I’ve had such a fun time sharing with you my interviews with the cast of Incredibles 2. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?! Today I’m back with my last interview, this time with Sophia Bush who is the voice of Voyd in Incredibles 2. Our interview with Sophia was amazing – she is such a brilliant and caring person!

Photo Credit: MomStart.com

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.

What Voyd Means to Sophia Bush

Sophia shared with us what it was like working in the recording booth and how she got into the character of Voyd, “What’s interesting is you go in and it’s you and Brad in the room. And he’s such a phenomenal director. And as any good director, he’s really got the movie put together in his head. So, I’m guessing obviously knowing that Holly and I are gonna be having a conversation in the way that you and I are, but I have no idea how she’s talking, how fast she’s talking, how loud she’s talking, what her intonation is. So, I have to think about what’s going on in the scene and kind of guess.

Brad knows what take he’s gonna get from Holly, so he knows when I’m throwing things at him which take of mine is right. So, he’s the mad genius scientist, which is awesome. For me, I had to think a lot about who this girl is. You know, Violet is a teenager. Voyd is a young woman. And she represents, to me, so many of the girls who I spend so much of my life talking to, girls that are in high school, college, post college, trying to figure out who they are.

And the way that I related it was this, I thought a lot about being a young girl in this world of the Incredibles, who has powers, who thinks it’s the coolest. And then you see people like you become illegal. And your parents tell you you have to hide who you are, because you could be jailed. You could be killed. You could be subject to harassment. But you grew up looking up to Elastigirl. She was on your TV. There’s no one in your town like you.

But you had an idol. And you knew that she got to shine. And the way that came into a specific idea for me when I think about what intersectional activism, what I think about being a woman for all women looks like, when I think about what my level of relative privilege is, ’cause when we’re women we don’t have enough privilege, but as a white woman I have more privilege than a lot of other women. And I think about what the struggles are in society for people who are not accepted or people who are othered because of their race, because of their gender, because of their sexual orientation.

I thought about listening to my sweet superhero friend herself, Debra Messing talk about what it was like when Will and Grace was on the air. And she would meet these young gay kids from small towns where they maybe were the only gay boy or lesbian girl, and they were shunned and they were judged. And they would meet Debra or Erica McCormick. And over and over again these kids would say, I grew up in a place that didn’t accept me, and I saw you on TV and your character taught me that everything was gonna get better for me and that someday I’d get to be who I am.

Elastigirl girl is Voyd’s Debra Messing. She is that idol who made this girl, who had to dim her light for so long, feel like eventually everything was gonna be okay. And you see her expressing her identity. Like, she has turquoise hair and a side shave. This is a bold expression of her inner radicalness, but she’s had to hide her biggest magic. And she gets to meet the person who made her feel like one day it was gonna be okay. And that made everything about why she just couldn’t figure out how to hold it together.

It made it really, really personal for me, because it was something that — that’s a fight I’ve been a part of in my real life, and it helped me own the moment for this sweet girl in the recording booth.”

Elastigirl Front and Center

We asked Sophia how she felt about the roles reversing with Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl and how Incredibles 2 really is a movie showing strong women. Sophia shared, “Well, I told Brad he’s clearly psychic, because you know, this movie was three years in the making. So, this was pre the Time’s Up conversation being had. This was pre a lot of these studies about gender parody and even current stages of pay disparity, our lack of paid family leave in this country. Even when we look at some of the statistics that have come out about how many dads are actually now the stay-at-home parent, how many women earn equal to their male partners, how many women are actually the primary bread winner in their households.

Brad was like, I just thought it would be funny to freak Bob out, you know, is always his public answer, but then we’re talking backstage and he’s well, you know, my wife’s a superhero. She’s the coolest woman I know. And he’s really so for us, and I think it’s so important to be grateful at a time like this to our excellent male allies, because it’s like we’re not looking to burn all men at the stake. We just wanna like throw the trash out. So, and, you know, like Harvey Weinstein is trash. Bye. [CHUCKLES]

So, this film was ahead of its time, in a way, when it was written and when it began. And I think it’s so smart, because a lot of these conversations when we talk about the data around gender, people are like, oh, my God, you know, especially people who don’t agree with us, who don’t wanna hear about race, who don’t wanna hear about sexual orientation. It makes them tense. And this movie manages to talk about identity and empowerment with not an ounce of tension, with so much humor.

It welcomes everybody to the table. I’ve not heard a single guy be like, oh, that’s like a woman’s movie. They love the movie. And I’m like, yeah, because women’s issues are just life. They’re just issues. They’re everybody’s issues. And these are family issues. They really are for everyone. And so, I think it’s really refreshing in a time where people are a bit tense about where all of this goes from here to remind them that it can go to a place like this, that instead of bothering people we should welcome everyone to the table, because if everyone puts their own personal brand of magic on the world, the world gets better.”

Real Life Super Powers

Of course, we’ve had to ask everyone in Incredibles 2 what their real life super powers would be and Sophia told us, “I mean I would love to have Voyd’s powers. They’re really badass. But I think about convenience, and whatever the power is that would allow me to teleport, I’d like that. ‘Cause I have to get on a red eye tonight. Do you know how happy I’d be to just grab my bags and twitch my nose like Samantha from Bewitched and just be in another city? No more TSA, no more bad airport food, no — it would be the biggest game changer of my life. I would love that.”

Photo Credit: MomStart.com

Working With Pixar

We asked Sophia about the moment when she found out , “I was sitting at lunch with a friend of mine, and I got a text message that open your email, because people know that I do not email. I’m like allergic to it. I think the user interface is terrible. I don’t understand how nobody’s redesigned the inbox. I would do it for free. I opened my email and there was this letter from my agent, and I sort of started having an outer-body experience and like couldn’t figure out what I was reading, because I got very emotional. And I opened the PDF, and the scan that was attached to it was the actual letter from Brad Bird on Pixar letterhead offering me the part, telling me who Voyd was, asking me to come and join the Incredibles family. And at the bottom of the page are all of the Incredibles family in like this beautiful 2-D drawing.

And I was like, what. I screamed so loud the whole restaurant turned and looked at me. I was morbidly embarrassed and also very excited. And I asked him, I said I don’t understand how this happened. And he said, well, you know, years ago you came up here to learn about animation, and I did. I spent a day like asking all of the animators crazy questions about code, like a total nerd. It was the best day of my life. And they have a great cafe there, so lunch was also very nice.

He said, you know, what we started to do was look for something for you knowing how excited you are about this whole universe. And they take samplings of your voice from other jobs. So, they basically cut generic enough sentences of your dialogue and then cut it together with the other actors in Pixar films and figure out who’s voice they like the sound of your voice with. And they liked me and Holly’s voices together. And I was like, she’s a queen. I am dead. Great. Like, all of my dreams have come true.”

Voyd Clutch at the Incredibles 2 Premiere

We asked Sophia more about the Vody clutch purse that she carried at the Incredibles 2 premiere and she told us more about it, “I’m very, very lucky. So, this fabulous designer named Bret is the woman behind Edie Parker. And back in the day, she ran all of these big fashion brands and was always one of those really nice people who like I’d see at an event where I’d feel completely fish outta water and intimidated. I’m like I don’t know what to do here. And she’d be like let’s go in the corner and talk about life and have a tequila. I was like you’re great. So she’s just cool. And she decided to start this line, and I’ve carried her bags forever, a, because they’re beautiful, and, b, because I like to support badass women that are for other women.

We contacted her a while back and said, you know, I’ve signed an NDA. I’m not allowed to send these renderings to you, but I’m gonna send a rendering to you so that you can design a bag, ’cause I’d love to take something that is about Voyd to the premier. And she sent me four versions of bags, and we picked one where like her little mask was on the sad so I could also like do the manicure and have a whole story. I was like, I have never been more prepared for something. I’m usually the person who my friends are like you didn’t even get a manicure. Like, honestly, what is wrong with you. You are fired from being a lady. [LAUGHS] So, I really felt like I put it all together.

Okay posting oooone more time because this is vintage @Versace people! And y’all HAVE to see the #Voyd bag @edie_parker custom made for me, and the manicure @esnail_la did to match Voyd’s supersuit! And MY ACTION FIGURE?! I’m obsessed. #Incredibles2 #ItsAllInTheDetails #PinchMe SWIPE! ✋🏼🕳💥 @theincredibles

A post shared by Sophia Bush (@sophiabush) on Jun 6, 2018 at 9:14pm PDT

What a cool thing to have, you know, ’cause I don’t get to keep that vintage Versace dress, but I get to keep the bag. I have something. I have a memento.”

Sophia Bush and Technology

As you can tell from the interview, Sophia Bush is extremely brilliant and we asked her about her interest in technology. She told us, “I’ve actually been investing in tech companies for about ten years. I think that when we talk about parody, for example, I think we have a problem in that women when they make any money at all — and I’m not talking like you don’t have to be Warren Buffet and be a billionaire and be 65 before you can be charitable or before you can start investing. That is a lie. Like, you can invest a couple hundred dollars here, a couple thousands dollars here. There are ways to get women in the financial game that we don’t talk about, because we don’t talk to women about money.

And oddly enough, we don’t talk to women about their healthcare or their bodies either. So we really don’t talk to us about anything but like makeup and hair products. So, we need to change the conversation. But when women make any money at all, they’re encouraged to donate to charity, which is something that I do. But men when they make money are encouraged to become investors. And this is a major point of disparity in our society. And so, for me, the reason that back in the day — and I started writing like very small checks. I’m still not writing huge checks.

I remember there was announcement probably like eight years ago now that like Ashton Kutcher and I invested in the Seed Round. It was a very cool tech company. And I was like don’t put my name next to his name. He wrote a check like 18 times bigger than mine. That guy — he has all of the money. I’m trying to catch up. But I realize that even getting the game in small ways changes who’s on board calls, changes who’s on advisor calls. We need more women having seats at those tables.

And so, for me, being a person who is very intuitive about design and who also loves tech, the world of UI design, interface, the way that things are coded, the way that they function on mobile, these are things that I can have input on for companies that very often have these engineers who are so into their world that they’re not thinking about how most of us are not gonna use their product. So, that was a really fun way for me to foray into that. And I’ve spent a very long time supporting a badass woman of color in New York. Her name is Reshma Saujani.

She created a company called Girls Who Code. She also ran for office. She did not win. She will. I know she will. Times are changing. She is incredible. And so to support her coding camps for girls, like look at — my character is a woman in STEM. She literally manipulates space time. It’s so cool to me. So, to talk to women about how science, technology, engineering, medicine, these are fields that they should be in. They should be owning. That is very exciting to me. So, I think that the people at Pixar were probably like we just needed you to come and do a thing. Okay, so, yeah, you wanna see like how they animate — how this level of animation works, fine. I was like please tell me all of the things.”