Interview With Amanda Leighton, Skylar Astin & Matthew Beans #DWTrollsTV

The voices behind Poppy and Branch: Amanda Leighton and Skylar Astin

Travel consideration provided. This is a partnered post.

Last month’s trip to the DreamWorks Animation Campus began with an advance screening of Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, a Netflix Original series that just premiered today. We got a sneak peek at three episodes from the first season, and I’ve been impatiently waiting to see the rest of it ever since! Like the movie, Trolls: The Beat Goes On! is full of fun, laughs and great music. The characters and stories are genuinely heartwarming without being saccharine – it’s a truly feelgood show that adults will enjoy just as much as children!

Matthew Beans, Skylar Astin and Amanda Leighton

After the screening, we were joined by three talents from Trolls for a Q&A: The show’s Executive Producer, Matt Beans (Known for his work on Robot Chicken) and the voice actors behind Poppy and Branch, Amanda Leighton (This Is Us) and Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect). Since the Trolls universe is so uniquely vibrant and fun, I asked the trio what they enjoyed most about immersing themselves in this colorful and zany world.

“You know, it’s really helpful having Matt and Katie McWane, our voice director, there because they actually help us immerse ourselves into this world,” said Astin. “We don’t always have the visuals – we have a script, and what they’re telling us is already being generated in the animatic, so I think what’s fun is to channel all of this knowledge, all of this imagination, into what we do. Sometimes that means doing certain movements that sometimes [the animators] borrow or steal willingly, because it feeds the visual and feeds the entire story. So it’s fun to get into that little booth and make stuff happen.”

“It also really helps when Matt will visually show us what the joke is,” added Leighton, gesturing in the air. “Falling from a tree – OK, got it.”

“This is what I think of actors, I don’t think they know what falling is!” laughed Beans.

“But that is a real challenge,” continued Beans. “I think a unique challenge for our show – if we did have long runs where it’s just two characters talking to one another, these guys could get that script and OK, I get where this is going and what each line intends. But when you have every other line broken up by some visual that requires a specific point of view – the camera has to be in a certain place for it to pay off, the timing has to be exactly right – sometimes they come and [say] ‘I don’t understand – what’s happening here?’ (laughs) ‘There’s a trick candle fire going on? Falling down a river IN a tornado? SPRINKLES? Cool…so, how long is this battle cry? 5 seconds?'”

It was interesting to hear this perspective from the voice actors on the importance of guidance to fill in the blanks with these detailed scenes. I got a small taste of this myself later on in the day, when I had the opportunity to step into the sound booth with Beans and record my own Trolls voiceover. He’s very skilled at bringing a good performance out of anyone, even a novice such as myself; I can really see where his approach would be key to conveying these fantastical scenes to Astin and Leighton as they try to imagine them in order to bring the show to life.