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Voicing a character can be just as isolating as you might expect—you fly in from “God knows where,” as Hailee Steinfeld puts it, and try to get yourself into the mindset of a character who only exists as a stick figure at best. You’re alone in the booth, reacting not only to an artificial world but to someone reading the lines that will eventually belong to your costars.
But that’s not how Kemp Powers and his fellow Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse directors, Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson, were interested in doing things. Powers, the codirector of Pixar’s Oscar-winning Soul, made himself an active presence in the recording booth with his actors, to the point that Steinfeld credits him with the performance she was able to give as Gwen Stacy. Though Powers insists he’s “no Shea Whigham” (Whigham voices Gwen’s father in the film), he knew there was a lot riding on Steinfeld’s performance in particular. Though Shameik Moore returns as the franchise’s hero, Miles Morales, who has his own adventures and emotional obstacles to overcome, Steinfeld’s Gwen is far more prominent than she was in 2018’s *Into the Spider-Verse—*and such a powerful figure that the world she inhabits literally transforms itself based on her emotions.
So how do you explain to an actor a world that’s like a “mood ring” when the technology to animate that world hasn’t even been completed yet? Powers and Steinfeld reunited on this week’s Little Gold Men to break down their creative process—and how they’ll bring the reaction to Across the Spider-Verse into their work on the upcoming third film.
**Vanity Fair: **Could you guys start by talking about how you first started working together? Hailee, you were part of the first film, but, Kemp, you were jumping in for the sequel. Do you remember that first meeting?
Kemp Powers: I just remember our first meeting was Hailee’s first recording session. That session included a pitch about what the movie was going to be, because this movie was so visually different than the first one. I did a lot of explaining about Gwen’s world in particular because Gwen is a lot more forward in this film, and her world is basically this mood ring. It was tough because the technology wasn’t done yet, so we had just, like, a couple of tech samples, some visual development that we showed Hailee. And then we just got into it. Of course, the way these animated films are made, it was basically just random scenes from all throughout the movie—you can ask Hailee, but I’m sure it must have made, like, no sense what the hell the story was gonna be.
She doesn’t know this, but I was kind of intimidated, because I had just watched True Grit a couple of days before our recording session. When Hailee came in, she had that kind of Mattie energy, where she comes in like a pro. The only thing that gives it away is she had her two Yorkshire terriers with her. She let them out in the booth and they were walking around, and she was just like, “Alright, let’s do this.” There was a little bit of an intimidation, but it very quickly melted away.
Katey Rich
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