Open Season touts the star power of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher as the lovable talking animals, but they are supported by an equal level of all star talent. Debra Messing plays a park ranger who keeps Boog the bear as a pet until circumstances drive him back to the wild. The whole project was kind of a gift.
Debra Messing Talks Open Season
“It came to me without looking,” she said. “The timing of it was so perfect because I was pregnant at the time. I was also working on Will and Grace at the time, but as you know animation takes three plus years to do. I’m such a big fan of animation. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try and so when it came up it was just like, ‘Oh thank you.’”
Like all animation newbies, she had to adjust to working all by her lonesome. “The whole process of working in animation at first was so intimidating and scary because you have no one to act opposite and so much of it is having courage to try different things and to make yourself look like an idiot. And putting your trust and faith in other people’s hands to put it together to make it funny or tender or what have you. So you really just hand over it all and they really become the architect of the whole creative vision. At first that was kind of scary and daunting. Very quickly, it became thrilling and liberating. I just really fell in love with the whole thing of rolling out of bed in my sweatpants, not having to put on makeup, not having to brush my hair you know walking into a studio and having all of these people who are so excited about this project and passionate and playful. I mean people who are in animation are animated people. It’s infectious. They’re energy is infectious. No matter what, when you walk into that room it’s inspiring. The whole process of playing became just that. I was never worried about anyone judging me and saying, ‘Oh that was awful.’ Everything was just, ‘Okay let’s try something else.’ It was almost like going back to graduate school and being in a theatre games class where it’s like oh let’s try this.”
The repetitive nature of multiple recording sessions also challenged Messing’s expectations. “I went in quite a bit. I didn’t think I’d be going in quite as often. Again, this was my first time. Everything was a first for me. I thought I was just going to go in, say all my lines and that would be it. The way it worked was I’d go in and they would and we would put some things down and then we would have Ashton come in and put some things down and Martin. They would start to edit things together and see what was working and what wasn’t working and sort of construct it and redefine it as it went along. There were scenes or parts of scenes that I redid several times because they had change the approach of a scene on the other side of it or you know. So it was really interesting you know the fine tuning at the very end. It would literally be like this one line you know the last scene of the film was something that took a bit of time. We did that a couple of times because the ending you know just getting the right degree of whatever emotions they were hoping to tap into.”
Open Season opens to theatres this Friday, September 29th.
For the trailers, clips, posters, movie stills and movie info, head over to the Open
Season Movie Page.
Debra Messing
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