Sterling K. Brown is ready to flex his comedic muscles for obvious reasons: “Everybody tells me I make them cry all the time, so I’m trying to balance that out,” the This Is Us star tells EW of Garry, the coffee-guzzling piggy tech genius he voices in the Angry Birds Movie sequel. Plus the fact that this is the first thing he’s done that his kids can “unabashedly” go see.
“To go to a movie that daddy is in that they’re excited to see where no human beings die,” Brown mentions. “They were excited to go see Black Panther but this is a little bit lighter fare.”
He survives quite a bit longer in Angry Birds than in Black Panther.
In The Angry Birds Movie 2, the birds (including Jason Sudeikis’ Red, Bill Hader’s Leonard, Josh Gad’s Chuck, and Danny McBride’s Bomb) team up with the pigs to take on a common enemy: the purple-feathered Zeta, voiced by Leslie Jones. Garry, as shown in EW’s exclusive photo, is the tech genius of Pig Island. He has the cardigans, coffee cups, and the mustache-goatee combo to prove it.
Columbia Pictures/Rovio Animations
“Garry is really awkward, really nerdy, to the point of arrogance and there is something incredibly humorous about that level of arrogance embodied in a pig,” Brown describes of his voice role in the animated sequel. “If there was a Q from the James Bond world, Garry would occupy that space, with the exception that half of his contraptions are kinda crappy. He’s doing the best he can with what he’s got.”
But, the actor promises the character has “got quite a few tricks up his sleeve.”
“He is the kind of person that you meet when you’re a kid and he’s got some sort of contraption in his yard,” he says, “‘What the blank is that?!’ And he’s like, ‘You’ll see someday.’” Noting Garry’s Starbucks-style coffee cups, Brown adds, “There may be some dabbling into the coffee arena, and there are dabbling in other areas, as well.”
Garry is just one of a flock of new characters coming to The Angry Birds Movie 2, including Rachel Bloom’s Silver, Chuck’s speedster sister. Being that she’s also a science whiz, Bloom says, “yes,” we can presume there are fun scenes to be had with Garry.
Dove Cameron voices as actual dove named Ella, while Awkwafina voices pig Courtney, Zach Woods and Pete Davidson voice eagles Carl and Jerry, and The Florida Project’s Brooklynn Prince voices hatchling Zoe.
“The fact that they have to work together against a common enemy is thematic of a message that we would like to put out into the world,” Brown says. “Meaning, those folks that you don’t think you should be in an alliance with one another, actually could make for the best partnerships. So, on a macro level, if the parents are taking the kids and they’re bearing witness to this little theme, hopefully, it can be the catalyst to saying, ‘Hey, maybe I should be looking for alliances where I have thought before.’”
The Angry Birds Movie 2 will now open in theaters on Wednesday, Aug 14, a couple of days earlier than its previous release date on Aug. 16.
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Cast
Jason Sudeikis,
Josh Gad,
Danny McBride