In DreamWorks Animation’s Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, Schitt’s Creek star Annie Murphy makes her animated feature debut as Chelsea Van Der Zee, the popular new girl in town. Chelsea and Ruby (Lana Condor) are total opposites. Ruby is sweet and unsure of herself whereas Chelsea rides in on a wave of confidence into Oceanside High. While Ruby thinks she’s gained a cool new bestie when Chelsea takes her under her wing and reveals she’s a mermaid, she’s actually about to feel the force of a sinister secret Chelsea is hiding, one that’ll dare Ruby to embrace being a kraken like never before.

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff got the chance to sit down with Murphy to chat about making the move from live-action to animation. Murphy reflects on the skills she gained while collaborating with Ruby Gillman director Kirk DeMicco and co-director Faryn Pearl, some of which she intends to apply to her live-action work as well. From her knack for delivering A+ evil laughs to battling imposter syndrome, Nemiroff dives into it all with Murphy.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken also features the voices of Toni Collette as Ruby’s overprotective mother, Colman Domingo as her softie father, and Jane Fonda as Ruby’s Grandmamah, the kraken queen.

Check out Perri’s interview with Murphy in the video above or read the conversation in transcript form below.

Image via DreamWorks

PERRI NEMIROFF: One of my favorite things about this movie is I’m gonna get to take my four-year-old niece who is just exploring movies for the first time to see it, and I know there’s gonna come a time when she looks back on one that makes her say to herself, “That was the first time I was wholly consumed by movie magic.” So I want to know what that movie is for you, the very first time you realized the power that big screen storytelling could have.

ANNIE MURPHY: The first memory that I have of going to the theater was to go see Pocahontas. It’s so immersive when you’re not just sitting in front of a 12-inch TV, which is what we had at home. And just the sound and the colors and the experience, it’s seared in the old dome.

I’m getting such wholesome answers to that question and I’m like, “Batman Returns! Watching Danny Devito bite the head off a fish!” That’s my memory. [Laughs]

MURPHY: I mean, also very strong. That’s really good. [Laughs]. It’s cooler.

So this is your very first time voicing an animated character. I have many questions about that. First, did you seek out any advice on how to do that, and if so, what is the best piece of advice you were given?

MURPHY: I sought no advice whatsoever, which was my first big mistake. I went in and in the first four-hour chunk that we did, blew my voice out entirely because I just went for it, which, you know, you gotta go for it. But I only use my voice to talk on a daily basis and not to do big evil voices, for the most part, so I did learn as we went along that I needed to do a bit of warming up and I needed to take care of myself a little bit more and not just go in and scream my head off.

Understandable. So, warming up is important. If you had to give another piece of advice to another actor who’s about to do their first voice-acting gig, what would it be?

MURPHY: I would say do what I just did after the movie wrapped, which is sign up for voice lessons. And even if it’s not to learn how to sing, it’s at least to learn how to use your breath properly and control your voice a little bit more. So I think drop into some lessons if you can.

Oh, breathwork is so important. Is there anything surprising you learned during those lessons that now you’re eager to apply to a future voice-acting gig?

MURPHY: Okay, so I just signed up for the lessons. I haven’t taken one yet.

Signing up is the first step!

MURPHY: Signing up is the first step!

It’s a very valuable step. It is important.

MURPHY: [Laughs] But I’ll let you know. I’ll keep you posted.

I wanna know! We’ll circle back.

Image via DreamWorks

I want to know a little bit about working with Kirk [DeMicco] and Faryn [Pearl]. What did you appreciate about the two of them the most as actors’ directors, especially coming to understand what it means for a director to direct an actor in a voice performance versus one doing that on a live-action set?

MURPHY: Kirk and Faryn were so much fun, and they were so collaborative. So you go in and the way we did it was I would just read one line three times, and then we’d open it up and they’d throw out ideas and we’d chat about it. It was clear how much fun they were having with the project and how passionate they were about it, and how there’s still a whole lot of little kid infused in both of them. We did a lot of laughing and a lot of trying something out, and often it would sound ridiculous, and sometimes it would sound ridiculous in the perfect way. So it was amazing to work with both of them.

Can you give me an example of something that you thought sounded ridiculous, maybe you took it to an 11 or beyond, and you never thought in a million years they’d use it, and now it’s in the finished film?

MURPHY: I think one of my first really evil laughs that I did.

You have a good evil laugh!

MURPHY: [Laughs] I know! It came uncomfortably naturally. But I did it and I kind of surprised myself, and then I started to laugh and they were like, “No, no, no, can you do that again?” And I was like, “I genuinely don’t know.” But no, it was so much fun.

It was spot-on. I love it.

So, going from voice acting back to live-action acting, is there any tool that you’ve added to your acting toolkit, so to speak, that you think actually might come in handy in live-action acting as well?

MURPHY: Yeah, I do think the kind of lack of inhibition just getting into the booth and knowing that you’re gonna look ridiculous and knowing that you want to try something and just doing it to see how it works out, I do want to take that back to film and TV acting. If you’re gonna look dumb, you’re gonna look dumb, but also if you’re going to figure something out, sometimes you have to look dumb or take a risk to do it. So yeah, I wanna try to bring that back with me.

It demands fearlessness.

MURPHY: Yeah!

I feel like that’s one of the best parts of the experience.

Image via DreamWorks

This will be a good segue to this question. This might get awkward, but I wanna ask you about efforts.

MURPHY: Oh god. [Laughs]

I want to know what is the effort that comes most naturally to you, the one that’s the easiest to do, but then, on the other hand, I wanna know an average everyday sound that’s most difficult to replicate in one of your sessions.

MURPHY: The thing that comes the most easily to me is laughing. It’s the efforts – we get to the effort page and I’m like, “Oh my god.” You don’t have a trident in your hand and you’re not under the water, so you have to – it’s the grunts and the kind of guttural screams that don’t come as naturally to me [laughs], which I guess is a good thing. And you’re also kind of contained in this really small booth, so even though the action in the movie is literally throwing a trident, you can’t do that, so you just kind of have to tense your body as much as you can and do small versions of whatever the action is, and it looks ridiculous. I wish there was a little video of everyone doing theirs.

There’s a little bit of video out there. I have watched some of it. [Laughs] It’s delightful!

MURPHY: Oh god, not of me, of everyone else! That’s all I want to see.

It is all delightful. I will confirm you are all doing exactly what you need to be doing.

A personal question inspired by Ruby; this movie is all about Ruby finding her power, finding the value in her voice. I wanna know the first acting project where that happened to you, where you realized acting isn’t just about doing what I’m told and reading the lines on the page, but, “I have a voice that I should share, people should listen, and it could influence projects the I work on for the better.”

MURPHY: Wow. That is something that I’m constantly working on achieving, I think. But the role that gave me the most confidence in myself was definitely Alexis Rose in Schitt’s Creek. There was huge impostor syndrome going on in the first bunch of seasons, and sometimes still, but a bunch of seasons in, I was like, “No, I know what I’m doing now and it feels good, and I can strap on my stilettos and walk on to set and feel like I know what I’m doing.”

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken splashes into theaters on June 30th. Be on the lookout for more of Perri’s interviews with the cast and creatives.