The animated comedy Storks centres on the birds' legendary function as delivers of babies.
And for the voice cast, this made creating the characters a lot of fun. "For me," says Kelsey Grammer, father of six children, "it's about just celebrating babies, celebrating life, celebrating the gift that every child is."
Grammer enjoyed taking on a darker role as the intimidating boss Hunter in the movie. "Well, you just have to know what play you're in," he laughs. "You have to know you are in a comedy. You have to know that you are actually allowing the audience to participate on some level. In this, when you go dark, you know that there is something funny going on."
When asked about his own priorities in life, Grammer quickly says, "Less work, more family: that's what my life is now. When I was 28 and I had my first child, it was a little more work, a little less family, and I actually still kind of regret it. But that's when you're carving out your identity as what you're going to do for the rest of your life. So honestly, with my first child I took her to rehearsals with me a lot of the time."
While Grammer found making the film a joy, costar Andy Samberg was more taken by the emotions of his character Junior. "I think that there's no one definition of family," he says. "It's whatever feels right to you and whatever, you know, your reality is. I have two older sisters, and a lot of the comedy I do comes from that dynamic of family goofing around in the house, like trying to make each other pee your pants kind of laughing. And I just chase that feeling in my life."
Samberg enjoyed being able to riff on the dialogue while in the recording booth. And when asked when he learned that babies don't actually come from storks, Samberg laughs and credits "The Where Did I Come From book. My parents just sort of casually left it ... on top of a stack of Playboys! No, I think at some point we had the sort of awkward, requisite conversation about it. I grew up in Berkeley, California, so it was pretty discussed on the streets. I was like, 'Where do babies come from?" And they're like, 'Come over here young lad.'"
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