You may not have seen much of the actor Alan Tudyk’s face, but if you’ve been watching Disney movies lately, you’ve heard a lot of his voice. He has been behind characters in “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Frozen,” “Big Hero Six,” “Zootopia” and “Moana.”
“They like putting me in their movies as a good-luck charm,” he said.
Disney’s luck is continuing with its latest role for Mr. Tudyk: the glowing-eyed reprogrammed droid K-2SO in “Rogue One,” the first stand-alone “Star Wars” movie.
The film opened Friday, and Mr. Tudyk’s character is already a breakout, stealing scenes with his British accent and devil-may-care attitude. He threw more than his voice into this one: Performing in scenes on location, he donned a motion-capture suit and balanced on stilts to simulate the tall, lanky droid.
During a phone interview from Los Angeles (where he’s shooting an NBC superhero sitcom called “Powerless”), he spoke of improvising some of K-2SO’s lines, running on stilts over sand and the kind of preparation that goes into playing both robots and roosters. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.
What happened when you met with the director Gareth Edwards to talk about “Rogue One”?
I met him in this nondescript boardroom and he showed me all the secrets to the movie, told me about my character in and out, and gave away the ending. He offered me the role really casually. I initially turned it down.
Excuse me?
I had crowd-funded a show called “Con Man” and we were in preproduction. We were just about ready to go. I said, “I can do it just as long as it doesn’t go in June because I’m not available.” Luckily, Gareth said, “We start in July.”
Would you have really skipped out on this role if production started in June?
I had worked so hard to get my show made and we had raised $3 million weeks before. It was a lot of things at once. I don’t know. There probably would have been a negotiation of people talking sense into me. I think that the fans who did support the show would have been angered the most if I had turned down K-2.
The role was motion capture and you’d done that kind of work before in “I, Robot.” What was different about it here?
In “I Robot,” it was about a robot that was having feelings he didn’t understand. The decision was to have him move in a very robotic way. In the world of “Star Wars,” droids have huge personalities and emotions. So I found if I did any kind of slouching or anything that read as human, it really played well. Using my hands really grounded him as a character.
We see that in C-3PO too.
Yes, there was a freedom in motion-capturing K-2 because of the history of droids that had come before. It wasn’t bogged down in being a machine.
What else helped you build the performance?
I worked with a mask teacher in New York City named Orlando Pabotoy. Mask work is similar to this kind of work — you put a fixed mask on and can’t make facial expressions. You have to tell the story through your body.
What was the most challenging aspect?
The stilts were the hardest part, the basic skill of stilt-walking. They were 13 inches high. I walked around on them for the entire production. Certain things, like sand, were a challenge. Running was scary. You just had to put all your weight forward and hope that nothing goes wrong.
Clip: ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’
A scene from the film.
By WALT DISNEY PICTURES on December 16, 2016. Photo by Walt Disney Pictures. Watch in Times Video »
When you took this role, did you think the character might become a breakout?
Gareth said it, but I didn’t put any stock in it. We were focused on having a good time.
What did you find most enjoyable?
They let me improv within the role, which was a blast. It was a natural extension of the character. In the beginning, Cassian, Diego Luna’s character, says, “He just says whatever comes into his circuits.” If you’re playing a character who says whatever he wants, I felt free to say whatever I wanted on set.
How did the voice come about?
Gareth and I agreed that it made sense he would have an English accent because he was formerly of the Empire and there were so many Imperial characters that have an English accent.
You’re playing your fifth Disney animated character in a row in “Moana,” and it’s a dumb rooster who speaks in clucks and crows, rather than words. What was your approach?
It was one of the most fun roles I’ve done a voice for because when you put that character in extreme circumstances, you are limited to just those sounds. I loved cartoons as a kid, and so many funny moments in animation for me are nonverbal sounds, unarticulated mouth noise. This is that to the extreme.
I had a role in “Dodgeball,” where I played a pirate who played dodgeball. I’d say 80 to 90 percent of my lines were “garrr” or “arghh.” And it was all about what the quality of your “grr-arr” was.
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