Adding her voice to Transformers One still fascinates and intrigues Scarlett Johansson

One of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, Scarlett Johansson has voiced numerous big budget Hollywood animations, now including Transformers One.

Scarlett Johansson has lent her voice to numerous big budget high grossing Hollywood animations.

She does, however, remain fascinated and intrigued by the often solitary process.

“If there’s a particular movie that my daughter loves, a Disney film or whatever, I will watch the recordings of that,” mother of two Johansson told Insider.

“It is interesting how children ... I remember when my daughter first started watching movies and Sing came out – I play Ash in Sing – and she could not ... I had to explain to her how it works, like how characters are animated. I was like, there’s actors like me that go in and they voice the thing, and then we started watching. I was like, maybe she would like to see the process. It is absolutely fascinating. All of the recordings that I watched … they’re so animated, the actors are so exaggerated and animated, and like feeling so strongly what they’re saying. It is really cool.”

Scarlett Johansson has lent her voice to numerous big budget high grossing Hollywood animations. Picture: John Phillips/Getty Images

While one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, Johansson has voiced the likes of Mindy in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Pink Lady in the Assassin Banana TV miniseries and giant snake Kaa in Disney’s The Jungle Book.

She caught up with Insider for her latest animated flick, Transformers One, in which she is Elita-1 alongside super robots voiced by Chris Hemsworth (Orion Pax), Steve Buscemi (Starscream), Jon Hamm (Sentinel Prime), Laurence Fishburne (Alpha Trion) and Brian Tyree Henry (D-16).

Scarlett Johansson’s Elita-1 in Transformers One.

In countless interviews with stars of animated movies, actors always comment on the fact they rarely, if ever, come in contact with their co-stars while making the film.

Instead, their work is carried out in sound booths – just them and a producer, and most likely the director.

In this case, it was Josh Cooley, who won an Academy Award for Toy Story 4.

Cooley was also nominated for an Oscar for 2015s Inside Out.

“The only time I ever did a vocal session with other actors in the room when I’ve been doing an animated film was when I did the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and that, for whatever reason, we all did facing each other, which was really fun,” Johansson, 39, recalled.

For this interview, Johansson was paired with Keegan-Michael Key, who has starred in a raft of live action and animated projects (The Super Marios Bros. Movie, Migration, The Lion King and Hotel Transylvania).

Both Johansson and Key, at different times, voiced characters in the Robot Chicken TV series.

“As opposed to directing a live action film, where you’re on a set or you’re on location and you’re directing the actors and the action in this, he (director James Cooley) said you’re directing everything so you create the environment, you create the little atmosphere, dust in the air, the amount of scratches on the face of the characters,” Key, 53, explained ahead of the pair walking the red carpet for the London premiere of Transformers One.

Keegan-Michael Key. Picture: John Phillips/Getty Images

“It’s like it’s you’re absolutely in control of everything. So there’s a part of it that, Scarlett and I aren’t parts of that to me are absolute magic. I don’t know how animaters do their job. It’s absolutely amazing to me.”

Johansson said: “We get it in like different stages. Similarly, when I do stuff for Sing and also for Transformers, it is kind of the same thing where there’s early stages that are just very much like storyboards and so you’ll lay down a chunk of the film, and then as all the pieces get recorded and it progresses. Also, your performance becomes more like layers to … even by the end of this film, that’s when we were doing all the actual action and all of that stuff because you couldn’t do it at the beginning because it’s just a one dimensional thing.”

It is a constantly evolving process, Key continued.

“They improve it and then it progresses, and then that informs your performances. And then they improve it and progress it more, and then you change it more … it is really a fascinating process.”

Johansson and Key agreed voice acting required one to “use more of your imagination”.

“It is nice to be with other actors doing voice work,” she said.

“It is more challenging to do it in an isolated environment. In animated films, definitely, I think that’s the case where things are either much bigger than you’d normally play them or they’re even like, more intimate because the nuance is so exaggerated. So even the smaller things are also weirdly exaggerated. But I think voice work is really, it’s challenging because of course you don’t have this whole other part of your creative tool. You don’t have your physical body and so you’re more hyper-aware of things like your intonation and, then again, like vocal nuance and that sort of thing. But I like it. It is hard though.”

Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, director Josh Cooley, Scarlett Johansson and Keegan-Michael Key at the European Premiere of Transformers One on September 19 in London. Picture: John Phillips/Getty Images

Context is important to consider too, Key said.

“I always feel that the cartoon or the image that you are trying to match vocally is usually visually exaggerated so you be broader, or you can be a little more over the top to match the visual,” he said.

“Whereas in real life, there’s this like, I’m sorry, this 50 Cent word just came to me, the verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real) of real life, you kind of pull yourself back a little bit and don’t go full out because you want to look real, you want to look realistic, whereas you’re not fettered by that when you’re doing animated work. It is hard because you’ve got to generate all of the context yourself.

“We were very fortunate that we had Josh (Cooley) because he would be with us, acting the scenes with us in the room very often, and that was extremely helpful but sometimes you don’t have that. Sometimes they’re in the booth and they’re three plexiglas shields away from you, or they’re on the other side of the world, the way we’re talking right now, and there’s that disconnection and you’ve got to generate the context to help push all your emotional triggers so you can give the performance.”

Transformers One is playing in cinemas now