Before I saw Big Hero 6 in preparation for an upcoming Disney press trip to Los Angeles to cover the junket for the in-home release, I really wondered what all the fuss over "Baymax" was about. Sure, I'd seen the large, inflatable white robot, but I had no idea how completely lovable and huggable he was. I certainly didn't know that he'd quickly become one of my favorite Disney characters so quickly. There's just something about him that's so unique and special, and I think a lot of it has to do with his voice. Scott Adsit, the voice of Baymax, is so superb in this role that it's mind blowing. I couldn't wait to sit down with him and hear more about his role as Baymax in Big Hero 6.
In case you aren't familiar with Big Hero 6, let me bring you up to speed with a quick recap of the film. Big Hero 6, from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is an action-packed comedy-adventure about the special bond that develops between a young prodigy named Hiro Hamada (voice of Ryan Potter), and a plus-sized inflatable robot named Baymax (voice of Scott Adsit). After a devastating tragedy in their city of San Fransokyo (a futuristic world marrying San Francisco and Tokyo), Hiro turns to Baymax and his four closest friends to uncover the truth behind the tragedy and as a result they form a band of high-tech heroes called "Big Hero 6". This film was inspired by the Marvel comics of the same name and came to fruition because of directors Don Hall (“Winnie the Pooh”) and Chris Williams (“Bolt”) and producer Roy Conli (be sure to check out my interview with Don Hall and Chris Williams too!). The film was released in theaters on November 7th, 2014 and the in-home release was February 24th, 2015.
Scott Adsit, voice of Baymax. Image courtesy of Kayvon Esmaili on behalf of Disney
Creating a voice for a robot must have been quite challenging. Not adding too much inflection, but not sounding too monotone seemed like it would have been difficult, but Scott Adsit played the part perfectly. We asked him, "Was it a challenge for you to bring the character Baymax to life?"
Adsit replied: I think the audience does a lot of the work for Baymax, because he does skirt along in a kind of impartiality emotionally, but I get to lean on either side of him just a little bit, to invite the emotions to flood in from the audience. So it's a lot of inferral on the audience's part, and projection. So, it was a bit of a challenge not to go too far off that line, but still communicate something emotionally, because we decided pretty early on that he does not have that kind of emotional life. It is all programming, but then in spite of that decision on our part, the emotion, his emotional life does kind of creep in here and there.
I wondered how he came up with the voice of Baymax. Did he just know how he'd play it once he saw an image of Baymax, or did it take several attempts to find the perfect voice? We asked Adsit, "How did you find Baymax's voice? I'm sure you tried everything."
Scott Adsit said: I didn't know if it would be a robotic voice, and when they brought me in for the audition and the script was the first indication that it wouldn't be a typical robotic voice. Then when I saw the picture, because they already had the character design... I just saw soft, huggable, so I found a very benign bedside manner voice. So, I mixed that with a the state of the art robotic interaction vocally, which is pretty much [like] an automated phone system. So he will talk with the flow, but then there are elements within a sentence that are variables. And so they'll sound a little separate from the rest of it.
Baymax becomes more human like to me throughout the movie, but I couldn't tell whether that was my own perception based on how I felt about him, or if he did take on more human like qualities as he and Hiro became closer. We asked Adsit, "How did your character evolve throughout the film?"
Adsit answered: We found the voice pretty early on in the audition, I think. The big change was somewhere in the middle of the process, they decided to give him another facet, which is when he loses power and becomes, for lack of a better word "drunk". And so I came in and they introduced this concept to me, and they'd scripted a bit of it. And so my first question was, "Okay, so how do I take that voice and make it drunk, because it is such a straight line, the voice. And I said, "So, do you want it to sound like a robot who's drunk?" And they said no, just be drunk! So, then they put a process, a little filter on that and that was it. I just played over the top drunk... And an interesting thing about the, the processing filter on Baymax, I was told this after the fact, John Lassiter, who is the man in charge of the studio, wanted there to be a processing on my voice, but he also wanted my voice to come through. And so they would bring him examples of a filter that they wanted to use in the sound department, and he would say no, dial it back a bit... dial it back a little bit. And they kept dialing it back, dialing it back, until eventually, it was just my voice, no filter. They said, "Oh, well there's nothing on this now," but John liked what I was doing naturally. What they ended up doing was a combination. They have all that filter on me at the beginning when you meet Baymax, and then during the course of the film, they dial it back, dial it back, dial it back, so that by the end in the last scene in the void, there is no filter on my voice at. It's just me. So, he kind finds his humanity with a subtle kind of a subtextual thing that subliminally you guys may not notice. I didn't.
I'd bet that after spending the day in a voice booth that it must be pretty hard to just "turn it off". We wanted to know, "Did you find yourself going home and staying in character?"
Adsit laughed and said: Yeah, which is not bad, because I was just talking to Daniel before I came in here and he has such an altruistic character in Tadashi and we were saying,"Wouldn't it be great to be egoless and helpful your whole life and every day?" But we can't do it. But, yeah, I would go home and I would catch myself talking with the voice, which is not much different from my voice, but I know when I've got it on.
Big Hero 6 Bloggers with Scott Adsit, photo courtesy of Disney.
Of course, we were all crazy about Baymax, so we asked, "Can we get a little bit of the voice?"
Adsit relented and added: Alright. It's funny too, because I meet kids who are fascinated by the character, and I'm always afraid that they will be disappointed that Baymax is just this kind of dangly, bald, bearded adult and so I'm always ready for them to go, "What?!" But they understand the concept, and I start talking to them and their eyes go wide and they get real excited and they totally accept it, so it's the best job in the world.
One thing I never really thought about in animated films is any level of improvisation. I know if motion pictures that some level of improv will inevitably make it into a film, but I figured things were more straightforward for animation. We asked Adsit, "Do you used to do a lot of improv?"
Adsit told us: It's a very collaborative process with these guys, and I'm very appreciative of that because I come from an acting background of improv and there's a good bit of my creations in there. Most of it is that great script, but in the drunk scenes - or I should say "low battery" scenes, I got to play and they had a structure of what needed to happen in the scene and they just let me say whatever I wanted. And, the fist bump noise is mine and a lot of things would be changed along the way because it just didn't sound right in my ear. I thought that's amazing, here's this company that's so huge and so powerful, and doesn't need my little input, but they listened and they incorporated it. So, again, best job in the world.
We also wanted to know, "Has being the silent hero changed you?"
Adsit said something really profound which I thought was fantastic. He said: I see the value in just entertaining without needing to feed my own ego. There's a certain satisfaction in being a stage actor where you get an immediate response, and you can walk off and say, "Ah, that was great... and people think I'm great." That's part of the reward of that. With this, it is bigger than me, and I know I'm a small part of what makes Baymax Baymax and so lovable, because Baymax is this diamond with every facet being a different person. I'm just lucky enough to be kind of the face of the character, but when we talk about Baymax, it’s not me, you know. It's everyone who worked on it, who decided how he walks and how he blinks, all of that.
As with all great Disney films, you go through a range of emotions from pure enjoyment to moments of despair, and Big Hero 6 is no exception.The end of the movie is pretty emotional honestly. We wanted to know how it was for Adsit to create these scenes. We asked, "Did it take a lot of takes to get the perfect emotional response so the audience could feel it?"
Adsit said: I got emotional in the room. By that time, I'm connected to Daniel [Henney], or to Ryan [Potter]'s character - to Hiro - and I had a great deal of investment in him and the fact that we were separating and that he was so upset. [But] I had to get through it, and we had to do it twice, because the scene changed over the course of the few months. And yeah, I had to stop and say, "I'm sorry," because I was tearing up and it's not so much about Baymax. I see there's more, for me as an actor, it's more about Ryan and Hiro's experience going on, so yeah it was very emotional. And the bad thing was I wasn't allowed, because actually it's like you get to an emotional place, you want to share it, but I kept it reigned in.
Speaking of his emotional investment in Ryan and his character Hiro, we asked Adsit to "Talk about working with Ryan [Potter]."
Adsit said: We met at the first screening. About 2 hours after they completed the final thing they did for the film, we had a cocktail party at Disney and dinner, and Lassiter hosted us... and there were about 30 of us watching the whole film for the first time anywhere, and it was like a reunion of people who had never met. It was great. So we were a family before ever having met.
Isn't that amazing?! I'd always just envisioned the characters interacting right then and there (especially in a cast this big) when lending their voices to these roles. It's unbelievable to me that they can get such a depth of emotion in their voices without having anyone else to play off of. Totally amazing! It was such a pleasure to meet Scott Adsit and pick his brain about being Baymax, and to learn even more about the making of Disney animated films. Be sure to also check out my interview with Daniel Henney and Ryan Potter (who play brothers Tadashi and Hiro Hamada) for more behind the scenes information about what it was like making Big Hero 6.
Jason Bohan says
how exciting!
Katie S. says
Wish I could be as creative and humble as him! Such a great movie- not surprised it won the Oscar for best animated feature!!