1 of 4 | A ewe voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Hugh Jackman star in “The Sheep Detectives,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
Emmy-winning Veep and Seinfeld comic actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus seems to have taken her voice role as the unlikely sleuth Lily in The Sheep Detectives very seriously.
“I got to play a sheep and I’ve never played a sheep and I’ve always wanted to BE a sheep, so I’m sure everybody can relate to that, and I liked playing her because she adores her shepherd. She is an intellectual sheep,” Louis-Dreyfus said at a recent virtual press conference with her co-stars.
“She uses her education, given to her by her shepherd, to solve the crime in the film and I think she comes to certain realities based on her exploration of the crime and consideration of the people around her and she has a real arc,” Louis-Dreyfus added. “Her character really grows throughout the film in a way that’s very meaningful.”
Featuring Hugh Jackman, Nicholas Braun, Nicholas Galitzine, Molly Gordon, Hong Chau, Emma Thompson, Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey and Rhys Darby, the screen adaptation of Leonie Swann’s best-selling novel, Three Bags Full, opens in theaters on Friday.
With a blend of live-action and animation, the British family film follows a group of resourceful sheep who try to find out who murdered George (Jackman), the kindly shepherd who took care of them and read them detective yarns before bedtime.
“He doesn’t like to communicate with humans,” Jackman said.
“Basically, he loves being with the sheep and his life is dedicated to them and he understands them a lot better than he understands humans. That’s probably the key,” the X-Men and The Greatest Showman actor noted.
Succession actor Nicholas Braun plays Tim, the local constable tasked with solving this rare homicide in his small town.
“Without the sheep, he wouldn’t have been able to solve it. There probably wouldn’t have been a movie, as well,” Braun quipped. “But I loved playing him.”
“You were the helper to the sheep,” Louis-Dreyfus teased.
“His dad, his grandpa were cops in this town,” Braun said.
“He is the only constable in town [now] and has a big duty, but, also, no one gives him any credit for doing all the little things he does around town,” he added. “He comes around and he finds himself and finds his confidence by the end of the film.”
One of the sheep assisting Lily and Tim is Bridesmaids and The IT Crowd star Chris O’Dowd’s Mopple, who has perfect sense memory.
“He remembers situations that have happened previously, just through something that he’s eaten. He never found a carrot he didn’t want to chomp and he can remember when he ate it, what bird was flying in the sky at the time he ate and that is his gift, but also his curse,” O’Dowd noted.
“Because it means he remembers all of the bad things, all of the cruel things that have happened,” he added. “We, obviously, have the smartest sheep here [in Lily], but I kind of help maybe put some of the pieces together in the search to solve of our crime.”
The Bear alum Molly Gordon plays Rebecca, George’s estranged daughter.
“I don’t want to give much away, but who I was going to be interacting with was very exciting to me, and I’ve always wanted to work in England and I love a crime story and then I also just love movies,” Gordon said.
“I thought the script was so beautiful and is about learning about how much life is a gift and it was a movie like of the ones I saw growing up and I haven’t seen a movie like this in a long time, so I just felt lucky to be a part of it and I would have played anything, but Rebecca’s really cool.”
