My Interview With The Man Behind My Favorite Monsters U Character Squishy! #MonstersUEvent

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***Disclosure: I was not compensated or paid in any way for this post. I solely was provided travel, hotel, and the opportunity to meet with the filmmakers of this film by Disney. I am sharing this for the benefit of my readers. All opinions are my own. Photos Courtesy of Disney***

Hey All!

On my recent trip to Pixar, I had the amazing opportunity to interview Peter Sohn. He’s worked at Pixar Animation Studios for about 11 years and is the voice of one of my New favorite characters Squishy (the chubby little guy with the hat and a bunch of eyes) in the new movie Monsters University. He was so fun to chat with and he does an fantastic job with this character.

Here is a little of what he said about getting the role of Squishy.

I’ve played, um, Emile in Ratatouille here. And it was like you’re chubby, you eat funny food, and you’re kinda nerdy too. So why don’t you play this guy? I’m like okay.  So why don’t you give this a shot? I did the recording was done a while ago. I’ve been on other projects since. I actually work in the story department. And so I’m pitching stuff. And as you’re pitching stuff you do voices. But this was a straight on kinda casting call for the thing where they wanted me specifically. So it was just Dan and Cory saying come on down and do the scratch voice for it. And do you know what the scratch voices are? It’s just like a temporary fake voice just to put something in there just to feel out how the story’s going to work.

The voice of Squishy actually started with a scratch voice of fake dialogue and then it became permanent. That’s how great he is being this character. It’s fantastic that they let their artists experiment as voice actors in their films.

It’s really interesting working here at Pixar and then doing voices, it’s just like this give and take with all the other productions here. It’s so familiar now. When you’re in such a family, you want to do whatever you can for each other. If someone’s just like “hey, could you quickly come down for ten minutes and just scream into the microphone about your mom?” You say Yeah, sure and go down and scream Mom then get back to work. It’s this give and take that’s really fantastic here because they have a studio that they allow this kind of creed of freedom of, yeah, you can do this.

What does he do when he’s not doing voice?

I’m currently co-directing, The Good Dinosaur with Bob Peterson and that’s coming out in 2014. It’s gonna be great. But I’ve been all over the place here. It’s been amazing to work here as that this place allows you to just move around into what you’re interested in and what you want to learn about. You know, Pixar’s great about that.

When you see Peter and his mannerisms in real life you can’t help but wonder if he inspired the character of Squishy or vice versa. Here is what Peter had to say:

I think it’s the back and forth. I’m not sure exactly. In the beginning there was a squishy but then evolved to be a guy with a hat who is chubby. So maybe it wasn’t a stretch. Maybe they thought that’s what he looks like. Let’s put him in there. It was an evolution for sure.

Peter went on to describe his Character Squishy and what he likes about him.

I like that he’s so sincere and kind of naïve about things. You know there’s a scene in there where Mike and Sully want to throw a party. And he’s like this is great. Grab some couch cushions ’cause we’re gonna build a fort. I totally connect with that type of guy because that’s how I grew up with my cousins. We  didn’t have the Internet. So the world was like out there. For us it was just like Oh my God. You have the one piece of Lego like whatever that is that you can just nerd out for a while.

I couldn’t agree more. Squishy is such a loveable and adorable character that you will instantly fall in love with the second you see MONSTERS UNIVERSITY in theaters now! I’m #TeamSquishy all the way!

For More info on this amazing film “Like” MONSTERS UNIVERSITY on Facebook: http://facebook.com/PixarMonstersUniversity

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Visit the website: http://www.Disney.com/MonstersU