TROLLS TAKE ON WORLD

POPPY AND BRANCH EXPLORE AS THEY EXPAND THEIR MUSICAL HORIZONS

When the animated family film

Trolls premiered four years ago, it was a glitter bomb of music, dance and colour.

Now the disco world of the fun-loving creatures, inspired by the troll dolls that were popular in the 1990s, is expanding in the sequel Trolls World Tour.

Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake reprise their roles as friends Poppy and Branch, who venture out into the wider world to discover there are six different troll tribes devoted to six different genres of music. Joining the voice cast are musical heavyweights Ozzy Osbourne, George Clinton, Kelly Clarkson, Mary J Blige and rapper Anderson .Paak.

Q: After the success of the first film, were you looking forward to coming back to work on the sequel?

Anna: Genuinely, yes. Making the first movie I realised I got to a point that every time I received an email saying they wanted to do another recording session with me, I was happy. I didn’t think ‘Oh, I have to schedule that’, but rather, ‘Oh, I get to be Poppy again!’. I had so much fun working on Trolls that I was thrilled to do another one. Q: And where are your characters in their lives when we meet them again in Trolls World Tour?

Anna: Well, it’s nice to see them (Poppy and Branch) on the same team. In Trolls they had a really contentious relationship, but that has changed now, even though we still get to have the fun and comedy of Poppy being very positive and Branch being the grumpier one. It’s just great to see them working towards a common goal.

Q: What do you like about your characters?

Anna: I like Poppy’s loveable face and that she is so smart. I love that she is positive, sassy, girly and tough at the same time.

Justin: It’s been fun to play a character who got to realise in the first movie what his true colours were and now is going through the awkward moment of trying to tell the person he likes how he truly feels. There is a lot of humour in that, and we want people to laugh watching this movie.

Q: Some actors say voicing an animated character is a more liberating way to work?

Anna: It’s really fun to not have to worry about how you look or about the faces you are making. Then you remember that the animators are studying your face and may even make your character look like that; but what’s great about it is that you get to just go over and over again and try different things, whereas if it’s a live-action movie there is a lot of pressure on every time you roll film. There is just so much more room to play and try silly things in animation.

Q: Did you get to improvise?

Anna: Oh yes, and a fair amount of it ended up in the movie. After I thought they got what they needed I tried a couple of silly takes, and they ended up on the screen, which is really great.

Q: Music played a very important role in the first movie, but probably even more now, as you have all these genres and composed many original songs?

Justin: Well, in the first film we knew we had to establish a DNA with the music, so we used a lot of covers; but this one has a lot more original music because we wanted to approach it as a full musical.

Q: What kind of a challenge was it for you to explore all those musical genres?

Justin: It was a huge and wonderful challenge to explore all the musical genres we possibly could to give each of the troll tribes their own space and sound. We had so much fun, because some of the songs had a comedic setting and others were used for a more emotional moment. And then the challenge was to figure out a way in the end to bring those sounds together and make a cohesive song out of it.

Trolls World Tour opens on March 26.