Sorry Tumblr,Jay Baruchelis taken. The star of theHow to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden Worldmay be an unlikely sex symbol, having started out as a geeky Canadian inJudd Apatow’sUndeclared, but he’s grown up a lot…especially in animated form. We began the films with Hiccup (voiced by Baruchel) as a gawky teen in a Viking village whose fondness for dragons make him a reluctant heir to his father, the village Chieftain, Stoick (Gerald Butler). After bonding with a crippled dragon named Toothless, Hiccup is forced to adapt to brutal realities: in the first film, he loses his leg; in the sequel, his father.
In the final chapter of this trilogy, Hiccup has a lot more to lose…but what’s got a lot of film’s fervent Internet fan-base excited is what he’s gained: namely,a beard.
We sat down with Baruchel to talk to him about the fandom, and his desire to work more behind the scenes.
Collider: The film is so gorgeous, but from what I can gather, fans are most excited to see how your character Hiccup has developed physically over the arc of the three films. What are your thoughts on being known as a hot animated dude?
Baruchel: I don’t know if this plays into my narcissism, but I see myself in Hiccup, so it’s hard not to be flattered. It’s weird. I don’t know. I’m just happy people are psyched to see him. The opposite would be kind of weird, right?
Collider: You’ve essentially gone through puberty in cartoon form, I don’t how I’d feel about that either.
BARUCHEL: It’s a strange thing. And again, I don’t know if I’m terribly vain, but I like to think that Hiccup looks more and more like me.
Collider: The way you interact with Toothless makes me think you had an actual puppy there in the sound booth with you. Do you have any memories of pets to draw on when you record?
BARUCHEL: Yes, definitely. My family, we always had cats my whole life, and I have a cat now. Now with my fiance, we have the dogs with the two cats as well. So there’s been plenty of opportunities for me to babytalk and embarrass myself by being all smushy with animals. That’s a very easy thing for me to channel. I wish it wasn’t.
Hidden Worldleaves viewers on a very bittersweet note. What were your first impressions on reading the script?
BARUCHEL: Just…pride. Pride that we’re still committed to doing stuff that I think might scare other films of this type. In the first film, our hero loses his leg, which for a kid movie was like…I can’t name another kid movie like that, you know? And this is just an extension of that, which I think is an incredible thing for kids to experience.
Collider: It’s a tough lesson for kids to learn…it’s about making hard decisions when you have no perfect options.
BARUCHEL: Right. Hiccup fights tooth and nail over the course of two movies to create and preserve this paradise of Vikings and dragons living side by side. And in this one, he’s been put in this almost existential, philosophical crisis. “Is this paradise we’ve been fighting for actually the best thing for all of us?” And is he too proud to see that it might not be?
Also accepting that anything important comes with difficulty; any real profound change is going to be scary. But that’s not to be avoided, that’s to be embraced, because it’s an inherent part of being a person. And again, I can’t think of a children’s film in recent memory that does that.
But no one could call these movies cynical. So for us to traffic in those ideas of self-doubt and sticking to your guns and ideals while still being as hopeful as they are…that’s what makes them so rare. The ending of this film just feels right, like it’s the correct ending; the saga couldn’t end another way. And yet who could have seen that coming? It f*cking hurts. And that’s what makes it so special.
Collider: If you were living in theHow to Train Your Dragonuniverse…human? Dragon? Which would you rather be?
BARUCHEL: I’m quite loyal to Hiccup, but it seems more fun to be a dragon.
Collider: We’re at your third animated film and by now the cast is quite large, what’s your process for acting against people when you’re all alone in the sound booth?
BARUCHEL: It’s kind of a funny thing, you’ve got to be very in tune with your imagination because you’re filling in all these blanks in your head. The literal aesthetic ofThe Hidden Worldis a recording booth. It’s just sound blankets, some carpets and a f*cking microphone.
I also think it’s Dean. He’s created these characters and fostered ownership of them so the movies have a real sense of themselves, so I know exactly who I’m talking to and how they’d react. What helps with that is having done two movies before that and six…eight?…however many seasons of the TV show we’ve done. It’s kept us warm. I’ve never gotten rusty.
