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Moana 2 Cast Guide: Who Voices Whom?
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DANA LEDOUX MILLER:We did have to streamline in a way.
She is the hero.
Moana and Simea in Disney’s ‘Moana 2’Disney
Her names in the title.
You want her to have an epic adventure worthy of someone like her.
That was probably the biggest shift.
MOANA 2– Matanagi (voice of Awhimai Fraser)
We were already telling a continuous story with one larger arc, the beginning, middle and end.
We got to go bigger.
We got to pull out all the stops across the board, across all departments.
One exciting element of this is we also had to make a feature worthy of the big screen.
Its in 3D and its 4Dx.
Somebody was just telling me today, they got soaked with water and windblown.
So it was more working on the story as we are going.
DEADLINE:Moana starts out in her space, and Mauis off in his own thing.
Im curious about some of that backstory with Matangi What was your inspiration for her character?
We were inspired by many of the stories of the people of the Pacific.
And nature is always a part of everything.
Theres no separation of it, and theres different stories with people with connections to certain animals.
Plus we get to have these really fun interactions where Maui actually meets Moanas crew first.
We had a lot of fun with that.
It helped keep the attention alive of When are Maui and Moana gonna be back together again?
DEADLINE:What did you learn from the first film that helped you with the sequel?
Im assuming the Kaka Mora were a fan favorite with their unique communication.
HAND:The Kakamora were something that I loved from the first film.
So even in the first film, theyre adrift, and you understand them in a different way.
Therefore, they share this common bond of wanting to find Motufetu for this curse to be broken.
DERRICK:Jason and I both worked on the first movie.
It is an incredible movie.
I love the story.
I think what we all love about Moana is that shes a badass hero who has really deep empathy.
Its so aspirational in a lot of ways.
And if that makes her a princess, fine, but I its like who needs labels?
DERRICK:We love Simea.
She represents the future of her people.
Everything that Moana does is with that in mind.
And theres no rule book for this one.
And theres no rule book in this one.
Theres no instruction manual, and so Moana has to figure it out on her own.
Its about the future, its about the people, its about her as a leader.
Is there a consensus on that?
MILLER:For Moana, yes, shes a demigod.
What that entails to the full extent?
Weve yet to discover, but shes been changed by this experience forever.
With Maui, this is some of the funnest stuff to write and animate all of these things.
We name all of our sequences, and that one was called, What makes a demigod.
They cant not be demigods together, right?
DEADLINE:I read that the mid credits scene was tweaked up until the last minute.
And I wanted to ask why you held off showing Nalo in his human form until then?
Also, weve just been on this wild, emotional ride.
We realized, we dont want everyone leaving the theaters on a bummer.
We have such fun characters, lets go out still having fun and wanting more.
Plus, we were lucky enough to get Jemaine back for a little cameo, yeah.
We could have done any of the things that he did.
MILLER:We actually wrapped shooting the live action the day after the Hawaii premiere.
It was really special to have a lot of the live action crew actually at our premiere in Hawaii.
Its exciting that there will be, there will be more of her to come.
