RUN RABBITS...
JAMES MCAVOY, NICHOLAS HOULT & GEMMA ARTERTON VOICE A NEW VERSION OF THE CLASSIC TALE…
For those of us of a certain generation, it was a rite of passage to be emotionally scarred by the 1978 film Watership Down. Now the story of rabbit relocation is being retold for a new audience, with state-of-the-art computergenerated animation – and a voice cast including James Mcavoy as Hazel, Nicholas Hoult as Fiver, and Gemma Arterton as Clover. It’s safe to say they were all very hoppy (sorry) to be involved…
What are your memories of
Watership Down?
James It’s up there with Dune and the Narnia stories as one of my favourite books. When I got the email asking, “How do you feel about doing this?”, I was wearing my Watership Down T-shirt! I took a selfie and I was like, “This is fate!” Gemma I hadn’t read the book, I’d only seen the film when I was a kid – and it absolutely traumatised me. I remember it being played at Easter and not being very joyful and bunny-like – there was all this blood and foaming! Nicholas I watched things with my older brother when I was way too young to be watching them, so it had definitely imprinted on my mind.
What’s it like being asked to voice a rabbit?
Gemma You have to do an ‘effort pass’, which is where you record things like, “You’re running away from a cat and sniffing the air,” and you have to be like, “Uhh! Ahh! [makes panting sound]”. It’s fun – you always do it at the end because you have to scream and things like that, and you might hurt your voice, but it’s quite liberating. You just have to let yourself be a complete idiot!
Is it helpful to only have to worry about your voice, not your whole body?
Nicholas I made my voice sound younger – they were like, “Can you pitch your voice up a bit?” So I started doing it, then I heard it back and emailed Rory [Aitken, the executive producer] saying, “Please fire me! I feel as if maybe you need someone else?” But he just said, “No – we really like it!”