Lisa Henson
*Disclosure: I received an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the coverage of several press events for Disney. All opinions are 100% my own.
Interviewing Lisa Henson for the movie Alexander The Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day was amazing! She was super friendly from the time she walked into the room, until she left. It really felt like we were talking to a friend because it just feels more personal. She enjoyed making a few jokes and started the interview with saying, “It’s so much better without a microphone.” Which we couldn’t agree with more!
What first attracted you to the film? The idea of creating this film?
The Henson company is great fans of the book and looking after the rights to see if they would become available. When we got the rights to the books and developed it along with 21 Laps, which is, Shawn Levy’s company, family bean. Then we hired Rob Liber, the writer, who, helps us went through a really interesting development process taking that very small and very intimate little book and blowing it up into a full feature film by focusing on the rest of the family. But we really felt that the Alexander, as a character is such a sweet, and loveable underdog. “He’s really, there’s a little bit of Alexander in everybody including adults.” You know, even, adults have bad days, and teenagers have bad days, and mommies have bad days.
Original Alexander Book
When we asked Lisa if she has read the book as a child? Or was this a book that you were interested in? She opened up to us and told us a little about her role as a parent. She actually read it to her children, but when she was little, she admitted she was a little bit old for the book originally.
The book is only 22 pages and the family isn’t mentioned very often throughout it. So what was the process like of basically creating his family for him, and giving them their identities, and their roles?
“Well so much of that is the creation of the Screen Writer, Rob Liber. But his challenge was to use that-the book, as essentially the first act of the movie. And then the second two acts of the movie are what happens when the very bad day is had by an entire family, not just one person. So all of that became invention. We were, we were so happy to know that Judith, of course, likes the movie. Because most of her book is in just-just the first act of the film. But the heart of it, the heart of the movie is so similar to the heart of the book.
Baby Trevor
Baby Trevor is actually cast twin girls who play the role of Trevor for a couple reasons. When you use kids that age, you almost always have to use twins. But they held a baby audition for both boys and girls that were identical twins and within the right age range. Those girls already have been in the movie Neighbors, so it worked out perfectly for them to be Trevor because they had some experience on set. They were fantastic babies and they took the movie in stride and baby Trevor fit the movie perfectly. We never dreamed that Trevor would be so many people’s favorite character.
Steve Carrell and Jennifer Garner
Steve was the one they had in mind for the Dad in this movie but he attached himself to the property before it was setup at Disney. So we worked with him in the, in the film in process. He was, he’s been sort of entangled to the, to the movie. And then, Disney introduced us to Jen, she-she had just done The Odd Life of Timothy Green with them. And, you know, she’s such a marvelous person, and a wonderful mother, and you know, she’s just perfect for the part, I felt so lucky to get her.
Ed Oxenbould
When was it, decided to pick an Australian actor to play Alexander who obviously loves Australia? It was really the strangest coincidence and it is a very strange coincidence because as a character he’s obsesses with all things Australian. And then, and yet he was an Australian actor who had to get rid of his Australian accent to do the role. Ah, you know, he only gets to say one thing in an Australian accent in the film, when he says, “Thanks mate.”
Family Friendly Film
Well the idea of making a family film that really every person in the family can enjoy, that’s, you know, is, that would, that’s going to be the-the best possible family film. And not something that the adults must accompany their children to and not really enjoy it, you know, we wanted to make a movie that adults would enjoy and find something drily too in it. And that, the kids would enjoy it in their own way, maybe they don’t, might not even understand everything that their parents are going through in the film.
“We wanted this movie to be appreciated on all levels by every person in the family. And we, you know, I hope that families go all together to see it. So many, there’s so many thins or ways, in which families are sort of being split up in their viewing patterns. Kids preferring to watch one thing, adults maybe, even at the exact same time are watching something different. And we would love it if families would watch the film together.”
Support System
The movie was kind of built around the theme that no matter how bad of a day you are having your family and friends are always there to catch you. But in the book Alexander really feels misunderstood. And if his family wasn’t there loving him, in spite of his bad day, it would just be a bleak book. It would be a, it would be a depressing book for children as opposed to a happy one. So I think the idea that the family is loving, and your family is there for you no matter what, is really in the original book, as short as that book it.
The movie has a lot of heart to be his, so many bad things happen to people in the film. But everybody ultimately has compassion for the rest of their family. And, you know, they, I think, one of the things that I love about the movie is it’s so easy to relate to and there cannot be a family that hasn’t experienced a day where you-you might even have prayed the night before, am I really going to be able, can we juggle all these things?
And opto-, over optimistically you might think, yes, we will be able to juggle those things because we’re an amazing family. And like the family in this movie, it just all unravels and it’s sort of, I think, I think everybody’s had a bad day. And maybe moms might particularly relate to that idea, that it just, you cannot keep all the plates in the air every day of your life.
What character do you relate to the most?
Well of course I relate to the mom. Because I am a working mother and, you know, all of, trying to get phone calls from your kids at work, that, you know, I, when somebody says to me, well you have to be pulled out of a meeting because your child wants to speak to you right this second. And then it turns out to be something important in their life, but maybe, you know, I as mother, they, well they could’ve waited. But they don’t know you’re in a meeting.
So it’s just that misunderstanding of trying to juggle, you know, working and-and being a mom. I think Jen captured it so well in the film. You can see she really doesn’t want to entirely let go of control. Even though she can’t physically be there to do everything. And that makes her very relatable character.
Real Animals
Fun parts like the kangaroo scene, or even chasing the kangaroo. Now was that really hard to film, just because, I don’t know if you guys actually had the kangaroo running down the street or something like that?
“I can’t say what shots were the real Kangaroo and which ones were not. Let’s just say that Kangaroos are not very good actors and neither are crocodiles.”
Tokyo Wako
The Tokyo Wako shrimp catching scene was something that Steve did all of by himself. He just ad lib-bed it in during that scene and it turned out comedically.
Lisa Henson considers herself a glass half full. And, you know, I am used to being in partnerships, you know, where somebody else will see all the things that could potentially go wrong and I’ll be the person that’s like saying, in denial basically, you know everything’s going to be fine. You know? So, I’ll be the optimist, the glass half full person.
*Disclosure: I received an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles for the coverage of several press events for Disney. All opinions are 100% my own.