"We're getting A-list cast performances for a cartoon that most people would not really think twice about in the real world."
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Kevin Smith on 'Masters of the Universe: Revelation,' Treating He-Man Like Shakespeare, and What Made Him Cry
BY LIZ SHANNON MILLERPUBLISHED 2 DAYS AGO
"We're getting A-list cast performances for a cartoon that most people would not really think twice about in the real world."
Press days aren't necessarily the most fun experiences for anyone, but when I got on Zoom recently to talk to
Kevin Smith about the Netflix sequel series
Masters of the Universe: Revelation, he was
excited. "I have been waiting to talk about this for two years," he said. "The moment I got the job, I was ready to do press. And every step of the way, like in the writer's room, I was like, 'Oh, I can't wait to talk about this.' When we saw animatics, I go, 'Oh, I can't wait to... Oh.' When we cast, everything we did, I couldn't wait to talk about and it was weird being involved in a project where you couldn't say anything."
As he continued, "I don't usually do that. I make Jay and Silent Bob stuff. I'll tell you about every detail before the movie comes out and stuff, but being involved in something where it's just like, 'No, you can't say. Mum's the word. You can't share any of this'... So I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, obviously."
He's got reason to be excited, as the return to the world of
He-Man he masterminded has garnered a great deal of critical acclaim, thanks to its surprising and emotional take on the characters which an entire generation grew up watching on Saturday mornings. In our interview, which you can watch above or read below, he explained how his original pitch for the project went and what went into assembling the objectively stunning voice cast, including
Chris Wood,
Mark Hamill,
Liam Cunningham,
Sarah Michelle Gellar. Lena Headey,
Diedrich Bader,
Alicia Silverstone,
Stephen Root,
Susan Eisenberg,
Kevin Michael Richardson,
Kevin Conroy,
Henry Rollins,
Jason Mewes,
Justin Long,
Tony Todd,
Phil LaMarr, and
Dennis Haysbert. We also go deep on a little guy named Orko, and how Orko's journey (and Griffin Newman's performance) make him cry every time.
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[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Masters of the Universe: Revelation
Part 1.]
Image via Netflix
To start things off, what was the pitch you went in with this for this?
KEVIN SMITH: The original title of it was
Masters of the Universe: The End of the Universe. So the pitch was pretty much what you've seen so far. You guys haven't seen Part 2 yet, but it's very much that story. I'm a big comic book guy, and the idea I had was like I looked at He-Man as Superman. He has a secret identity just like Superman, Clark Kent to Prince Adam and stuff. But with a character like Superman and a character like He-Man, you have the impossibly powerful characters.
So He-Man is so strong. He can do like literally anything. And if there's things he can't, well, he has the Sword of Power to take him the rest of the way, for heaven's sakes. You know, that doesn't create a lot of compelling drama. If you're like, "Well, he's going to win," he's always going to win because he's the most powerful man in the universe and stuff. So the idea was like, all right, what happens if you remove Superman from Metropolis? Everybody depends on this cat. He's the epicenter of everybody's life.
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To me, it was an interesting story to be like, "All right, let's pull this element out and see how the world reacts without him." And so that was a story that I pitched, and Rob David at Mattel Television was like, "I like this. Let's take it to Netflix." And I was like, "We're going to pitch this to Netflix?" And he was like, "Netflix is doing it."
Image via Netflix
I was so delighted at that point because I had gone in to pitch so many things at Netflix, five, six things prior to this and they'd always been like, "Oh, you're the guy that made
Mallrats. We love you," and they never pick it up. So when we went into Netflix, this show was a done deal. It wasn't even me going like, "Please, you've got to pick it up." They're like, "Oh, we're making this show. It's a question of whether you're going to be involved." So then I pitched to Teddy Biaselli there and he went for the story in a big, bad way and he's like, "You're the guy. Let's go forward."
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I got lucky, man, that they liked the story. Every time I watch the episodes, and I've watched them in every incarnation, as animatics, as fully blown animation, scoreless, without scored, a temp soundtrack, without temp soundtrack. I have this insanely gratifying feeling of like, "Oh my God, somebody gave me something really important to handle." I'm not that guy. Nobody ever gives me anything important. I handle Jay and Silent Bob and they don't even want me to do that." To give me something that is a legacy franchise that people have known for a long time, and they were like, "We think you're the guy," honestly, made me rise to the occasion.
And Teddy was such a wonderful boss. I've never had this experience where a creative exec in charge of the project is more creative than the people tasked to create the project itself. He loved this stuff so much. As much as like all of us enjoy
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, this is Teddy's religion since he was a kid, and he very seriously said after I pitched, he was like, "I love that." He's going, "I think you're the guy. This is what I'm going to tell you." He's going, "When I was a kid, I watched every episode and I loved it. And I assume that He-Man would be killed by Skeletor. I was so scared."
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He's going, "Then I grew up and realized that was never going to happen." He's going, "All I ask is that you give me those stakes again. You make me afraid for these characters again, the way I felt when I was a kid." And he said, "But most importantly, I'm begging you, don't make fun of this." He's going, "It's so easy because some of the characters are goofy, to just lean into the comedy as per the 4 Non Blondes song that had been on the internet for a while." He's like, "Don't reference that. Don't make jokes at their expense." He's going like, "This is a deep bench of rich, intellectual property, as deep a bench as Marvel or DC has." He's going, "All I ask is that you treat them like Shakespeare." And I was like, "I would love to attempt that." I can't write Shakespeare, but I could do Fakespeare. I could put like lofty words in the mouths of scenery-chewing skeleton-faced arch-villains and stuff, so it was right up my alley.
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Excellent. Talk to me a little bit about the voice casting, just because there are some really great actors here and they're not doing stuff you would necessarily assume they would do. I, for example, wouldn't have thought of casting Stephen Root as Battlecat.
SMITH: But now, can you unsee it?
No, I can't.
Image via Netflix
SMITH: You know what I'm saying? I went for Root. Root was one of my suggestions, where I was like, "Can we go for Stephen Root?" Most people when they think about casting Battlecat, they think about Battlecat. But I think about Cringer because most of the time you're going to spend with the non-heroic version of Battlecat as Cringer. Stephen is an amazing actor period, but he also has this very gentle voice. When you talk to him in real life, he talks like this. He's always like, "Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, I hope that's the case." It's a very hopeful voice, you know? And he can play some shitty characters in movies and TV shows, but he's in real life he's got that voice.
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So I was like, "I think Stephen could totally be our Cringer." And he came in and he gave us a bit of Bert Lahr, but he gave us, most importantly, soul. One of my favorite monologues in the entire thing is when he's like, "Do you remember who named me Cringer?" when he convinces Teela to go on the journey. I don't know that anyone was going to nail that performance but Root. So we got incredibly lucky with the cast. I mean, I'm telling you, you've seen a lot of the Lena Headey performance as Evil-Lyn. Wait until you see Part 2. They should give her an acting award for Part 2, if not Part 1, because she transcends. Everybody stepped up to the mic and brought this incredible A-game. Nobody whiffed it. Nobody was just like, "What are we doing? Yeah... "
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Everyone brought passion because a lot of people were familiar with
Masters as children. It was a part of their lives, or in the case of Mark, Mark was like, "I remember the year that I had to personally call Mattel to try to track down a fucking Castle Grayskull for my kid." So he's like, "I'm well aware of Skeletor and
Masters of the Universe." And you've had people joining for that reason, man. So it was bliss and we got huge names. A lot of cats I've worked with before, like Diedrich I've worked with before, Mark, I've worked with before. Chris Wood, who plays our Prince Adam and He-Man, I've worked with before. He was on
Supergirl, the episodes I've done. Jason Mewes is our Stinkor. I think I've worked with him somewhere in the past. So forth and so on. There were definitely people I've worked with.
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And then the rest was made up of like people whose work I just really dug. I was a big
Game of Thrones fan, so [we had] Lena come in and having Liam come in as well because Liam has that paternal voice. His Sir Davos was like the most likable, lovable character on that show. And so we were like, "That's the voice we need for Man-At-Arms." And we got lucky with these people saying, "Yeah," because as if people like the show, I think it has a great deal to do with those vocal performances, man.
We're getting A-list cast performances for a cartoon that most people would not really think twice about in the real world. They lent us their credibility so much so that when we made the announcement, like, "Here's the cast," people were like, "Holy shit. Wow, I want to hear what that is." And that even lifted my credibility, you know?
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People like, "Hey, fucking good for you. It ain't just like fucking
Clerks all the time, is it? You rubbing elbows with the big stars and stuff." But it became like one of my favorite things I've ever done. I put this side by side with
Clerks at this point, shoulder to shoulder. I think, honestly, this is the one they'll remember me for with
Clerks. They'll be like, "He made
Clerks and he got to play with He-Man once," when I die.
Absolutely. Well, I think something that speaks to the quality of the voice performances is how emotional the material is, like I was not expecting you to be moved to tears by Orko.
SMITH: Did you? Did you cry?
A little bit.
SMITH: I fucking cry every time I watch it and I've seen that in script form. I've seen it in animatic form, and I've seen it fully fleshed out in animation. And then I saw it with bare score. Doesn't matter, it always makes me cry because that is the heart of heroism. Somebody who can't, who's going to try no matter what. Somebody who's going to put their life on the line for everyone else.
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Image via Netflix
It wasn't my idea. In the story we have this fellowship and Orko is the weakest link as he's always been. And in that moment, he gets this incredible glow up to send him out for good. He was somebody we were concerned about when we sat down in the writers' room because we were like, "Orko's the weak spot," because a lot of people hated Orko, but we were like, "Rather than get rid of him, how do we make people fall in love with him and then get rid of him so that people are like, 'Orko's my favorite. What do you mean he's gone?'"
And so that allowed us to create some compelling drama. But the secret to Orko, I swear to you, is Griffin Newman, Griffin, who performs Orko. The guy who performed Orko in the original show, who was one of the producers, I think it was Lou Scheimer, he would record his voice and then they'd put it through a filter to make it high pitched and it sound like this. Griffin is not put through a filter. What you hear is literally Griffin just sitting there going like this and creating that Orko voice, which to me was so special because kids can come up to him in the real world and if somebody is like, "This is Orko," he could literally be Orko for them and not have to be like, "Well, I have to put on a filter on my voice."
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Griffin gave us such an incredibly soulful performance and he sought that role. I saw him on Twitter trying to get that role, so much so that he popped to the top of our list where I'm like, "You guys know this guy who was on
The Tick? He really wants to play fucking Orko." And he came in and blew us all away. And that performance, one of my favorite moments of anything I've ever done is when he's facing down Scare Glow and he goes like, "It's okay, Teela." I get fucking emotional, like technically he's, "I'm not scared."
He's like he can't stay. He goes, "I'm not afraid. He can't scare me." It sounds like the bravest little five-year-old facing the Lord of Hell. And so, oh my God. If anybody went into this series going, "Man, Orko was always a drag," I guarantee you, by the time they hit that moment, they're like "you fucking piece of shit. You killed the best character."
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