With Sing 2 now playing in theaters nationwide, I got the chance to catch up with Tori Kelly and Scarlett Johansson to discuss their individual journeys in the animated feature realm.

In the new movie, Kelly’s Meena is performing in Buster Moon’s (Matthew McConaughey) very successful local production at the New Moon Theater. But, Buster has his sights set on something bigger at the Crystal Tower Theater in the glamorous Redshore City. Yes, Meena did manage to conquer her stage fright in the first film, but when she’s tasked with singing a romantic song in this new show, those nerves creep right back in. Meanwhile, Ash winds up with a task that could make or break the entire production. Buster promises the very demanding and intense mogul Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale) that he’ll get the legendary Clay Calloway (Bono) to be in their show, and Ash comes to realize she might be the only one who can encourage Clay to get back to performing after keeping to himself for over a decade.

Sing 2 Cast
Image via Universal

During our chat, Johansson took a moment to revisit her experience delivering voice performances for directors like Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, digging into the shared traits she really appreciated:

“Working for Wes and Spike, both of those directors, one thing they share is they’re both very, very specific. They hear it in their head and they think they know when it sounds right to them. There’s a musicality to their dialogue. And I love the figuring out of the puzzle of what that is and helping them, even if they can hear it, helping them sort of put that to the test. The creative process is very exciting when a director has a vision for something or has a musical mind in that way.”

Scarlett Johansson in Sing 2
Image via Universal

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Johansson went on to highlight a similar quality in her Sing and Sing 2 director, Garth Jennings:

“He also similarly knows when the pitch is right of a performance I think. He knows when he’s got it and he listens for the little nuances of vocal performance and calls them out and appreciates them and pushes them and stuff like that. He’s brilliant.”

As for Kelly, she’s gone on quite the journey with the Sing series given the fact that the first installment marked her very first experience making a movie:

“I stepped into the first film as a complete noob. I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, but thank you for hiring me for this. This is incredible.’ It was very much a dream role because as a singer, I get to sing in the movie, I get to dip my feet into acting more. Starting there and then now doing the second movie, I guess I had more context for how this all works. Because it was literally my first time doing a movie! So it was cool to just be at the premiere and then see how it all turned out, meet the cast. The whole experience was great and then stepping into the second one, it was just a little bit more confidence of like, ‘Okay, now I kind of get how this whole thing works.’”

Tori Kelly and Eric Andre in Sing 2
Image via Universal

Another benefit of learning the animated filmmaking ropes via Sing? She was doing it alongside Jennings who was making his very first animated feature.

“I think having a director like him and it being my first movie, and I think for him his first animated movie as well, and so I feel like we kind of shared that and it was like two kids just trying to figure it out and bounce off of each other.”

If you’d like to hear more from Johansson and Kelly, including what’s driving Johansson to continue working with Marvel but in a producorial capacity, be sure to check out our full conversation in the video interview at the top of this article!