00:00Hi, and welcome into EOM Presents. I'm Thomas Manning, senior interviewer for Elements of Madness, and recently had a wonderful chat with Sheila Omi about her role in the new Pixar film, Elemental.
00:11Sheila was just an absolute delight to speak with and hearing her break down some of her approach to voice performances compared to screen acting and theater acting and talking about working with director Peter Son on Elemental.
00:24It was just an absolutely incredible conversation, and I really appreciated her engagement and just everything she had to say about the filmmaking process, and I really appreciate all of you watching and listening.
00:37Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy the conversation speaking with Sheila Omi about Elemental.
00:41Well, I really do appreciate your time for this today, and I'm really excited to be talking with you about Elementals, and if you're ready, I'll get right into it.
00:50Ready. Thank you.
00:52Awesome. You know, so your character, Cinder, she has a deep love for her family, and she's the matriarch of this group, so I'm curious if these qualities remind you of anyone in particular from your own life and your own family who may have had a similar effect on you.
01:10Certainly my mom, but here's an interesting tidbit is that out of all the characters I've ever played, Cinder is the only character that has been completely myself in so many ways.
01:21She is Firetown's matchmaker. She's a very good matchmaker because she's got this gift with, she smells the smoke of people and she knows if there's a love match or not.
01:36I'm a matchmaker. I'm a terrible matchmaker.
01:39My friends and family loathe the fact that they think I'm middle in their lives, but I'm always trying to get people together because I just want, I just feel like people are happier being together than living alone.
01:53So, so, yeah.
01:56And it's so funny. Cinder looks like, the character of Cinder looks like my mom. My mom was round and fiery.
02:04She's passed on since.
02:05Yeah.
02:06Yeah. I love it.
02:07And, you know, Cinder is a very empathetic character and she has a respect for what others are going through and she can relate to those situations in many aspects.
02:17And, of course, there's definitely comparison to be made there to the art of acting.
02:22So, for you as a performer, whether it be in screen acting or voice roles or theater, how do you strive to channel that empathy in each of your characters?
02:33You know, I just personally, I think that empathy is one of the most powerful things in the world.
02:37So, I always love to hear actors talk about it.
02:39So, I just wanted to give you the chance to talk about that in your own words.
02:42You know, one of the reasons why I believe that acting is such a noble profession is because as an actor, that's what you have to focus on.
02:52That regardless of what character you're playing, even if it's a character that you might think, oh, this is a horrible human being, you have to have empathy for that because nobody thinks they're terrible.
03:03I mean, there are people who hate themselves, unfortunately, but even those who hate themselves, it's a pathology.
03:09It's not like deep down inside they think, oh, I'm a bad person.
03:13So, you have to have empathy for people to be able to play their parts well.
03:19And so, I feel like acting is also so noble because it also brings people together.
03:23You know, when you're sitting and you're watching a television show or a play or a film, a lot of times you put yourself in the place of those other actors.
03:34And even if those other actors are behaving badly, on the one hand, if you have a desire to behave badly, in a way, it's great that you get to watch someone else do it.
03:47So, you get to live it vicariously and not have to do those things or hurt other people or animals.
03:53You get to see it and you, you know, get over it in your system.
03:56But also, so many times we see ourselves in other people.
04:02And that's what this movie Elemental is about, too.
04:05It's about people of these elements.
04:08They're not people, but they're like humanoid elements that live in this city called Element City.
04:13And they're very different from each other.
04:16Like, if you take the element of water and the element of fire, it's actually dangerous when they get together.
04:22Water can snuff out fire.
04:25Fire can boil water into a way.
04:31But so, on the outside, you think, oh, my God, they're so dangerous for each other.
04:34But this movie is about what happens if they do come together and despite their differences, that how do we grow as people when we come together?
04:47And it's an immigrant story, too.
04:50It's an immigrant story and how, you know, immigration is something that happens all throughout the world and throughout from day one of humanity, we've been immigrating and emigrating.
05:04And we've always been different.
05:09We've always been living in different places.
05:12And so, because we live in different places, we have different characteristics that people call race.
05:17Scientifically, there's no such thing as race.
05:19It's just different characteristics based on some place that you and your ancestors grew up and then those genes.
05:26But the more that we come together, I'm sorry I'm talking too much, but it's what this movie is about.
05:32That we come together and we become better people.
05:38You don't have to worry about talking too much whatsoever.
05:41I'm just thrilled to hear you share all this.
05:43So, I really appreciate you putting that into words.
05:46Bless you. Thank you.
05:48And I understand there was a thematic decision in the approach you took to crafting the accent of your character and how she spoke.
05:56So, can you discuss a little bit of that decision-making process and why that was important to you?
06:02So, these people that live in Fireland, they speak a different language.
06:10It's called Fireish.
06:12And this language was created by a brilliant linguist.
06:15So, it's a whole language.
06:17For instance, how you say I love you in Fireish is I love you.
06:23So, Peter Son, who's the director and co-creator of this story, he helped me to come up with, okay, so if this is the language that these people speak, when they are speaking English, how does this language inform their accents in English?
06:43So, that was a really fun process of coming up with, what would a fire being sound like when they speak English?
06:53You know, is it crackly?
06:55Is it our certain consonants crackly and the sound of fire crackling?
07:01So, we played with it a lot.
07:03And finally, what I came up with was, I hope I did a good job with it.
07:09I don't know.
07:10But it's certainly an accent, and it's hard to place it.
07:14You don't know where she's from.
07:16And she's from Fireland.
07:19And I'm glad you mentioned the director, Peter Son.
07:23So, for you as a voice actor, generally speaking, how does your relationship with the director on an animated film like this one compare to your relationship with the director on set of a live action or TV show?
07:37What are some of the differences or similarities between working with a director in animation versus working with a director in live action?
07:44So, the first obvious difference is that the director in animation is focused only on your vocal.
07:52So, it's just vocally, the texture of a sound, the intonations, the energy of it.
07:59But it's all vocal, whereas, you know, for a film director, it's the whole thing.
08:07It's the whole of you, including your actions and your facial expressions.
08:12But it was such a pleasure to work with Peter Son.
08:16I don't know if you know, but you know the cartoon Up?
08:20The little boy in the cartoon was created after his likeliness, Peter Son's likeliness.
08:25And he's such a, he's like one of those people, pretty much everyone I've met at Pixar is this way.
08:34I don't know what it is about Pixar, if they just bring the best people on earth together.
08:39But he's one of those people who's just everything that's good about humanity.
08:44That even as a director, when he was guiding and directing, at no point, you know, I have worked with directors that lose their temper.
08:52Or at no point, like even certain days where he came in late and you could tell he was having a rough morning.
08:58But you never felt that the minute you started working.
09:01He's so kind and gentle and respectful.
09:06And, you know, and his direction was more of a collaborative guiding as opposed to, what are you doing?
09:15I get that sometimes.
09:17What is that?
09:19Oh, man.
09:20And also on that front, do you have conversations with the other voice actors that you're collaborating with about the dynamics between your characters and developing those relationships?
09:32Or what are those conversations like, if there are any?
09:36Here's the thing.
09:37This, again, speaks to the brilliance of Peter Son as a director.
09:41We, I at least never worked with any of the other voice actors.
09:45So what he does is he guides you because he knows exactly what he's looking for.
09:51He knows what the other voice, what he's looking for from every single voice actor.
09:56So he guides you into a vocal range and a way of speaking that when you put it all together, it looks like, it sounds like these people are totally talking to one another.
10:09But we never met each other.
10:12I don't know if any of the other voice actors were ever in the booth together.
10:15I doubt it because I certainly wasn't.
10:19That's incredible.
10:20Wow.
10:20Yeah, I didn't even know it was established like that, but that's awesome.
10:24Yeah.
10:24And so when you are in the recording booth, are you someone who kind of gestures around and uses a certain physicality to aid in, you know, formulating your voice performance?
10:36Totally.
10:37And that's what I love about voice acting is that you get to be so free physically.
10:42I mean, of course, not totally free.
10:44You do know that the microphone has to be exactly a certain space away from your mouth.
10:50But other than that, with these big gestures and big facial expressions that help to make the voice come to life.
10:59And those are things that obviously you wouldn't be able to do in front of the camera where you have to really rein it in.
11:06A lot of times when I'm acting in front of the camera, I feel like I'm walking on a tightrope that, you know, just go a little this way or that way.
11:14And it's like too much or too little.
11:16Whereas with voice acting, it's just fun and you're free.
11:21The freedom is mesmerizing.
11:25And obviously throughout your career, you've done your fair share of other voice roles and animation.
11:32But this was your first time working on a Pixar film.
11:36So, you know, what do you appreciate generally about the approach that Pixar takes to their stories?
11:42And specifically, how did you see those unique storytelling qualities manifest in Elemental?
11:47So, you know, Pixar has defined what good animation not only looks like, but what it feels like and what it sounds like.
11:58And what I love is that with the Pixar characters, every single character has a point of view and they're real.
12:10You know, it's not like, oh, there's cartoony and I'm going to be cartoony.
12:13They're like real, real characters.
12:17So when you watch a Pixar movie, you can really believe you get lost in that world because they're not fake cartoon characters to you and that there's always a lesson.
12:29And these lessons are so beautiful because all of their lessons are about making the world a better place and making people, just making us better.
12:38Making us, you know, you watch, you just want to become a better version of who you are.
12:45You want to be better to other people and to yourself.
12:48And so it's just wonderful.
12:50And they're stunning work.
12:53And especially with Elemental, this cartoon is, it's a technological feat.
12:59Because these elements there, for instance, you take fire, it isn't like a match that's set on fire or a piece of wood on fire.
13:09It is a, it's a whole fire being that is moving all the time.
13:14And on top of that, it's emitting light.
13:17So when, when I first went into the booth and I saw kind of a drawing of the fire character that I'm playing, I thought, oh, okay, it looks like nothing.
13:27And suddenly when you see it on the screen and it's, light is coming from it.
13:32And then when you put a, for instance, a fire character next to another character, let's say a water character, the light that's emitting from the fire character is reflecting on the water character.
13:43It is so stunning to watch.
13:48And it's made for the big screen.
13:51It's made for the big screen experience.
13:53And I really hope that, you know, as soon as it comes out on June 16th, that people go to the theater to see it and don't wait, you know, to see it on your TV.
14:02It's still going to be amazing.
14:04But on the big screen, it's a whole nother experience.
14:07And it's also a sound experience.
14:10It's the audio, not just the voice of these, and I'm not talking about myself, by the way.
14:14I'm talking about the woman who plays Ember and the woman who plays my husband, Bernie and Wade.
14:22These actors have such mesmerizing, beautiful, velvety voices.
14:26And the music by Thomas Newman is, I mean, you feel like you're sitting in a sound meditation chamber when you watch this film.
14:39It is, it's an experience.
14:41I'm so honored to be part of it.
14:44I still have to pinch myself on a daily basis.
14:48Absolutely.
14:50Well, Sheila, I know you have a pretty full day, but I'm really glad I got a chance to get in with your schedule and have a conversation with you.
14:57It was a privilege.
14:58And hopefully we get another chance in the future to talk some about your other roles down the line.
15:03I'd love that, Thomas.
15:04Have a wonderful day.
15:05Thank you so much.
15:06You too.
15:07You too.
15:07You too.
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