‘Forgiveness and grace, these are the themes’
◆ Chris Pratt talks to Ellie Iorizzo about voicing the famous lasagne-loving orange cat for The Garfield Movie, co-starring Nicholas Hoult and Hannah Waddingham
When actor Chris Pratt was born in 1979, orange cat Garfield – the Mondayhating, lasagne-loving feline – had been capturing hearts through his gag-filled comic series for just over a year.
Considering he is almost the same age as the cantankerous cat, Pratt, 44, says that giving him his voice in a new animated film was a “full circle” moment – having devoured the original comic strip as a child.
“I didn’t feel too much pressure,” the Guardians Of The Galaxy star says of taking on the role.
“Mark Dindal, our director, had a very clear vision of what he wanted Garfield to sound like – he wanted it to sound like me. He pictured me in the role for years before he even had a conversation with me and in that regard, it really took the pressure off.
“I am a huge fan, like everybody, of Garfield. The comics are almost 50 years old, and I’m damn near 50 myself – it came out in 1978, I was born in 1979. I remember growing up, we had the newspaper, and the newspaper had the comic strip, and it had the movies.
“The first thing I would do is pull the comics and the movies out, and I’d see what movies were playing that weekend, and I would read Garfield. It’s kind of cool I’ve come full circle now.”
In The Garfield Movie, Pratt voices everyone’s favourite curmudgeonly house cat who is forced from his perfectly pampered life in the suburbs with his owner Jon Arbuckle and unpaid canine intern Odie to join his longlost father, scruffy street cat Vic, in a high-stakes heist at Lactose Farms.
Despite Garfield being a symbol of do-nothingness and finding new ways to minimise exercise and maximise a food coma, the heart of the film is an important message about forgiveness.
“Forgiveness and grace, these are themes that are resonant today and necessary as much today as really they’ve ever been through time,” Pratt says.
“The people that we hold this resentment towards, sometimes we don’t know the whole story and in learning the whole story, it can allow you to be put into a position of grace and forgiveness.”
The film is billed as bringing audiences everything they love about Garfield – and a few things they never knew, including “a vulnerable side to Garfield”, says director Mark Dindal.
“It’s hinted in all of the comic strips and sometimes, it’s more than just a hint, he may give Odie a hug in the second panel of a strip just to push him away in the third panel, ‘OK, that’s enough’,” says Dindal, who also directed Disney film The Emperor’s New Groove.
The film will highlight for the first time how Garfield’s relationship with Jon and Odie began. Jon rescues – and, crucially, feeds – the
enchanting baby Garfield who was left in a crate outside Mamma Leoni’s Italian restaurant, but Garfield also saves Jon by giving him a family.
Jon is played by Skins star Nicholas Hoult, while Odie is barked by Puss In Boots actor Harvey Guillen. The film also stars Samuel L Jackson as street hustling larger-than-life cat Vic, who is Garfield’s biological father. His presence in the film gave it an emotional backbone, Dindal says.
“I was excited about the introduction of Vic, because I knew there would be a lot of possibilities for character, for heart, for themes about family, some warm and tender moments to work with all of the broad and physical comedy,” says the director.
Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham also stars in the film, voicing dramatic, theatrical and flamboyant villain Jinx.
“If we have Hannah Waddingham in the movie and we don’t have her sing a song, it feels like a missed opportunity,” Dindal says.
Jinx is very theatrical in the way that she emotes – very much a theatre cat – and Hannah just understood that so perfectly. She gave the performance that would inspire the character animators to be much more broad with Jinx’s actions.”
As the voice of Mario in The Super Mario Bros Movie, Pratt is a dab hand at voice acting. While he says the journey is not always smooth, he had lots of fun playing Garfield.
“The process was actually made very easy and seamless by Mark,” he says.
“He was in every session physically. When I did Mario, it was during the height of Covid and so people weren’t in the same room, so it felt a little more isolating.
“Here was a little bit more of a community feel, we had our producers on set and our director, literally they’re in the room with me while I was working, so that was really nice.”
Pratt adds that with animation “you’re doing this voice, but you don’t really know what it looks like” – though, of course, he had an inkling of the cheeky cat he was giving voice to for The Garfield Movie – which is part of the fun of the job.
“You really don’t know until you sit down and watch the movie, which is so special about doing an animated movie,” says the star.
“In a live-action movie you have a sense of what the sets look like, what the costumes look like, what the people look like. So when you watch the movie, you’re reminded of where you were.
“But in an animated movie, you get swept up and taken on the ride like an audience member, which is a real gift being part of a movie which allows you to become one of the audience members.”