NEW ACTOR, FAMILIAR VOICE
Noah Schnapp, 11, is uncanny as Charlie Brown
He has a free-spirited pet pooch. Alas, it’s a spaniel named Spaghetti, not a beagle named Snoopy. But the new voice of Charlie Brown just may consider bringing a beagle into the family fold should the latest incarnation of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts take hold on screen.
Noah Schnapp provides the pipes for the ever-flappable Charlie Brown in The Peanuts Movie (opening Friday). The 11-year-old actor, son of former Montrealers Karine and Mitchell Schnapp, was selected for the lead role in an extensive hunt. For good reason: his take on Charlie Brown is deadon, and surprisingly similar to the voice that generations of Peanuts fans were nurtured on in the TV shows and specials.
It turns out that wasn’t accidental.
“In preparing for my recording audition, my mom told me to YouTube the old Peanuts Thanksgiving and Christmas specials to hear how Charlie Brown speaks,” the articulate Schnapp says in a phone interview from his family’s New York City base. “So I listened to as much as I could find online to get the voice right. Winning the role took a lot of hard work, but good fortune as well. There were a lot of other talented kids up for the part, too.”
Although Schnapp knew little of the Peanuts lore prior to landing the part, he soaked up all the literature he could find on the subject. “I found this book that had every Peanuts strip from 1952 to 1955 and read every one. Amazing. So now I can say I have become a big Peanuts fan.”
After studying the character, Schnapp says, he can relate to Charlie Brown in a lot of ways. “Charlie never gives up, and I try never to give up either. And my dog Spaghetti is a bit like Snoopy — a real wise guy.”
But Schnapp is not bashful like Charlie Brown. Nor has anyone pulled that famed stunt of moving a football just before he was about to kick it. “Not in real life, but we did a kind of remake of that for fun in an interview with the girl who voices Lucy. But that was just acting.”
Acting is something at which he has become most proficient. He already has a resumé that reads like that of a thesp twice his age.
Moviegoers can catch Schnapp in Steven Spielberg’s recently released Cold War chiller Bridge of Spies, and will soon be able to see him in the indie feature We Only Know So Much, based on the book of the same title.
He is commuting between New York and Atlanta, where he is in the midst of shooting Stranger Things, a supernatural thriller series for Netflix that is exec-produced by Montrealer Shawn Levy.
And he spent a portion of last spring in Park City, Utah, where he took part in the Sundance Directors Lab and played the lead in director Brent Green’s Untitled Loveless Fable. No surprise, Schnapp was the youngest person invited to the event, which was also attended by such heavies as Robert Redford and Ed Harris.
To top it all off, Schnapp was just listed in Variety’s Youth Impact Report as a rising star under 21 to
watch out for.
Pretty heady stuff for a kid who only started acting in community theatre three years ago.
Schnapp plays the son of Tom Hanks’s negotiator character in Bridge of Spies, and is most convincing as a kid who’s concerned about a Soviet nuclear retaliation at the height of the Cold War. He dutifully learns the ludicrous duck-and-cover technique should a missile strike while he’s at school, and keeps his bathtub full of water should it strike while he’s at home.
“I have to be honest and admit that before I started working on that project, I actually didn’t know much about that period or who they (Hanks and Spielberg) were,” Schnapp says. “But you have to understand that I was only 9 at the time.
“However, when we started pre-production, I watched most of their movies. Then I went: ‘Wow!’ I hadn’t realized how big and how important they were.”
He was particularly struck by Hanks’s manner.
“He’s just such a selfless, generous actor,” Schnapp marvels. “In most of his movies, he’s usually playing the hero and good guy, which is what he really is. He would always be holding on to my shoulder (during shooting) and putting me into the spotlight. And not just me — he was always trying to make everyone else shine, too. It was really such a great experience working with him and Steven Spielberg.”
Schnapp is nothing if not determined. Because of his lack of experience, he figured he was a long shot to land the roles in The Peanuts Movie and Bridge of Spies.
“It was kind of crazy — those were some of my first auditions,” he recalls. “I was very excited, but I didn’t really think I could get the work in Peanuts. Still, I really, really wanted it, because I knew I could do it. And I got it.
“It was the same thing for Bridge of Spies. It was crazy, too. Then I just started getting more and more roles.”
Apart from Hanks, he’s had some solid parental figures watching his back when he’s on the job. In We Only Know So Much, Jeanne Tripplehorn plays his mom, while Winona Ryder takes on that role in Stranger Things.
Schnapp plays a crossword addict who falls in love with a young girl in We Only Know So Much. “But the girl wasn’t able to show up for the final scene. So they asked my twin sister Chloe to do the role, and it worked out because we don’t look like one another at all. It was funny.
“I really learned a lot in that film. Because it was such a small production, they let me do a lot of
different things. I could be behind the camera. I could help with the lights.”
The Sundance Directors Lab was quite the learning experience as well. “There were about 200 directors, actors and screenwriters. I learned that it was OK to experiment with scenes and improvise new lines. We were like a big family — everyone became my friend.”
Though he didn’t start acting until he was 8, Schnapp says he caught the bug two years earlier.
“After I saw Annie on Broadway, I came out of the show crying, because I wanted to be on that stage. Then when I watched TV, I just knew I wanted to be that person in the TV, too.”
Acting wasn’t in his genetic makeup. His mom and dad, both McGill grads, are in the fashion and finance trades, respectively.
“It’s weird, because the only one in the arts in my family is my twin sister, who plays the violin. I just developed such a passion for acting,” explains Schnapp, a sixth grader who has a tutor on set when he can’t make classes at home.
While he has become something of a hero at school, Schnapp denies fame has gone to his head.
“And attitude is not allowed at home, either,” his dad pipes up in the background.
Schnapp credits his mom and dad for keeping him in check: “My parents keep me humble and focused on school. But my parents — my entire family, in fact — are also so supportive.
“Because I’m only 11, I don’t have any long-term goals. But because I’ve been very lucky and got to where I’ve got, I think what I want to do when I grow up is become an actor.”
Apart from acting, Schnapp has another passion: he’s a huge Habs and P.K. Subban fan.
“I just love the Habs. Whenever we can, me and my dad watch the games, screaming at the TV. We’re so into it,” says Schnapp, who visits Montreal regularly with his parents to touch base with his extended family.
“I’ve seen the Habs play at Madison Square Garden, but my dream would be to see them in Montreal. This could be the season.”
For both parties, it seems.
I have to be honest and admit that before I started working on that project, I actually didn’t know much about that period or who they (Hanks and Spielberg) were.