In Universal Pictures’ The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Nintendo’s most iconic franchise is brought to screen on a huge scale. Beloved characters and landscapes are ready to be explored, and Chris Pratt’s Mario can’t do it alone.

In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario and Luigi (Charlie Day) are unexpectedly sucked into a mysterious world. During the transportation process, the brothers are separated with Luigi landing in Bowser’s (Jack Black) territory and Mario finding himself in the Mushroom Kingdom. With the help of Keegan-Michael Key’s Toad and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Mario sets out to rescue his brother and save this new world from a Bowser takeover.
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With the movie hitting theaters on April 5th, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff had the opportunity to chat with Key about the role and how he managed to sneak in some extra screen time. During their discussion, Key opened up about his real-life Luigi, the person who inspires him to pursue his wildest dreams. He also pinpointed the most challenging aspect of finding Toad’s unique voice and how the character changed from the original pitch courtesy of Key’s improvisation. Check it all out in the video interview at the top of this article or in transcript form below.

Image via Universal Pictures

PERRI NEMIROFF: One of my absolute favorite parts of this movie is how Luigi is always there to support Mario’s goals and ambitions, even when no one else will. Who is your Luigi in this wild industry? When you have a big idea or a dream, who do you know will always be there to back it up?

KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY: That’s a great question. I love that question. That’s a good one, Perri. You’re right. It is hands down, 100% my wife. She is my creative partner, my producing partner, my life partner, she’s everything. No matter what I think, whatever dream I have, if it’s crazy, or I think it’s crazy, she’s always there to tell me that it’s not. She’s always there to tell me, “It’s simply your dream,” and she’s the one that is always there to tell me, “Listen, whatever story that you’ve made up as to why you can’t do something, why not think about why you can do it,” is always what she says to me. It’s been helpful in my career, and it’s changed my life.

My heart right now!

One thing I was reading a lot about in the production notes is how you get a lot of opportunities to reach for the stars when it comes to doing a voice performance. What would you say was your greatest reach or the biggest swing when voicing Toad that we can see in the finished film?

KEY: The biggest swing is, was I going to be able to get the voice as high as the director wanted it? Because as I started doing the voice, I had based the rhythms of the voice on a friend of mine, and he liked that fine, and then he was just like, “But can you get the voice higher and higher and higher?” And every time he’d say, “Can you get it higher?” I’d be like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Here we go!” And he goes, “Can you get it higher than that?” “Uh, yeah, I think I can.” “Can you get it higher than that?” “Um, yeah, okay, let’s try it a bit …” and then maintaining that.

And I’m going, first of all, am I gonna be able to maintain it? Second of all, is this really gonna work? Because you know how you hear yourself different in your head than everybody else hears how you sound? And so you’re just trusting that it’s gonna be okay. And it worked out. It worked out.

Image via Universal Pictures

I was also reading about how you did a lot of improvising on this movie. When it comes to making an animated feature there’s so much development, there are a lot of moving parts, departments, and different artists, so to give us a sense of how much improvisation you can really do, what would you say is the biggest difference between the version of Toad you were first presented with and how the character turned out in the finished feature?

KEY: The biggest difference would be, I think that he’s actually more of a go-getter in the final version. I got to be a little more contemplative when we were running it because there was lots of stuff where I would improvise — I would make Toad a very kind of, for lack of a better word, loquacious person. He would talk and talk and talk and talk, which is just me trying to get more screen time. [Laughs]

And so I would improvise and improvise and improvise, but then eventually we get to a point where that all gets cut down to just the essentials, and you find he’s really a person of action, and that was something that was great. But I did get to improvise quite a bit, which was fun. The thing is that it’s a little easier now with all the technology we have because you can improvise something and they can go back and re-animate something or additionally animate something to match what you’ve improvised.

Image via Universal Pictures

There are true magicians back there. I’m so impressed!

KEY: They really are! They’re amazing!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in theaters now. Before snagging tickets, check out Perri’s interview with Seth Rogen below.