Vital Thrills recently attended a virtual roundtable discussion with the cast of Disney’s Godmothered. The film will begin streaming on Disney+ on December 4.
Joining the discussion were Jillian Bell, Isla Fisher, Jane Curtin, Jillian Spaeder, Willa Skye, Santiago Cabrera, Artemis Pebdani, and Utkarsh Ambudkar. You can check out a video of the discussion with the cast of Disney’s Godmothered below.
Set at Christmas time, Godmothered is a comedy about Eleanor, a young, inexperienced fairy godmother-in-training (Bell) who, upon hearing that her chosen profession is facing extinction, decides to show the world that people still need fairy godmothers.
Finding a mislaid letter from a 12-year-old girl in distress, Eleanor tracks her down and discovers that the girl, Mackenzie, is now a 40-year-old single mom (Fisher) working at a news station in Boston.
Having lost her husband several years earlier, Mackenzie has all but given up on the idea of “Happily Ever After,” but Eleanor is bound and determined to give Mackenzie a happiness makeover, whether she likes it or not.
Fisher spoke about the balance of physical comedy and comedic humor. “We’ve got a lot of physical comedy and a lot of sight gags and slapstick. And then we also have wordplay, and my character is more – I’m kind of the straight man in the story, which is something I haven’t really enjoyed before.”
She added: “I mean, had the opportunity to get to play. And it was just really nice…to try not to laugh when Jillian is absolutely hilarious.”
Curtain joked that this was the tallest character she’s ever played. “It was a momentous thing for me actually to tower over other people.” She said that the fairy godmother gowns helped her get into character.
Spaeder and Skye play sisters, and they said they had a sisterly bond on set. “We had lots of cuddle parties, and we played with lots of slime in our free time,” said Spaeder.
Santiago plays a newsman in the studio that Fisher’s character works in. He mentioned they did a lot of research and visited the set to get a sense of how it all works.
Utkarsh, however, didn’t really have to do research. He laughed, “I mean, I have to play like a news boss who has no idea what he’s doing. So, I didn’t have to do any research, and it worked out just fine.”
Fisher told Utkarsh how much she loved his comedy, saying: “You made me laugh so much, you’re so funny. Some of his improvs, in fact, a lot of it’s in the movie. So, you get to see his comedy right there, but he would just say, it’s just really funny. He had a buzzer that he would just hit and then do an improv line, and we’re in stitches.”
Pebdani plays a camerawoman, and she said she was trained. “A couple of people came to set and taught me how to hold it and look tough and really what you would do, how close your eyeball would actually get, that sort of thing.” She continued, “…for the most part, we were out and about in the field and playing with and avoiding snow and all those good things.”
Bell also spoke about that pink ball gown she wore throughout the entire film. “I didn”t really have a costume change, besides, I’m in pjs at one point, but for the most part I am in a corset and a ball gown the entire time we shot. And I will say that I actually really liked it.
“Like Jane said, it really helps like get into character, stay in character, helps the posture. But there was one day where we shot, we were on a field. And it was very cold. It was 17 degrees. And I was just in the dress.
“And I was shaking uncontrollably. But like, besides that, I feel like we – I don’t know, made it work, loved it… I wish I could’ve kept one because I like to keep one costume for everything I do, but this was a pretty massive costume to ask for.”
Directed by Sharon Maguire, the film is produced by Justin Springer (Dumbo, TRON: Legacy), with Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), Tom Pollock (the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife), Amie Karp (the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and Diane L. Sabatini (Lady and the Tramp) serving as executive producers.
Jenna Busch has written and spoken about movies, TV, video games, and comics all over the Internet for over 15 years, co-hosted a series with Stan Lee, appeared on multiple episodes of “Tabletop,” written comic books, and is a contributing author for the 13 books in the “PsychGeeks” series including “Star Wars Psychology.” She founded the site Legion of Leia and hosted the “Legion” podcast.