We Need More Strong Women–Sophia Bush

One of our interviews during the Incredibles 2 Press Event (that Disney provided hotel and transportation for) took an unexpected turn and that was Sophia Bush. Sophia Bush plays Voyd a female character that has spent her life in hiding and unsure of herself because she is a super and it’s illegal to be a super. In many ways Sophia Bush is nothing like her character except that they both want change.

For one, she entered the room explaining to us that she is on a 30-day “no throw away challenge”. I found that to be so inspiring, I mean think about all the waste that there is in one single day, and at big events there is a LOT more. So boom, that was the first thing that impressed me.

Sophia Bush Impresses

As all the actors did, she also mentioned how great it was to work with Brad Bird in the sound booth. He’s really great at impersonating all of the other Incredibles characters. But as she was talking about this she transitioned into talking about her character Voyd.

Who is Voyd?

Voyd was told to hid who she was, but she saw Elastigirl and wanted to be just like her. That was her idol because there was no one in her town like her. And for Sophia it made her think about intersectional activism. She talked about how all women don’t have enough privilege. As a white woman we have more privilege than most women. She also mentioned that people in society are not accepted for who they are because of their race, gender, sexual orientation. She mentioned that she had an idol and that was Debra Messing.

Elastigirl girl is Voyd’s Debra Messing. She is that idol who made this girl, who had to dim her light for so long, feel like eventually everything was gonna be okay. And you see her expressing her identity. Like, she has turquoise hair and a side shave. This is a bold expression of her inner radicalness, but she’s had to hide her biggest magic. And she gets to meet the person who made her feel like one day it was gonna be okay. And that made everything about why she just couldn’t figure out how to hold it together.

Sophia said this made it really personal for her, because that’s been a fight in her real life and helped her own the moment for the character Voyd.

Another thing that impressed me is that she went back to the story about Brad and how he didn’t have a political agenda in making The Incredibles. His goal was to freak the character Bob out by making him the stay at home dad. However, she shared a story that Brad told her about how his wife is the coolest woman he knows. And that Brad is a good guy, one of the good ones. And we need to remember that we don’t want to “burn all men at the stake”. But we do want to “Throw the trash out. The Incredibles 2 is able to bring issues to the table and it’s refreshing because there is no tension in the issues, everyone is welcome to the table here.

Another thing that made me love this strong woman is that she knows a lot about animation because she just went into Pixar one time and interviewed a lot of people and dug in. She, like I, loves the tech part of it. Pixar Animation is so much more than regular animation because of all the technology involved. Not only is something drawn, it’s programed, it’s styled, it’s got lighting and rigging. There’s been a while process starting with making clay figures and story boarding. Then when things don’t work new technology is created because there is no, no we can’t do that. It’s let’s figure out how.

Finally, she told us a lot about how she loves all tech and investing and that women should talk about money. Women should be investing. We should be talking about our healthcare and our bodies. We are much more than just makeup and hair products. She said we need more women sitting at those decision making tables. She said we need more girls who code and she supports Reshma Saujani’s program, “Girls Who Code”.