Mamoudou Athie Talks Representing 'Elemental' & 'The Boy and the Heron' at the Oscars | THR Video - video Dailymotion

'Elemental' and 'The Boy and the Heron' star Mamoudou Athie tells THR on the red carpet how it feels to represent two films at the 2024 Oscars.

Transcript

00:00How does it feel to be here tonight, not only representing one film, but two at the Oscars?

00:06I've been asked this question a lot, and every time I'm asked, it hits me all over again.

00:10It's a dream, especially with movies that mean so much to me.

00:13There's so much heart and integrity in both of these movies,

00:15and I've wanted to work with Pixar since I was a kid,

00:18and I've wanted to work with Miyazaki since I wanted to be an actor.

00:21So it's like a dream come true. That's the best way I can say it.

00:24What's been the highlight of your award season journey with these films?

00:27I'm hanging out with Pete's own, Denise Ream, Leah Lewis, the whole Pixar family.

00:33They really treat us like family. They really care about us.

00:35I can't tell just the journey of the movie from the beginning while we're doing the press tour

00:41when we saw the box office release, but we all still believed in the movie

00:44because we knew what we made, and we put our heart and souls into this movie.

00:47Pete and Denise have been working on this for seven years,

00:51making the impossible happen with the animation, but also the story.

00:54It's so beautifully simple.

00:55And what I mean by simple is it's really just earnest and heartfelt, no cynicism involved.

01:01It has to touch people, and I'm so glad that they did.