Incredibles 2 is now in theaters! If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? It picks up right after the first Incredibles and it’s SO good! I’ve had so much fun sharing all of my Incredibles 2 posts the last few weeks and I’m back with another interview, this time with Sarah Vowell, the voice of Violet Parr and Huck Milner, the voice of Dash Parr in Incredibles 2!

About Incredibles 2

Everyone’s favorite family of superheroes is back in “Incredibles 2” – but this time Helen (voice of Holly Hunter) is in the spotlight, leaving Bob (voice of Craig T. Nelson) at home with Violet (voice of Sarah Vowell) and Dash (voice of Huck Milner) to navigate the day-to-day heroics of “normal” life. It’s a tough transition for everyone, made tougher by the fact that the family is still unaware of baby Jack-Jack’s emerging superpowers. When a new villain hatches a brilliant and dangerous plot, the family and Frozone (voice of Samuel L. Jackson) must find a way to work together again—which is easier said than done, even when they’re all Incredible.

Working With Brad Bird

I’ve mentioned before that everyone we interviewed has told us how much they love working with Brad Bird and it was the same from Sarah and Huck! Huck told us, “It was actually really fun. Brad Bird made it really fun, and he just made everything really fun and it was really amazing.”

Sarah added, “I just trust him so much, especially after the first film. He always uses the best take, and he is really entertaining. He’s the voice of Edna Mode. He is an exceptional voice actor himself. So, he does all the other parts. He does such a good Holly Hunter impression that if he is doing Elastigirl’s part, I always laugh first because the impressions are just so dead on. It’s always really fun to do the things that come naturally, and for me that’s Violet’s sarcasm. She’s kind of a wise guy, and that’s what I’m like.

He’s very useful with the more emotional scenes. I was brought up to hide that stuff when you’re around people and especially sound engineers. So there’s a scene where Violet has to cry, and Brad was very delicate and very helpful with me and really respectful. But, you know, because I trust him and because he really does believe in me and had to because I had never acted before the first film, so that relationship — it’s been a third of my life now, I like being in that room with him.

I mean, for those of you who get older, you know like the number of people who really believe in you and know what to do with you, it’s a pretty small number. And he has definitely been that for me.”

Sarah’s Unique Casting and Stepping Back Into the Role of Violet

This was probably one of my favorite things that I learned during all of our interviews! Sarah had never acted before she voiced Violet in Incredibles. The way that Brad Bird discovered her was pretty amazing! Sarah shared, “Brad was in his car listening to the radio and heard one of my public radio documentaries and was so taken with the gravitas and maturity of my voice that he made me into a junior high school student who becomes a superhero in that. People who are actors are like, how do I become a voice actor. Like, go into journalism?”

Sarah also told us about stepping back into the voice of Violet after 14 years, “I mean, she and I sound a lot alike, so there’s that. And, you know, Brad and I became friends in the first film and some of the other people who work behind the scenes. So, I have kept in touch with everybody. I would just go there just to have lunch with them sometimes. So, I was perfectly happy to just move into another room and get paid to be there. It has been a while since the first film, but when you become one of these characters — you will learn this, Huck — you are Dash until you die.”

Photo Credit: MomStart.com

“Like, that lady who was Snow White got old, and she was always Snow White. Not a week goes by I haven’t talked to someone who wants to talk about how much they love the film or what Violet means to them. When I was a kid, there weren’t even VHS tapes yet and if you saw a movie, it was gone. But I think since then because of VHS and then DVDs and now streaming, children watch these films over and over again and I’m sure, as you know, so do their parents. At any given day, someone is watching that movie. Violet stays alive just because of other peoples’ fandom.”

Real Life Superpowers

Of course, we had to ask them what their superpowers would be in real life! Huck revealed, “Mine would be super speed like Dash, probably because I’m really slow in real life. I cannot beat my cousins or my sisters at any game involving running. I wanna be able to go somewhere and then just come back and be like I was here the whole time. [LAUGHS] Yeah, so I would just love to have Dash’s power.”

Sarah laughed telling us, “As a middle-aged lady, I would love super strength, because I don’t know if any of you have like those rubber jar opener things….if I could just open a jam jar or like move a car with my hands, either of those two things, I would love.”

Favorite Incredibles Scenes

When asked what their favorite scenes of the Incredibles movies are, Sarah told us, “In the first movie — I mean I’m not even part of this moment. It’s actually just the animators and the music, but there was that moment in the cave and Violet, you know, on the island when they need to go save Bob. Violet is like, I don’t know if I can do this, and her mother says you’ve gotta step up. And she decides, okay, I’m gonna try. And she goes out of the cave, and she stands up and, you know, almost does the superhero pose and puts her mask on.”

Huck shared, “My favorite part with my character, well, in the new movie – I just liked it when he was pressing buttons. Crushing a couch inside of a water feature.”

What Violet Represents

Sarah was asked what Violet represents to her and she told us, “Like all the members of the family, their powers are stemmed from the psychology of wherever that person is at their stage in life. So, a ten-year-old boy has way too much energy and runs around. And so, you know, the fact that Violet, especially when the first movie starts, she hasn’t really developed her powers yet, but she has them and they reflect kind of her insecurities and her annoyances.

Becoming invisible is sort of that teenage girl thing where you just wanna hide. Also her force fields, you know, I don’t want to let you in. But then as she develops her powers and becomes her person and comes into her own and learns how to use the powers — and not only learns how to use the powers but enjoys using the powers, then they become her strengths, you know. And then those powers really reflect what she can do and not what she’s afraid of, I think.

She kind of goes through the most growth of any character just because, you know, that is what is a teenager does. It’s like the rite of passage between childhood and adulthood. And so, she definitely represents that. Though she does represent a certain sub archetype of teenagers, a kind of wise guy, sarcastic type of teen, and so that part of her, just how she says whatever’s on her mind, which is, as you grow older, it’s not a quality that endears you to people necessarily. You know, like in this movie she literally has a line like, are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room. Like, no one ever wants to talk about the elephant in the room, but she does, you know.”

The Greater Good

“Elastigirl going and working outside the home and Bob staying home and taking care of the kids. That is the storyline for a while, and that’s interesting. I find that compelling politically but also hilarious, because he is just trying to reign in his jealousy. But by the end when they’re all working together, I mean the goal, I would say culturally for us as a society, is maybe everyone gets to become the person they’re supposed to be and they all get to be who they are equally and they all work together. And each of their individual powers, you know, using those collectively for the greater good. To me, that is an exciting, functional society where everyone gets to do that.

When you see them all working together, Frozone and the family and each person contributing what they’re best at – I don’t know if that’s political, but that’s the country I wanna live in.”