more proof that “shrek” is a cultural treasure
As GQ site editor Chris Gayomali points out, the actual best part of Gabriella Paiella’s Q&A with Antonio Banderas is when she asked him about voicing Puss in Boots, and instead of dismissing the question like any other established & v. serious actor might if asked about their work on a cartoon from two decades ago...our man Antonio goes in deep:
...I came to this country without knowing the language. So the fact that they call me to do a character just for the use of my voice, not my image, was fantastic … I thought it was very successful, but the thing is that when I got to America, at the beginning, they said to me on the set of The Mambo Kings, "Oh, you're going to stay in America, get ready to play the villain.”
Really?
“The villains here are black and Hispanics. Those are the villains." And then like three, four, five years later, I got a mask and a hat and my horse. I was a hero in a movie, and the bad guy was blond, he got blue eyes, and he spoke perfect English. And I thought, Hmmm, that's interesting.
But with Puss in Boots, the interesting thing is that the movie is for kids. And the kids are listening to a hero who has an accent, and the bad guy—Billy Bob Thorton specifically—[talks in] perfect English. It's very interesting because it made things change.
Such a stellar interview, and if it got your gears grinding about accents and the moral alignments of fictional characters, you definitely need to read this Atlantic piece on Why Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents and realize you’ll never see The Lion King in the same way ever again. Sorry!