Gerard Butler discussed playing Santa in the new animated musical The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland, which is out now on Hulu and Prime Video. The actor told ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese about finding his Santa voice, singing in character, and the challenge of musicals.
“St Nick (Gerard Butler) receives a delayed letter on Christmas Eve from the Princess of Hearts. He and his dedicated team of reindeer set off to Wonderland where they’re greeted by the mean and miserable Queen of Hearts (Emilia Clarke) who hates all things Christmas… especially presents! Can St Nick, aided by Alice (Simone Ashley), the Mad Hatter and March Hare, show the Queen the true meaning of Christmas and save the day before it’s too late? The animated film features original music and songs written by long-time Robbie Williams collaborator Guy Chambers and Grammy Award winning songwriter Amy Wadge,” says the synopsis for the Gerard Butler movie.
Tyler Treese: I wanted to hear about you finding your Santa voice because I feel like we all have our general Santa voice, but you get a good warmth and jolliness in there. How is it finding that balance? Was it easy?
Gerard Butler: Yeah, I feel like I stepped right into that from the second I started reading the script. I found myself reading it out loud and kind of like, okay, this feels right. I think that the trickiness wasn’t finding that voice but then finding the colors around that voice. You can have your general Santa voice, but it can get easy to get stuck in a certain way. So, within that voice, how high can you take it? How low can you take it? Where can you kind of break the rules with it?
That was fun ’cause I went in the room with [director] Peter [Baynton] and we just played. It was like playing in the sandbox. It was fun and it was a space for complete creativity and silliness, so you felt that you could try anything. I would do stuff that I’m like, “This is probably ridiculous and stupid, but let me just try it.” Or they would throw out ideas, and when you’re in that space, you can’t beat it ’cause you find magic that might not have been there. I was a little bit scared, actually, how quickly I found my old Santa voice. It was just kind of there.
I’m always just blown away by actors when they’re playing a character and then singing as that character. Is that tough for you, or can you kind of not focus on being like a picture-perfect singer because you are Santa and Santa’s not really known for his singing voice. How is that?
Yeah, that’s a very good question, actually, because it is the temptation maybe to sing the hell out of it and give your best singing voice, but then you’re breaking character. We did go through all of that. There was a couple that I that I actually really liked how I sang it, and they were like, “Sounds amazing.” But I thought, “Yeah, but is it Santa? Are we trying too hard to sound good, and we’re losing the character?” So it was finding that balance with perhaps what was just too Santa and losing the musicality and some of the beauty of it, and not getting too caught up in a kind of a great singing voice, you know? But keeping those, I’ve been able to break the rules and let it falter or screech a bit and stay like this guy who’s kind of bombastic and definitely not a rock singer, that’s for sure.
The film has a really cool conceit mixing Alice in Wonderland and this Christmas story, and Santa fits right in line with his magical elements. What did you like about that mesh of these two different fables together?
I think it’s such a cool idea. You know, I think we all still have the child inside ourselves. Whether we believe in Santa or not, we still have the memory of these things that formed part of our culture growing up and having our imaginations in Alice and Wonderland in the world of Santa and the reindeer. So then to see it be recreated in a way that’s actually quite believable in the way you would’ve imagined, but then you put them together that just lets your imagination run, right? Where could you go with that? That Santa not just goes in there, but the fact that the reindeer already have heard about Alice in Wonderland. So they’re like, “Wait, but you don’t go over there. They’re crazy there. They chop your heads off,” and then suddenly you’re there.
Santa’s actually having a moment with Alice, and they’re hanging out with a Mad Hatter. The whole idea of that is fantastic and there’s a lot of curiosity around that. It really lives up to its expectations in the film. When they’re drinking strange concoctions at tables and suddenly Santa and they’re all off on some kind of trip, which is really kind of fun to have this going on in a Christmas movie, hence why it works for adults, teens, and younger kids too. It just depends on whatever level you want to go with it. But I love the mish-mashing and the convergence of these two stories. I think there’s the scope for more Santa trips elsewhere.
It’s so interesting how you reprised your role for How to Train Your Dragon in live-action, which is such a unique thing, but would you ever want to play Santa in a live-action role?
I don’t know. I don’t say no to anything, really. ‘Cause you know, I wouldn’t have thought that I would’ve played an animated Santa, but I didn’t expect to come across the likes of Peter Baynton in this crazy script, being a musical. So maybe if they came to me and it was a different take on Santa, then yeah, maybe I would. It’s true.
I mean, I didn’t think when I was doing the voice of Stoick for How to Train Your Dragon that I would actually be having a dress up and play Stoick both physically with the voice and pick up a sword and a shield and fight dragons. Yeah, I’m actually thinking about that. That is a little nuts.
You starred in Phantom of the Opera, but you don’t have that traditional singing background. What do you like most about the challenge of doing these musical roles?
The fact is, I haven’t had a hell of a lot of training in singing, but I love to sing. I think that if you can bring music into a film or stage, it gives it a whole other character, a whole other dimension that you can take it to. If it works. If it doesn’t work, it’s terrible, but if it works, that’s there. For me, as a performer being able to sing in a film, they often happen at great moments, like when I sang in How to Train Your Dragon, when my wife shows up and we sing that old [song], you know, the Irish. Oh my God, that’s such a powerful moment of the singing, and in the Phantom, all of that emotional resonant. It’s great to be able to sing that and feel that.
Thanks to Gerard Butler for taking the time to talk about The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland.
