A very good year for Bill Hader’s voice
Comedian played character in Inside Out, was consultant for Star Wars droid BB-8
Perhaps Bill Hader was destined to voice a Star Wars droid. The sci-fi franchise, after all, provided his first inkling that he would wed his wife of now nearly a decade.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Hader said, several years back now. He looked around writer-director Maggie Carey’s apartment and he knew. “She had Star Wars curtains. I walked in there and, in my head, I thought, ‘This is awesome and we will be married.’ ”
Now, nine years after their nuptials, Hader has lent his vocal skills to a Star Warscharacter that is being emblazoned upon seemingly every fabric and common surface material around. The SNL alum is credited as a “vocal consultant” for the sounds of BB-8, the cute new “soccer ball” droid in The Force Awakens.
Two years ago on Conan, Hader — while doing his comic impressions of dying Star Wars characters — half- joked that he “cornered” J.J. Abrams and told the Force Awakens director that he would do any voice for Episode VII.
What really happened, Hader has said in recent interviews, was that Abrams was messing around with an iPad sound-effects app while the actor operated a talk box. The result soon became less “voice” and more mechanical, as they found the droid sounds they were looking for. ( Parks and Recreation’s Ben Schwartz is also credited as a BB-8 consultant.)
Inspiring the whirs and whistles of a droid is the capper on a stellar year for Hader, the Emmy-winning performer who got to contribute even more significantly to another one of Disney’s biggest hits of 2015: Pixar’s Inside Out. Hader voices the emotion Fear, an easy role for him, he says, given his naturally anxious state.
When asked in June how he landed that role, Hader joked that he basically hung out at Pixar for days until they gave him work. “It’s that thing where I stalked them,” he said.
The real reason directors seem to love to hire Hader, however, is that as a quick-witted performer and writer, he’s an appealing mix of wildly imag- inative, joyously collaborative and ever so sonically gifted, plus it doesn’t hurt that the Oklahoma native comes across as terminally humble. No part is too small if it captures his creative interest.
The sheer eclecticism of his roles suggests someone who is truly following his own muse as a performer. (Is he simply cherry-picking from a wealth of offered roles, ranging from The Skeleton Twins to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, he was asked. “Cherry-picking? I wish,” the actor demurred. “I’m begging for roles.”)
That wit and presence and sense of collaboration made Hader a smart choice to star opposite Amy Schumer — and LeBron James — in Judd Apatow’s summer hit Trainwreck. And his Documentary Now! series with Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas was very wellreceived.
Yet often, 2015 resonated as the Year of Bill Hader’s Voice. Besides his Disney credits, he continues to provide inspired contributions to South Park and also voiced Dr. Malocchio, alongside a wealth of fellow SNL talent, on The Awesomes. (He even offered ideas to Pixar for the current The Good Dinosaur.)
And he springboards into 2016 by lending his starring voice to The Angry Birds Movie (opposite Maya Rudolph and Peter Dinklage), and then plays a giant in Steven Spielberg’s summer fantasy The BFG.
Whether he’s hanging out in the story rooms at Pixar for days, or experimenting with J.J. Abrams’s talk box, Hader is primed to experiment, bringing that fertile mind and vocal range to some of the most rewarding sound booths in the business.
And whether he’s voicing BB-8 or imagining a dying Jabba, it’s a matter of have tongue, will travel. Time after time, the muse awakens.