By Tim Lammers

After more than 100 credits in film and TV, comedic genius Eugene Levy has finally dived into the world of Disney•Pixar Animation with Finding Dory—the long-awaited sequel to the 2003 blockbuster Finding Nemo, starring Ellen DeGeneres in the title role as the forgetful blue tang fish trying to muster enough memories to find her way home to her parents.

Voicing the role of Dory’s dad, Charlie (opposite Diane Keaton as Dory’s mom, Jenny), Levy, despite having a unique set of pipes, has surprisingly only done a handful of animated projects over his 45 years in the entertainment business. Mostly, he’s dedicated his talents to classics like the famed sketch comedy series SCTV, the improv film gems Waiting For Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, and the hit American Pie film series. Currently, Levy stars opposite his frequent collaborator, Catherine O’Hara, in the hilarious riches-to-rags sitcom Schitt’s Creek on Pop TV.

Levy, 69, recently spoke with D23 about his work on the new, big sea adventure and yes, even his very distinct set of eyebrows.

D23: As many of your projects will attest, you’re so brilliant at improvisation—and it seems to me being in the sound booth on a film like Finding Dory would give you the opportunity to put those skills to work.

Eugene Levy (EL): Not necessarily. The scripts you usually get for animated films, especially like Finding Dory, you find that there’s so much time that goes into them that what’s in them usually ends up on the screen. So, the idea that you can go in and think you can just improvise your way through a scene is not necessarily the way to go. I don’t think I’d presume that I would just go in and take off on what they have on the page. We take our cue from [director] Andrew Stanton, and there are moments where he will say, ‘Lift it off the page and see where you want to take it and improvise,’ and he’ll guide you in that direction and say, ‘Let’s try it on this one.’ So in certain sections he might say, ‘Go ahead and do it your own way’ or, ‘If you come up with something better than what we have, then just go ahead and try it.’ He’s always open to that, but you better be pretty confident that what you’re coming up with is better than what’s on the page.

D23: It’s been 13 years since Finding Nemo, and I’m wondering what your recollections are of seeing that film for the first time and whether you’ve been hoping for an opportunity over the years to become a part of a Pixar production.

EL: I like the way they turn out hits, and the reason they become hits is because they encompass what’s best in the world of comedy and what’s best in the world of drama. They have a knack of combining comedy and emotion better than anybody, and their track record is just incomparable. You never sit by the phone and wait for the call to be a part of it, but I remember when I saw Toy Story, I had a slight envious feeling of the actors in it, thinking, ‘What a great animated feature to be a part of.’ It was so fun and funny. When I saw Finding Nemo all those years ago and all the impact that it had, I honestly never thought of a sequel to it—I don’t know who did, actually—but when I got the call to be a part of it, I thought, ‘Wow.’ That’s the kind of call you love getting.

D23: Finding Dory has a big family theme. I can’t help but think that as you get older and that family means everything to you—being married to Deborah Divine for almost 40 years and having your kids, Dan and Sarah, working on Schitt’s Creek with you—that somehow Finding Dory carries a deeper meaning with you.

EL: It does, because I think family is the greatest theme of just about anything. Family really is the most important thing in life. When you have a good family theme in a story, those are the things that can have an impact and really move you in ways that no other storyline can because people can relate to it so readily in terms of what they have and don’t have.

D23: It’s very rare that actors ever record voice roles in the same room, but it still must be fun seeing the film on the big screen and imagining that you, Ellen, and Diane are playing a family together.

EL: It’s true. We weren’t in the same room, and I didn’t actually meet Ellen until a month ago, and she’s the greatest. I almost felt like I knew her already, just because I’ve seen her so much over the years. With Diane, we actually recorded one session together, albeit in different cities. We had a lovely video hookup where she was on a monitor in my studio, and I was on a monitor in hers. Recording a session like that doesn’t happen a lot. It was really interesting to do a scene that way and watch her work at the same time, knowing it’s Diane Keaton behind the microphone, and she is actually reading lines as your wife.

D23: As one bushy-eyebrowed man to another, are you disappointed that Charlie doesn’t have any eyebrows?

EL: You know, I was kind of glad that they didn’t give him my eyebrows (laughs). Why burden that poor fish with these things? People might have been looking at the fish as (an oddity). It’s funny. I half expected they would give him eyebrows, but when I saw the drawings of the character in my first or second recording session, I realized that they didn’t. I was kind of glad.

D23: I feel like we do see your eyes in the character, though. They truly are the windows to the soul in animated films and are so vital in communicating the emotions of the characters.

EL: I’m glad you mention that because when I was watching the movie, I realized how the eyes of the characters really pop through the screen. The eye movements that the animators gave the characters are really incredible and I love what they did with Charlie.

Miles from Tomorrowland, the hit series from Disney Junior—which charts the outer space missions of young adventurer Miles Callisto and his family as they work together to help connect the galaxy on behalf of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority—blasts off with its second season today on Disney Channel and Disney Junior, at 9 a.m. ET/PT and 6 p.m. ET/PT, respectively. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) influencers and educators have lauded the series’ ability to inspire children’s interest and curiosity about science. The series’ creator/executive producer, Sascha Paladino, and the show’s technical advisors hope that the show will inspire the next generation of dreamers and doers, just as they were inspired by some of the films and TV programs they watched when they were young. And a touchstone for all of them was Man in Space, an episode of Walt Disney’s Disneyland series, which originally aired on March 9, 1955.

The episode, directed by and also featuring animator Ward Kimball, used animation to present the history of rockets and to humorously illustrate what man’s experience in space could be like. Man in Space also featured noted science experts of the era, like Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun, explaining complicated—then almost-unimaginable—concepts of space travel such as space stations and four-stage orbital rocket ships.

It was important to Walt for humor to be incorporated into the science of Man in Space. He explained, during a meeting while the show was being developed, “There are two sides to go on this—comedy interest and factual interest. Both of them are vital to keep the show from becoming dry. You need a good balance to keep it from becoming too dry and corny.” So, while Man in Space featured Wernher von Braun talking about a four-stage orbital rocket ship in terms that aren’t that far off from modern-day space shuttle technology, the episode also included an animated man—a “guinea pig” of sorts—demonstrating the practical effects of weightlessness. Sleep in space and a hypothetical game of pool were both illustrated for comedic effect. Von Braun had been called “the Walt Disney of the space field,” and he recognized the power of TV to inspire an interest in space travel among Americans viewing in their homes. He served as a technical advisor off camera—fielding complex questions about the science of space travel, while also pitching jokes about weightlessness—and as a noted space expert on screen.

Randii Wessen, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helps balance Miles from Tomorrowland’s blend of “science fact and science fiction,” marvels at how forward-thinking Man in Space was for its time: “A lot of the stuff is really prophetic in terms of ‘this is what the future will be’—and now we’re living in it. They talked about space stations—we now have a space station. There’s a quote by Dr. Robert Goddard [a pioneer in the world of rocketry], ‘…the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.’ We’re getting into those realities that Walt talked about [on Man in Space].

Man in Space aired for the first time on March 9, 1955, and was rerun a few months later, on June 15. The episode did, indeed, spark an interest in space—in both average American children and adults, as well as in someone no less influential than President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who screened Man in Space for officials at the Pentagon. On July 30, Eisenhower announced the approval of plans to launch earth-circling satellites, kicking the U.S. space program into high gear. Los Angeles Herald & Express writer Scholer Bangs wrote, “‘Man in Space’ is believable and Disney has close to 100,000,000 Americans believing. Half of the voting population of the USA has probably reached two impressive conclusions: ‘It CAN be done!’ and ‘Let’s get on with it!’”

When Man in Space aired, about 40 million people were watching, and it went on to be nominated for an Oscar^® for Best Documentary Short. The episode, along with the two that followed—Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond—are still frequently screened at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Sascha Paladino, creator and executive producer of Miles from Tomorrowland, points to films like Star Wars and Man in Space as inspirations for Miles’ adventures, and he’s proud to be part of a show that continues Disney’s legacy in this arena. “When I watched those shows, I realize that the DNA of Disney and outer space and the future is continuing with Miles from Tomorrowland, and that’s really exciting,” he says. “It was very exciting to know that we’re in this continuum of Disney’s history.”

By Marina Draskovic

“I don’t watch my films that often after they’re done because I have to watch them so many times before they come out,” Andrew Stanton, director of both Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, says. “So about 2010 when we were getting Finding Nemo ready for the 10-year re-release in 3D, it was interesting to watch again after all that time. Something kind of got lodged in the back of my brain and started to sort of stew. I started to think about how easily Dory could get lost and not find Marlin and Nemo again. She basically was in the same state that she was when Marlin found her. I didn’t know where she was from. I knew that she had spent most of her youth wandering the ocean alone, and I wanted to know that she could find her new family, if she ever got lost again. It’s almost like the parental side of me was worried.”

He started to explore this idea about figuring out where Dory’s from, but only very privately with a few people at Pixar. “I knew if I ever said ‘Finding Dory’ or mentioned a sequel to Finding Nemo out loud, I’d be done,” Stanton admits. “There would be no way I’d be able to put that horse back in the barn. So I kept it very quiet until I knew I had a story that I thought would hold, and that was in early 2012. So I pitched it to John Lasseter and he was all into it. Then I got a writer, and once we had a treatment that we kind of liked, I felt comfortable calling Ellen.”

 “I don’t think she’s changed; she’s the same fish we left,” Ellen DeGeneres, who voices Dory in both films, says. But while she still forgets the commonplace, like Nemo’s name and where they are, her emotional memory is in tact. She always remembers that she loves her newfound family. “She’s settled into the life she’s living with Marlin and Nemo, and kind of thinking that’s her family,” she adds.

An all-star lineup of actors brings new characters to life in Finding Dory. Joining DeGeneres and Brooks on the voice cast are Ed O’Neill as Hank, the cantankerous “septopus” with a heart of gold, Kaitlin Olson as whale shark Destiny, and Ty Burrell who gives voice to beluga whale Bailey.

Portraying Dory’s parents, Charlie and Jenny, are Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton. “Even when I was working on Nemo, I imagined that if Dory did have parents, they would be voiced by Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy,” Stanton reveals. “They were always my dream imaginary parents.”

Stanton and the animation team on Finding Nemo did an amazing job of selling the underwater world and the ocean in 2003, when technically they really shouldn’t have been able to. “We really pushed the boundaries then,” he says. “But we can just do it just more easily now. We do more of it and we can do it a little sexier but it basically looks the same. The thing that I think was groundbreaking, that we could not have done at all in the first one, was have an octopus as a character, because they’re just so organic and they change shape all the time. That was a major advancement in technology that allowed us to come up with a character like the octopus Hank.”

And, as in every Pixar film, the audience should keep its eyes peeled for surprises and hidden gems. “Well, I can’t tell what they are because that’s half the fun, but there are definitely some things to look for,” Stanton teases. “You know: A113, the Pizza Planet truck, the use of John Ratzenberger, a hint about a future character, lots of special references in signage. There’s going to be plenty for people to find.”

Stanton could have never imagined the first film would do as well as it did, or that he’d be working on a sequel all these years later. “When it first came out, it blew me away how well-received it was,” he says. “I had completely underestimated its staying power.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2016 issue of Disney twenty-three. Like what you’re reading? Become a Gold Member now.