Megillas Lester - Behind the Scenes: The Actors

We didn't necessarily seek out from people or even Jewish people necessarily for this project. We were looking for the most talented and people who are best cast for these roles. But as it turns out, the Jewish community has a lot of uh very very talented actors in it. So we were able to find just about everybody in this project is totally Jewish. Can somebody tell me where I am? I know. I know. He said that Bashi should be hung 50 almost in the air on the same gallows built for Morai. I'm playing Sish, who's one of the two garbage men and uh attempted assassins or Sish mellows, you know, like marshmallows but only with Sish in the beginning. I like Big Sashion. Also, Carvona who is a sort of servant to the king and has his own agenda. Maybe if we hang up the horse 50 almost and then try the Heimlick. Well, casting Lester was a real trick. So, um we did a casting call and uh one of our actors that we had a lot of experience with when back in the days when we were working on Mushel Man years ago was Michael Bahavsky. It's good trivia for those of you out there who um can try to figure out which characters Michael played using. Do you want to join the easy life? A life that's truly phrased. Candy over there. Candy on the stair. Kenny in the chair. Kenny in the air. I play Lester. It was a challenge cuz I had to, you know, I had to change my voice for the whole thing, which was a little bit a little bit tough and he's very anxious. So, I got anxious. But, um, that's what acting is. I was in character. I just figured Big Son, you know, could basically be rendered off me. Um, I'm an Italian bodybuilder and uh, it was just a natural natural. I wasn't even acting to be honest. Don't get too overconfident, Sesh. I mean, it took me two months to work out every detail of the plan. I affectionately call my plan to kill a vero. Big son actually turns into an integral character of this story, which he really isn't a huge character. He's basically this guy who's trying to kill the king and gets nailed for it. Um, but in this story, he just keeps on trying and keeps on trying to be, I guess, somebody bigger than he actually is. I mean, at the end of the day, in the beginning, he's he's a garbage man and he's just, you know, this lowly guard who's, you know, wants some respect and thinks of himself as so much more than he actually is. And then, well, you'll have to watch the movie. Now, I I found it interesting, you know, getting into the heritage of uh of what the Porm story is all about and getting back to, you know, we have modern day Jews who are from what essentially is Persia. Uh and and really tying them back into the Porm story I found really cool. I can't believe I ate the whole pizza. Somebody get in here. I had a very hard time finding someone in the acting community who not only was able to do the Persian accent well, but was able to do it with the whole from spin on it. What can I say? It's like there's a uniqueness to the Iranian accent that we've come familiar with. Certainly here in Baltimore where we produced it where there's a very substantial Iranian community. Um, you know, I grew up in Baltimore. My wife grew up in LA. So, we we always interacted with the Persian community. It was always like a novelty for us to to hear it. Um, both on the Baltimore side and on the LA side. We've heard and felt the uh the Persian culture quite a bit um over our lives. So, we we've been able to impart it. We had hundreds and hundreds of of of um auditions that people sent us to do the Human Voice and they were all over the map. We had this we had these like uh Middle Eastern sounding hummons that were genuinely scary sounding and truthfully too scary. We needed this to be a this is a comedy after all. and we met the incredibly talented Adam Levventhal who was able to put on this great voice. I don't know why there's a little touch of English accent in Hmon, but who cares? It's just it's just so much fun to listen to him. I play Hum. You know, I knew he was evil. Uh I didn't uh I didn't know he was a barber. Uh among other things, you don't know if he was like half British, half, you know, whatever his accent is. of um it's been a lot of fun. I like it. Serious prou misa why not move beyond just one man. So it's been a really nice cast. It's a lot of creative people and it's been a very collaborative process. People putting in their own ideas and being creative about how we can sort of solve problems and work together. So it's been a very good experience. It's been fun. It's creatively wonderful. You have this group of incredibly talented people. Um, but it's also just so much fun because we laugh a lot. 20 laps. Okay, great. That went random. I don't remember what I said. Try as close as you can. This is my first animated anything. Well, it's nice cuz you can have the script in front of you, but you know, there's a freedom. My body can look however it looks. It just matters what the voice is. No, I'm not a barber. What is it with this place? Just get me my drink. I I would say the lessons that I learned strongest in my life um definitely growing up were from children's tapes. Now that technology has moved in a way that we can do things on screen. Um there's a tremendous lack in the religious community in that there's all these very very rich and wholesome uh images that we could put to those stories. where we're trying to take a classic story and make it really fun and accessible. And so hopefully I think like our show, the idea is that hopefully kids will enjoy this story and we'll go back to the text and enjoy that relationship, see what's changed, what's the same, which characters they love, what sticks out to them. Um, it's really fun and I think the fun part, one of the great things about being Jewish is we have these great texts that we can always come back to. And so I think it's fun to expose kids to those stories in a new way, in a creative way. You know, I grew up in Jewish day school and I do a lot of musical theater work especially. Um, and I really always enjoy the chance to connect back to my roots and get to do Jewish themed projects. I was in two different Mushel Man films. Um, I was in a five-ish video. Um, most of these you would probably never recognize me in because every time they promised me I'm not going to be a clown and every single time I'm basically a clown or an Italian like gangster character, which is fun. Why you say to me or Shushine? This is not Shushan Sushi Shine. I am Shushan Sushi Chef. Dude, you're making up your own words. You know what I'm hoping is that this production will actually raise the production level on all the Jewish productions. I don't think that there's any reason why Jewish from content can't be made in an incredibly professional way. [Music]