Teri Hatcher Interview, Coraline

Teri Hatcher's portrayal of Susan Mayer in the worldwide television phenomenon Desperate Housewives has earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe Award, and Emmy and Television Critics Award nominations. The show is now in its fifth season.

MoviesOnline caught up with Teri recently to talk about her new movie, Coraline.
Combining the visionary imaginations of two premier fantasists, director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and author Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Coraline is a wondrous and thrilling, fun and suspenseful adventure that honors and redefines two moviemaking traditions. It is a stop-motion animated feature - and, as the first one to be conceived and photographed in stereoscopic 3-D, unlike anything moviegoers have ever experienced before.

Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is a girl of 11 who is feisty, curious, and adventurous beyond her years. She and her parents (Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman) have just relocated from Michigan to Oregon. Missing her friends and finding her parents to be distracted by their work, Coraline tries to find some excitement in her new environment. She is befriended - or, as she sees it, is annoyed - by a local boy close to her age, Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.); and visits her older neighbors, eccentric British actresses Miss Spink and Forcible (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) as well as the arguably even more eccentric Russian Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane). After these encounters, Coraline seriously doubts that her new home can provide anything truly intriguing to her...

...but it does; she uncovers a secret door in the house. Walking through the door and then venturing through an eerie passageway, she discovers an alternate version of her life and existence. On the surface, this parallel reality is similar to her real life - only much better. The adults, including the solicitous Other Mother (also voiced by Teri Hatcher), seem much more welcoming to her. Coraline is more the center of attention there - even from the mysterious Cat (Keith David). She begins to think that this Other World might be where she belongs. But when her wondrously off-kilter, fantastical visit turns dangerous and Other Mother schemes to keep her there, Coraline musters all of her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home - and save her family.
 
Teri Hatcher is an amazing actress and a fabulous person and we really appreciated her time. Here’s what she had to tell us about her new animated feature film, Coraline: 

MoviesOnline: IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE DONE A VOICE OVER AND HOW HARD WAS IT JUST USING YOUR VOICE AND PLAYING TWO CHARACTERS?

TERI HATCHER: It’s really three. I think of it as three. Yeah, there’s the real mother, the other mother, and the evil mother. Henry actually calls it four. Anyway, it is my first animated movie. I’ve always wanted to be in an animated movie, but I never dreamed that I would be in this level of artistry. I’ve always been a huge fan of Henry’s and Neil Gaiman’s. And then, on top of it all, I got to play these three different levels of people. Interestingly enough, I think when you go in to do your first animated movie, you imagine you’re going to pull out every accent you’ve ever worked on as a child, and every silly cartoon voice you ever imagined making up. And Henry had such a beautiful, imaginative, visual thing happening in his mind, as to how the look of the movie was going to be, that he really wanted the voices behind it to be seamlessly real, even to the point where you didn’t have, you know, you didn’t go — oh, I hear Dakota Fanning or I hear Teri Hatcher.

So it ended up in a way being similar to what you would do with any acting job, that you would try to find the sort of motivations, the needs, the desires, the situation of who these three people were, and what they wanted and what they needed. And then you sort of distill it all down into your voice.
Physically, I think, for the real mom, I had sort of a posture. Everyone thinks, oh you work in an animated movie and you just get to wear jeans and wear your hair in a ponytail, which is true and not bad, but for me, I still kind of put my hair up in a frumpy feeling way and sort of stood slumpier, so that I felt heavy and exhausted to find that voice. And then the other mother was much more postured and mannered, so there was still physicality to it, although you know you’re not in front of a live camera.

MoviesOnline: DID THEY USE YOUR PHYSICALITY IN THE MOVIE?
 
TERI HATCHER: I know I was videotaped, so I don’t know. I seem to recall them saying yes, that I was giving them interesting ideas and creepy — I think I did some sort of creepy head-tilt thing in the creepy voice. I might have even cracked my neck like I just did right now. And I think that might have been the first time you see her in that most desperate thing where she turns around like that. That might have been inspired by me, but I don’t take credit for any of their beautiful artistry.
 
MoviesOnline: WERE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE BOOK?

TERI HATCHER: With Coraline? No, I wasn’t actually before. I had read American Gods so I was familiar with Neil as a writer, but I hadn’t read it. I got it afterward, and I know that they’re different and so in a way that wasn’t a bad thing because I think what’s great is that Henry and Neil obviously — really there was some great synergy, and them bringing this vision and so much effort to life, so I was really directed by Henry and his vision.
 
MoviesOnline: DID DOING DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES HELP YOU DEPICT THESE LEVELS OF INSANITY?

TERI HATCHER: I don’t know if you mean because of the other characters or because of the (laughter from us obscures part of her answer) That’s very funny. No, I think they’re completely disconnected. I think it’s easy jump marketing-wise to make some connection, but I think they’re very different. I don’t think I’ve ever played — I don’t think I really hear any Teri in the movie, and I don’t think I hear Susan either, which I’m really happy about. You know, I don’t think they’re similar to the characters on the show. I think the most relatable character in life, and certainly in our economy right now and our society – we have a lot of working families, working mothers, that are just exhausted and trying to do it all, and are so burdened with worry and that makes you neglectful really, of your children, but not in a mean way. More in just the way of survival — you can only accomplish so much so you’ve got a lot of parents just running on empty and not able to be consciously and mindfully parenting the way they might like to.

I think that’s a really relatable thing, and I think on its deepest level, the movie thematically shows us that children can be lured away into something that is enticing and seems like it’s going to be better and seems like it’s going to be the answer to everything and ends up ultimately being very dangerous, if not entrapping. And what I love about the ending is that we really see Coraline embrace the imperfections in her parents and understand that that love is enough. And I think that’s a really great message for our world right now, because certainly nobody is perfect.
 
MoviesOnline: SOME PEOPLE THINK THE DARK ISSUES ARE TOO SCARY. DO YOU THINK THEY’RE TOO MUCH FOR CHILDREN TODAY?

I think it’s really an individual family’s choice. I mean, I think you hear about three-year-olds going to see The Dark Knight and I didn’t take my 11-year-old to see that movie, so there’s — you know, conservatism, that I think is a personal choice. What I do think about this movie, and I know lots of young kids who have already seen it, just as part of the screenings, so I’ve heard some different interpretations that come to your question. I think there’s subject matter, like I believe in my own parenting. We’ve always talked about everything. I’ve always said to my daughter, I know you don’t want to believe this, but there’s nothing you’re gonna feel that I haven’t felt and experienced.

And the things that kids get — they feel alone, and they feel ashamed and they feel jealousy, they feel anger, they feel things that aren’t necessarily comfortable to talk about. And I think whenever you have an opportunity to communicate with your kids in an open and imaginative, humorous way, which this movie provides, I think even when there are scary feelings that come up, I think the communication behind that and the message in this movie makes it worth seeing. As opposed to just some of the just scary kind of trash that’s out there that I think is influencing some of our children on the internet or video games, or wherever they’re getting it anyway.
 
MoviesOnline: DID YOU GET DIRECTION FROM HENRY OR NEIL AS TO YOUR VOCAL SOUND?

TERI HATCHER: Neil was not ever there, so I didn’t meet Neil until we started doing press conferences. Henry never— he was really incredible that way because he never — other than real — other than, don’t do a British accent. He never had specific guidelines, like I want that to be lower, I want that to be higher. But it was so specific in terms of – I’ll use the example I remember, that rat crap where the real mother says, oh, I found some rat crap, so I locked up the door. And it was like he must have had a thesaurus for the word crap, because we went through rat poop, rat dung, rat shit, whatever you can say for crap, we went there. And he would just sit in the room with his eyes closed and he would just listen to every time I [said it], and maybe he would change an “a” to a “the” or an “it” to an “of.” You could see that he saw what it was.

What was so fascinating from my end was that I didn’t see anything till I saw the whole movie finished. I saw a couple of sketches and I did get to go to the animation studios up in Oregon and see that. But I never saw my voice being a part of telling a story until I saw the whole movie finished. So it was really his genius that kind of envisioned all of our voices telling the story and how he was going to put that together with the images.
 
MoviesOnline: I UNDERSTAND YOUR DAUGHTER WAS INVOLVED WITH DOING VOICE WORK IN THE MOVIE, DID YOU EMBRACE THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE HER WORK OR DID YOU HAVE ANY TREPIDATION?

TERI HATCHER: I’m very much not a believer in children working. I say that in terms of when I talk to her about it, I say, there’s just your whole life, your whole life to be rejected and responsible and have to pay a mortgage and all kinds of things like [that]. Here’s the time when you don’t have to do that. But I also believe in opportunity. We travel so much together around the world and do charitable things together and live all sorts of luxury experiences, and then very down to just camping with nothing experiences. So I believe in children having experiences, so that said, she came up to Portland to this studio with me, and she was very intrigued with the story of Coraline from the moment I got the movie. She just loves ghost stories. We’ve always been fans of Nightmare Before Christmas. We have Jack Skellington all over our house. Halloween is our most favorite, we do up the whole house. I build this crazy maze with things that pop out. I mean I’m creative that way too.

So she was just entranced with the story from the beginning, so she went up with me and we saw the puppeteering, the sculpting and the people knitting the little sweaters, and all the sets, and it was just spectacular. And then she came to the studio and was listening to me record, and I actually was recording some of the scariest voice, which she didn’t want to hear, so she went into another room with another adult, because it was sort of intense, I guess, to watch her mother do that. And Henry actually asked her if she would like to record some lines. You know, there are the characters that are the friends in the picture frame. And then there were some other random characters. I think that scene with the bugs and all — I don’t even know if that was written at the time, but he had her record “Coraline, Coraline, what’s wrong Coraline?” and she didn’t want me to watch, so then I went in the other room and Henry and her — he directed her.

There was no guarantee she was going to be in the movie, there was no one said that, it was just sort of a lark and an experience and a mother-daughter thing. Ironically it’s a mother-daughter movie that she got to experience. And really just a month ago, Henry e-mailed me and said, “So Emerson made it into the final cut of the movie.”  I said, “Really, that’s so great, she’ll be so happy to hear that.” So I told her, I said, “I hear you’ve made it into the movie.” She was all excited. I said, “But don’t get excited. It could be…” I didn’t know what it was going to be, and it ended up being quite a few “Coralines” and “What’s wrong, Coraline?” so it’s sort of just like a neat little personal thing. It’s not meant to be I’m being an actress now, or anything like that, and we both happen to love fireflies, so it’s kind of cool that she ended up being a firefly.

MoviesOnline: SO SHE HASN’T BEEN BITTEN BY THE ACTING BUG?

TERI HATCHER: No, she’s not bitten by the acting firefly.
 
MoviesOnline: DO YOU MATCH THE TONE OF VOICE WITH THE EXPRESSION OR DO YOU USE THE EXPRESSION TO MATCH THE TONE OF VOICE?

TERI HATCHER: Well, since I didn’t see the animation, I would say that initially they did the animation against my voice, which is why it was so important to Henry to get the expression he wanted —that the voice work in a way does come first and inspires the animators. And then over a couple of years, it starts to go back and forth. Then you may get, “This line seems like we need something something, could you do something something with it?” But initially, it’s really just you giving them a jumping off point. And I was told by one of the producers that most of my lines are from the very first recording session we did.
 
MoviesOnline: SO THEY JUST BRING YOU BACK IF THEY HAVE TO?

TERI HATCHER: Like Henry rewrote scenes and added lines, realized something wasn’t working, but initially that first recording of the script was basically what they built my character around.
 
MoviesOnline: IN YOUR VISIT TO THE STUDIO, WHAT STOOD OUT FOR YOU?

TERI HATCHER: Well, everything stood out, I’ve already talked about the little knitting, like a sweater this big, imagine knitting clothes like that. The forest that she runs through was as big as this room. If you can imagine little trees, just unbelievable. I wouldn’t know anything about animation, but the same kind of big giant crane shots like we do on Wisteria Lane are the same thing that they do, only it comes from up here, comes down, comes down, comes down into a box like this big of the set of the living room with Coraline like crawling on the floor to the door. So they move that doll like little by little by little, and little by little, and each time that motorized crane shot comes down, apparently it’s one minute of film a week maybe they get. I mean, it’s mind-blowing, is what it is . . . and full of every kind of artists you can possibly imagine. I mean, I’m so proud to be a part of this movie. When I saw it the first time, I just can’t — it almost leaves you speechless. It’s really an art piece, at least I think so.
 
MoviesOnline: WHAT WAS THE MOST FUN ABOUT PLAYING A VILLAIN? WHAT DOES EMERSON THINK ABOUT HER MOM PLAYING THE BAD GUY?

TERI HATCHER: We had a screening. They needed me to see the movie, obviously the first time I saw it was before I started doing press. It was either me sitting in a theatre with a 150 empty seats or me invite some of Emerson’s friends and their parents. So we ended up doing that, and I’m very much known sort of like Camp Hatcher. Like they come to my house and build forts and bake cookies and paint paintings and, you know, the sky’s the limit in imagination. And sort of right after the movie was over, one of the kids went, “Well, no more sleepovers at Hatcher’s house.” You know, they were kidding, of course, but it was very well timed. That kid has a future in comedy.

Doing that voice in the little soundstage — in hindsight, looking at it, looking at how it combined with the visual, I didn’t really know what that was going to look like, it feels like a perfect blending. I’m really proud of it,  but it’s a vulnerable thing, that was vulnerable for me to just get to that guttural, angry, desperate, dying, rageful scream. Just blood-curdling — all that range, the last gasp, it was ugly and embarrassing. I think it’s embarrassing to scream in front of people. And so I really had to work hard to not be self-conscious, not be my own editor, and let myself go and sort of trust Henry would pick the right level of insanity, as you put it.
 
MoviesOnline: WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT BEING A MOM? 

TERI HATCHER: Everything. What I love most though? God, wow, that’s such a hard question. I’m thinking that the answer’s somewhere in the vein of just — you know, the opportunity to try to give somebody skills that maybe I didn’t get, the opportunity to leave somebody here better than, more capable than what I brought to it. So that she leaves something better for the world, the world that I get to play in carving a human being that hopefully leaves the world a better place than it was before.
 
MoviesOnline: DOES SHE TAKE AFTER YOU A LOT – DO YOU NOTICE SIMILARITIES IN PERSONALITY?

TERI HATCHER: She’s way better than me. Oh, she’s just a wonderful, wonderful child with great balance of adventure and patience and kindness, self-confident. She’s a great kid. I’m sure that I had a lot to do with it, but not everything. She’s got a good father too, and good grandparents . . .
 
MoviesOnline: IS SHE VERY DIFFERENT FROM YOU?

TERI HATCHER: No, I think she’s just a healthier version of maybe what I would be as a kid.
 
MoviesOnline: NEIL GAIMAN’S GOT SUCH A FOLLOWING, IS THERE ANY WORRY ABOUT LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS WITH CORALINE?

TERI HATCHER: Well, we’re certainly better off with him on our side than not on our side. That’s for sure. I think it’s a real compliment that he has sort of put his blessing on it, because you’re right, he does have such a huge following, and I think people do get — well, actually I met one teenage girl that saw the movie and had read the book, and she was sort of like — well, it’s different. Like possessive about the book. So it was nice that he shows such gracious respect for the journey Henry’s taken it to and that it feels very hand in hand.
I got to spend a little bit of time with both him and Henry just last weekend, and we did another press thing, and that was really the first time we sort of sat down as human beings not working and they were just both brilliant. (I’m) so lucky don’t even know where to begin.
 
MoviesOnline: IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR MOTHERHOOD THAT YOU COULD IDENTIFY IN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS AND WAS THERE ANYTHING AS A CHILD IN YOUR MOTHER THAT YOU COULD IDENTIFY IN THE CHARACTERS?

TERI HATCHER: I feel like one of the greatest accomplishments that I did in this, what I like about acting, is that sometimes yes, you draw from things that you know, from things that you feel, from things that you’ve experienced. And sometimes it’s just utter imagination, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. And I feel like that’s what the journey was for me in this film. And not only do I not feel like I really see extensions of Teri as a mom, but I don’t see extensions of Susan Mayer as a mom either. And that’s a big hurdle because that is what people are used to hearing, and I don’t think you hear that cadence at all. So I guess no, disappointingly probably to your question. I think no. And if my mother behaved like any of those people, I wouldn’t say it. Because there’s one thing she taught me was that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

“Coraline” opens in theaters on February 6th.