ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Teddy’s Christmas star Zachary Levi about the holiday movie from Capelight Pictures and Blue Fox Entertainment. Levi discussed the process of dubbing a foreign movie and his favorite holiday movies. Teddy’s Christmas is now playing in theaters.
“While visiting a Christmas market in her small town, eight-year-old Mariann suddenly sees an unbelievable sight: on the top shelf of a carnival game booth, the most adorable stuffed teddy bear has just moved his head and sneezed,” reads the movie’s synopsis. “Feeling an instant connection with the living stuffed animal, Mariann can’t think of any better Christmas wish than to win him as a prize. But when someone else wins Teddy, it’s up to him and his new hedgehog friend, Bolla, to reconnect with Mariann and discover the true importance of family and friendship.”
Tyler Treese: What I like about the character of Teddy is when we see him, he has a very inflated ego. He wants to go to a rich household, and it sets up the life lessons really well because if you have that attitude, you’ll just never be happy. Somebody will always be better off than you if you’re going to compare yourself to that. Can you just speak to Teddy and the lessons at play here?
Zachary Levi: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was one of my favorite things about the movie. With Teddy’s Christmas, you would think [when] meeting Teddy, he’s immediately going to understand his purpose. He’s a teddy bear. He’s meant for cuddling and for love. But no, you meet him, but he’s actually got this little ego. [Laughs]. He’s like, “Well, I want to go see the world. I want to go do all these things, and this little girl, she doesn’t have money. Kids don’t have money. Adults have money. I want to go.” So it was a fun little twist on it, for me. Then, of course, you get the character arc and what Teddy learns along the way, which is just that — that he’s a teddy bear.
His incredible gift to bring to the world, and particularly to this young girl or kids or humans in general, is to be that form of love. That touchstone, that cuddly thing that warms your heart. I think that through this amazing little adventure that he gets to go on — a really cool journey of learning that’s all wrapped up in this wonderful holiday movie that also has a lot of just great family value and love and messaging. So yeah, that is Teddy’s adventure –learning that there are far more important things than money and finding one’s true purpose. For him, that happens to be this conduit of love. What an amazing thing that is.
Is that what drew you to the project? How did you come on board?
Yeah. I mean, essentially, what drew me to the project is always the material and all that stuff. But also, I was honored. I’ve never done that. I’m pretty sure I’ve never done another dubbed … I’ve done English movies and there are wonderful actors in other countries that dub my voice, but I’ve never been the dubber. I’ve been the dubee.
So it was really kind of fun to have these folks reach out and say, “Hey, we have this wonderful little movie and we need an American actor to do the English voice for it, and we think you’re the guy.” And I was like, “Well, that’s really cool.” You know? And again, I’ve got nephews and so many honorary nieces and nephews for many, many years, so making family entertainment is something that’s always been close to my heart.
This is such a cozy Christmas movie that’s perfect to watch with the whole family. Christmas films have such a huge tradition in cinema. What does it mean to be contributing to that great legacy of Christmas movies?
Yeah, dude. I mean, it’s one of the coolest honors. If you can make something that’s a holiday film and that people find and hold onto because … I mean, not that there’s not seasonal viewing of different types of things. There’s Thanksgiving-ish movies — although those kind of blend into the holiday and Christmas movies — there are even some Halloween movies or 4th of July movies, like Independence Day. Things that you would come back around on yearly perhaps to watch. But Christmas is the biggest of all of that, because we’re sitting around with family and friends and we want to sit and watch a movie together.
It’s a Wonderful Life, for me, is one of those movies. I love it. It’s an incredible film. Jimmy Stewart was an incredible actor. I mean, everybody in the film was great and Frank Capra directing it and all that. But I always dreamed of being able to have something so seminal that it is what people watch every Christmas because it just brings them that warmth. It brings them that joy and hope — all the things that the holidays are supposed to bring.
I do think that Teddy’s Christmas has all those elements in it, so hopefully, people find it this holiday season and they enjoy it. Then it’s something like, “You know what? We’re going to hold onto that because we want to watch it next holiday season and the next holiday season and maybe even in between, who knows?” You know what, watch it for 4th of July guys, even though it has nothing to do with Teddy or the country of Norway. Watch it for the 4th of July. It’s going to be great.
You spoke about family friendly films being close to you, and you’ve done some great ones lately. What’s your process when you select which roles you’re taking? What’s your thought process there?
Well, normally the first thing is, “Is this something that’s going to be enjoyable for me in the acting process? Will it be challenging? Will it be a new thing I’ve never gotten to do before?” This was a new thing I’ve never gotten to do before. I’ve done voiceover, but I’ve done me being the original voice. So it’s a very different type of process. You just get to talk and you could ad-lib a little bit and anything’s usable. But this process was really interesting because it was a very unique challenge of going in there and finding the same tone and style and emotion that the first incredible actor and team of actors all brought to the table, right?
But doing it in your own voice, and also having to — best you can — match the mouth of Teddy while you’re doing it. So all of that was a really cool, interesting challenge. I was like, “Okay, that checks that box. I think the material is good and wholesome, so that checks that box.” The creative team behind it, I thought, was wonderful. And they had made, again, a really great initial film. Knowing I was in those good hands, that checked that box. Ultimately, something that brings joy to people that either is bringing joy and big smiles and warmth in that way, or doing dramas and doing things that really gut people and just touch them on the deepest levels and shine a light on something important either in the world or in their own life or both.
So all of those things, typically, are weighed into how I take a job. Sometimes location — well, always location, but sometimes it weighs big. Like, let’s say I’m rehashing a type of role that I’ve already played before, but the money’s good and it shoots in Fiji for a couple of months. It’s like a little paid vacation — it’s great! I’ll go play a role that I’ve kind of already played before if I get to go hang out in Fiji for a couple of months. So there’s all of those types of factors that all weigh in, and then you literally just weigh it all. You go, “Okay, well this works. Let’s go do that.”
Whenever I’m driving, I always see this lovely adoption billboard that features Shazam and the all the kids there. How great is it that the legacy of those films is being this great icon for adoption and these blended families? That has to be incredible to see, it making an impact.
Absolutely, man. It’s honestly one of the coolest things about that job and about those films and about our family, literally the Shazamily. All of us — talk about a mixed family! Not in the traditional mixed family sense, but all of us actors, both old and young, and their parents of the kids, and we’re all just coming together and trying to bring these roles to life, but in service of this fictional but true to life mixed family of adopted children in the foster care system. Being able to shine that light and tell a story from a different perspective and the representation that comes with that … the amount of foster kids or children who were in the foster care system or who were adopted that have never really seen themselves on the screen.
And all of a sudden, now it’s an entire family of superheroes that represent them. I just think I’m really proud of the inclusivity of all the representation we were able to put into the story. Even when it comes to the rainbow of ethnicity that we could put on that screen, and also Freddy being a disabled person … to put all those little bits and pieces in there to allow people to, again, feel more seen in ways that they might not have otherwise.
You’ve always shown respect to video games and one of your most famous voice roles is Flynn Rider in Tangled, and you got to reprise that for Kingdom Hearts III a couple of years ago. How was it returning to play Flynn in Kingdom Hearts?
It was super cool. I actually have never played any of the Kingdom Hearts games. I missed the boat on the first one, and then it was kind of … you know what I mean? If you miss the first, you’re kind of like, “Oh, maybe I’ll get there one day.” But I was always tracking it. I always knew it was this cool, Sony/Disney mash-up collaboration, and all these different Disney characters. Then, when the third one was being made — which, also, I was aware took a very long time between Kingdom Hearts II and III — it was a big jump. People were really jonesing for it. So it was really cool that they included Tangled in that, and that the diehard fans who had been waiting so passionately and patiently for it really dug that, you know what I mean?
It’s cool for me, as a gamer and as Flynn, that Flynn gets to be in a video game, but it’s only as cool as it is enjoyable for the actual audience. If the audience was like, “meh,” then I’d be like, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m in your game.” But they did it really well.
It was really interesting, though, because based on whatever the rules or laws or whatever are of the recording that was in the movie, even though I was saying the exact same lines most of the time — like word-for-word, exact same lines — they couldn’t take it from the movie and put it in the video game. I had to rerecord it new. I was so … my mind was boggled. By the way, that’s fine! I mean, I’m happy to go and get paid and do it, but I just thought, “There has to be an easier way to do this. You’re just using exactly the same dialogue.”
But anyway, that was just an interesting part of the journey. All in all, really, really cool, man. Eventually I am going to play some Kingdom Hearts, especially III, because obviously I’ve got to go check that out, and probably with my nephews at some point.
