an animated film? I picture a few people locked in a box talking to themselves.
Hua: I mean, you know what’s funny is, now that you bring that up is that working in animation, I think naturally a lot of people feel like you’re so closed off that it’s really only your voice that counts, but in at least in the scope of how we operate and how we produce the film is that that is not the case at all. You need to act the film and you need to be as animated, in your own body as possible and that’s actually what assists the animators.
A lot of times animation will come second. Voice over will come first. So we’ll have cameras on us and act out the entire scene. So being able to be as animated just as you’ve seen all of your childhood favorite characters, Genie, Olaf, so on and so forth, was something that was super fun.
You know, it’s super whimsical. Getting to do it time in, time out, and it’s something that I think you never really get tired of. So in a way, that’s how it really, like, kind of correlates to live action acting. I’ve had the opportunity to act in in television series like NCIS Hawaii, Rescue Hi Surf, and then I have a role in Lilo and Stitch live action. So the contrast between the two is that, one, you have an environment right in front of you and you have other actors to play off of and other actors to play with.
And in animation, that environment is up here [in your head] and with what our directors, writers, producers give to us, and they do an amazing job. Jason Hann, Dave Derek, Jared Bush, Dana Ludo Miller, even Bryson Chung, they created such a world for us that we can really step into and adapt into and make it easy to create these characters on the fly in a bunch of different scenarios, in a bunch of different environments.
I think the finished product came out amazing, and I’m excited for everybody to see it.
How exciting is it to be in such a major movie about Pacific Islander culture?
Hua: I mean, it’s huge, you know, being Pacific Islander, being Polynesian, being of Hawaiian descent—it’s huge to be part of a film at this standard, at this height, at this weight, in such an industry. It’s an honor. It’s an entirely huge blessing. I don’t even feel like I have the fullness of words to really describe what it feels like.
It’s an entire blessing to go out there and represent our people and for all of our people to feel a sense of belonging and feel a sense of place when they see our cultural displayed on the stage, displayed in film. And to say that I get to be part of that, to say that I get to be a representative on behalf of my friend on my right and my friend on my left, my brother on my right, my sister on my left, my family is huge. And, I’m excited for what’s to come with Moana in the future.
Christina, you went from working at EY to producing Disney movies. How the heck did that happen?
Christina: I’ve always loved movies growing up. I mean, Disney animation in particular.
I grew up with those films. I used to watch, back when there were DVDs, how there’d be bonus materials, and they have the commentary of watching movies and the commentaries to, like, live and breathe the commentary bonus materials. I was just obsessed with trying to figure out, obsessed in trying to figure out how to make films and truly elicit this level of empathy in characters that aren’t even real. But when I went to school, I foolishly confused film theory and film production.
So my college didn’t actually have anything that could help me study film, but, they had economics. And I was always interested in how things work in terms of psychology and business. So, Econ led me to Ernst and Young, and I was super excited because Ernst and Young counts the balance for the Emmys. So I was, “Oh, I’m a little closer to the industry at least.” But then I knew after two years, I have to just shoot my shot and hope for the best.
So I applied to all of these studios, across the United States, and Disney was the first to answer. I’ve just really been loving the experience of getting to work with actors to be able to just be a part of the filmmaking process.
Financially, there has been a lot more pressure in the last couple of years within the film industry. Moana 2 was originally going to be a Disney+ series, but it’s now a major theatrical release. I’m curious how you approach moviemaking with that in mind?
Christina: For us, we’re always trying to figure out what’s the best format to tell our stories in, and there’s such a love… like, a deep, profound love and respect for Moana and these characters that it was just begging for a sequel to be on a big screen.
It really was a groundswell from people within the community, from the people actually at the studio. We were watching screens of the film. We’re like, gosh. Like, it’s so gorgeous. The potential here can be so deeply immersive. It just really needs to be on the big screen. And so we ended up being able to pull it up, and we’re just so grateful and lucky for that.
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I tried to snap a photo with these two great people—who clearly are very passionate about Moana 2—and my daughter, but she was too busy playing a balloon-popping video game and refused to do so. So that was the end of the interview, and that’s the end of this write-up of said interview.
By Erik Samdahl