This is per Variety, reporting on comments recently made by Chris Meledandri, head of Illumination, who says that Powell and Glover both came to them, not the other way around, in order to lend their star power to these ostensibly small and thankless roles. In fact, Powell’s pitch helped convince the studio to put Star Fox protagonist Fox McCloud in the movie, period; the studio had been going back and forth with Nintendo about the possibility of including characters from the company’s wider brands in the film, and having Chad Powers himself on the other end of the line, putting himself forward as this particular furry icon, was apparently the tipping point. “He explained that we had to understand how deeply he loved the character of Fox McCloud,” Meledandri said. “His dream was one day to be part of a Star Fox movie. I’m listening to this going, ‘He has no idea that [Mario creator Shigeru] Miyamoto-san and I are talking about Star Fox being in this new movie,’ and Glen is expressing this passion for this.”
(In honor of this anecdote, we would like to posit a corollary to Gene Siskel’s famous question, “Is your movie as interesting as watching all of its stars grabbing lunch together?” To wit: “Is your movie as interesting as watching Glen Powell try to passionately sell a studio executive on how deeply he loves Fox McCloud?”)
Glover, somehow, sounds even more determined, to the point of nigh-monomania: “The other actor who called after seeing the first movie was Donald Glover, and he was like, ‘I need to be involved, if there’s any way with a Nintendo movie,’” Meledandri said. “We loved him as an actor and a creator, as well as a filmmaker, and so he came in, and we sat down, and he said, ‘I will do the most incredible Yoshi.’ So it was really interesting that these two casting ideas came from the actors themselves.” (It feels worth noting, in that context, that Glover’s high-pitched Yoshi appears to only be barely verbal in the movie; apparently he was so determined to be involved somehow in a Nintendo-branded project that he really just consented to lay down some chirps and “Yoshi!”s so he could be involved in the project.) If you’re feeling soft-hearted, there is something kind of sweet in all this, as big-name performers take small roles in these giant projects in order to express a portion of their Nintendo love. (We’re just not sure that the various professional voice actors who could be doing these roles would feel quite so sentimental on the topic.)
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