Emmy winner Sarah Silverman brings her energetic and feisty personality into the movie Wreck-it-Ralph in the role of Vanellope von Schweetz. I got a chance to talk with Sarah Silverman during our last trip up to Los Angeles about her role in the film. If I had my eyes closed when Sarah Silverman walked into the room, I would have thought I was interviewing Vanellope herself.
Vanellope von Schweetz is known as the "glitch" in the movie. She is a programming mistake in the candy cart-racing game Sugar Rush. She has a love for racing in her heart, unfortunately, the other racers, including King Candy don't want her in the game.
Vanellope suffers years of rejection and being the outsider, a situation that relates to many children. Sarah Silverman told us about her feelings on Vanellope's feisty attitude in the film, "She is obnoxious and precocious because she is protecting this little girl that just wants to be accepted. This is survival, and it is part of life for every boy and girl," says Silverman.
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The character evolution of Vanellope |
Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly (voice of Wreck-it-Ralph) did a lot of ad-libbing in the film. They both added a lot of their own personalities to the characters allowing them to evolve a lot during the process of making the film. When we asked Sarah Silverman about how she felt Vanellope evolved, she said, "She evolved a lot. She originally had red hair. Disney takes so much time honing, redoing things and re-sketching until everything is so layered and rich. Every time I saw Vanellope look more like me. That is why Disney is so amazing."
Then there is the voice. We asked Sarah Silverman about how she was able to maintain the childlike voice consistently throughout the filming of Wreck-it-Ralph. She said, "I looked at her, and she was so scrappy, and I was able to speed up the record player to talk with that voice." Sarah talked a lot about how she could relate to her character, making it easy for her to maintain the rich, strong voice of Vanellope von Schweetz.
Children and adults of all ages will be inspired by Vanellope to gain the courage to persevere through rejections and struggles in life.
Wreck-it-Ralph opens in theaters on November 2nd.