Matt Berry: ‘I think aliens might just see us as cattle’

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/26/matt-berry-spongebob-movie-alien-dolphin-it-crowd

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Hey Matt. In the new Spongebob movie, you’re voicing an alien dolphin (1). Is this the strangest character you’ve ever voiced?

I’ve voiced inanimate objects and I’ve voiced jelly sweets (2) before, so I don’t know. When you do adverts, you voice all types of nonsense. I think it’s probably one of the most interesting. In terms of animation, I’d say that it’s the most far out.

This is probably the biggest movie you’ve ever done, at least in terms of such a wide audience, given how much of a big hit it has been in the US (3).

I don’t have a clue. I’ve done stuff in other films. I don’t know if it’s big. I’m not doing stuff for that kind of reason.

Related: The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water first look review – superhero slugfest drags a good sequel down

In the film, you have a rap battle with some seagulls. Have you ever had an actual rap battle (4)?

No. Quick and simple answer. I don’t think most people have.

Make something up.

I can’t make something up. No is the quick answer.

Let’s move on then. People are always claiming to have had spiritual experiences or deep connections with dolphins. Have you ever met a dolphin?

I’ve never even seen one. No. Not even from a distance.

They’re not that great really. If aliens were to commandeer an animal to control, what would be the best choice?

Well, it’s an interesting question, but I don’t think they would. I think there’s a chance that aliens might just see us as beef cattle, so that’s us done. Whether they would inhabit us in that way is pretty fanciful because they’d probably just get from us what they could, and then I just see us as fast food. In which case, there’s no time to be thinking about anything else.

So we’d all be screwed?

Possibly, yeah.

In the film, the recipe for the krabby patty gets stolen. Have you ever stolen something as impressive as that?

Well, I’m not going to tell you. Not consciously, but I’m not going to incriminate myself. I might have done.

A colleague of mine has a crush on you and once saw you in M&S, but was too shy to talk to you. Do you have this effect on women frequently?

Well, it’s a very high-class problem. What can I say? It’s very, very, very, very flattering.

Before you started doing jobs that you loved, were there any that made you miserable?

I temped before doing this. Before doing Darkplace in 2003, I was temping and at call centres and that was pretty bad. Then I was at the London Dungeon, which I loved doing, and then from that I was on Channel 4 doing Darkplace.

You must have had some awful people giving you hell at the call centre. How did you deal with that?

You deal with it in all sorts of ways. If you take these things personally, then you get upset. But they didn’t know who I was and I didn’t care, and they don’t really care either because it was all fairly surface-level stuff. If they started to get funny, I would just take the plug out and keep putting it back in so I couldn’t hear half of what they said.

Have you ever made a prank call before?

When I was younger, yeah, but not since I’ve known what I was doing.

What was your trademark prank?

It was making up pizza names. That was the last thing I used to find funny. In my 20s, I’d phone up the pizza place and say: “I’d like a Pepperoni Passion,” and, you know, totally nonsense names. I’m making myself laugh with this so I guess there’s something left. It was just to waste people’s time, but I wouldn’t be doing it know, I don’t think.

You’re fairly active on Twitter. What’s your least favourite kind of tweet? What makes you unfollow?

I wouldn’t unfollow because I would only follow people who I’m sure of. But things like, when a total stranger says: “I want you to record something for my forthcoming wedding,” that can be a bit tiresome. But it’s a high-class problem. It doesn’t hurt my feelings.

In the future, could you ever see some sort of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace movie or TV follow-up happening (5)?

I haven’t got a clue. I didn’t write it. It was written by Matt Holness and Richard Ayoade, so if anything were to be done, it would be done by them.

Would it be something you might like to get back to?

Well, I like new things, as I would imagine they do too. You don’t want to make the same album again. It’s always more interesting to do new things. I’m not saying that I never would, but I think most people’s heads are looking to the future, rather than looking backwards, in terms of TV projects.

Footnotes

1) He’s called Bubbles and he protects the galaxy.

2) He once voiced a jelly snake trying to impress a dinosaur sergeant, also made of jelly.

3) The film has made over $280m worldwide so far.

4) Highlight: “You’re an inferior species, what could you know about taste? You get excited by a pile of trash on a plate.”

5) In 2006, there was in fact a spin-off called Man to Man with Dean Learner.