Writer/director George Miller revisits the world of singing and dancing penguins he created with the 2006 blockbuster animated film with Happy Feet Two, a family-friendly tale featuring many of the original characters. Elijah Wood and Robin Williams return as members of the voice cast, joined this time around by Hank Azaria as an inspirational penguin named The Mighty Sven (he can fly and everyone in the penguin world adores him) and Common, tackling his first voice role as a proud penguin dad named Seymour.

George Miller, Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, and Common Happy Feet Two Press Conference

George, can you talk about working with choreographer Savion Glover and the challenges of choreographing so many sizes and shapes of wildlife?

George Miller: "Well, the first thing to know is that I can't sing and I can't dance, so in a way I had no right to be there. But we had very, very good choreographers and people who really understand music - everyone from the composer John Powell to the three choreographers in this case: Wade Robson, who did the earlier material, Dein Perry, you might know him from Tap Dogs who did all the tapping later on, and Kate Wormald, who's also one of the motion capture performers who played Gloria and Erik and several others. In the center of that was Savion who came down for a week. Basically the first thing I had to understand about him was that he's a percussionist. He's a classic hoofer and they basically are brilliant, brilliant percussionists who use their body for the percussion.

For me, I look at it and get dazzled. I'm told by the musicians and so on that he's working with such complex rhythms, it's almost mind-boggling."

"With a movie like this you get a lot of wonderful material that you end up not able to use because you've got 90 minutes, essentially to tell the story. But we would watch him dance for hours. He's one of those people who just, I can tell you right now if he's awake, whatever he's doing his feet are tapping. He's just tapping right now. To watch that sort of virtuosity was fantastic. The great privilege for me for doing this stuff is you've got people like this who, whatever the universe conspired to make them, they have unique abilities that lets them shine out. And to see that and to sort of have a say in what they would contribute is just very exciting to me. It makes me feel a sense of wonder about being a human being, and Savion is the dance equivalent of that."

Can you compare this experience with your other experiences of doing animated films?

Hank Azaria: "This was the most soulful animation experience I ever had. We all recorded together; we all went to Australia to record together. Not only did that free us up to improvise and bounce off each other a lot, but it became a very rather intense character exploration. It was one of the most gratifying creative experiences I’ve ever had, in any medium. I really, really enjoyed it."

Robin Williams: "The bottom line for me is the same thing. We get to work together in the same room, and I forgot that when I did other animations, I was alone most of the time. And in Aladdin, it didn’t matter because I was creating 40 different voices. But with this, it's so great to have everybody in the room together. You build a rhythm. The wonderful thing about all of it is [George] is over-watching it. I would see him in the booth and I would go, 'Is he okay?' 'He's listening.' And then if all of a sudden his eyes opened up, I went, 'It worked!'"

"You give your best because he kind of lets you riff, and you trust that he'll pick the best stuff - which he does. So that's why coming back to do it again wasn't like, 'Oh, should we?' It's all of us and Hank being in this, and now you have krill, which is even better. That for me made it a worthwhile experience."

Elijah Wood: "I completely agree. I think also going to Australia this time around made the experience more immersive. We weren’t in Los Angeles, going home at night to our own homes. We were all staying in the same hotel and it was more of a collective, immersive experience. I loved that about it. But I completely concur with what they have to say."

Robin Williams: "Once you get over the language barrier, it works really well."

Common: "This was my first film where I got to do voice-over work for an animated film so it was an incredible experience. I'd been so looking forward to working with George Miller because I just love his creativity. And like what Robin and Hank was saying about being able to improv and be creative, in that creative space, it definitely provided me with one of the best creative experiences that I have ever been in. It was a great way for me to start my voice-over, animated acting career. I had a great time. Plus, I got to bring the musical element to it. George wanted my character, Seymour, to be soulful and have a certain essence. I was like, 'Man, this really has heart to it. This has meaning to it.' So it was really great for me to get into it and use my imagination the way we are able to when you’re doing this type of work. It was very new for me, and refreshing."

And Robin, it was nice working with Sofia Vergara? [she voices a pretty penguin named Carmen]

Robin Williams: "Yeah, that doesn’t suck. When she walks in the room it's like literally, 'Que paso?' Hi! Hi everybody.' It was like, 'Yeah!'"

Hank Azaria: "She's the only one that when she was recording, George actually kept his eyes open."

Elijah Wood: "I was lucky enough to overlap one day with her. It was a joy."

Robin Williams: "It was actually 3D in the room." [laughing]

Robin, it's such a sweet love story. Can you talk about that? Do you think that love is the most important thing there is?

Robin Williams: "It’s pretty close to it. It’s cheaper than Prozac. [Ramon] is a hopeless romantic in that way. I learned a new word yesterday in Spanish. This one guy said he's a machito. He’s this little guy who wants love in the worst way, which is usually in person. He even takes rejection as acceptance. Like, 'Fat chance!' He's like, 'I’ve got a chance and it's fat!' He’s more than smitten, he’s bitten, and it’s off and running. With this, at least he does get the girl in a way. He takes a leap of faith, literally. His love story is quite lovely because most of the time he doesn’t get the girl, and with this it's great."

How did you go about developing the voice you wanted to use for your character?

Hank Azaria: "I worked with a vocal coach. When it's an accent that I'm trying to do...Scandinavian was a new one on me for this one. We worked to make it really meticulous and get an authentic Scandinavian accent. And then we realized that it was funnier, in many places, to have sort of a bad Scandinavian accent. So, it kind of went in and out for me. That was on purpose - all the mistakes I made accent-wise were designed just to make you laugh."

Robin Williams: "For Ramon, George said on the first day, 'Make him an Argentinian football fan.' Recently, I had a Hispanic woman come up to me and say, 'You know, your accent is very Cuban.' But I wanted to make this guy very much like this small, but fierce, much like myself. And then with Lovelace, I kind of combined a little bit of Foghorn Leghorn and Barry White. Plus, when I grew up in Detroit, it was all these Baptist ministers you'd hear on the radio or even sometimes on TV. 'I want to feel it now!!!' There was always that guy, and I gave him that kind of power. It was easy to separate those two [characters]."

Elijah Wood: "I just had my own voice, really. This time around I think the register was a little bit lower because he’s older. That was the only major difference."

Common: "I wanted to bring a new voice, but I think most of the time George probably wanted me to stay with mine. For some reason, when I hear it now, it doesn’t sound like me totally, so I’m happy about that. I love just being the character."

Mumble has to compete with the popular, heroic, flying penguin, Sven, for his son's attention. Have you ever had to compete with a charismatic person in your child’s life?

Robin Williams: "I once was reading a story to my daughter, Zelda, when she was three. I was reading the story in different voices and, all of a sudden she went, 'Don’t do the voices. Just read the story.' I was like, 'Oh, okay, great. Thank you, missy.'"

"They've had teachers. It isn’t threatening, it's just if they’re inspired by someone it's kind of wonderful. I was lucky enough to have teachers or coaches that inspired me. They just take you to the next level. But it’s not threatening. It’s just kind of a joy to know that there are other people in their lives that are giving them the spark."

Common: "I have a daughter who’s 14 years old. Being that I’m a musical artist too, she definitely loves what I do, but she always brings up other artists, like they're getting a little better than me now. That definitely lessens the presents that she gets now. [Laughing] But, overall, she’s just trying to keep me sharp and keep me on point, so I’m cool with it."

Robin and Hank, you both have considerable experience doing animation work in a booth by yourself. What was it like to work with the cast together on this?

Hank Azaria: "In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, for the most part. On The Simpsons, for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I’m doing; I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times when I record with a group, I’ll stay after class for another hour or two and go, 'Let me try a bunch of things I was thinking of as you were doing that.' So, I wasn’t reluctant. I’ve also done a lot of recording together, and that can be more fun."

"I had no idea how the community of us being together really did make a tremendous difference. Not only was it fun, and a very warm, fantastic experience, but it became like a sort of rehearsal as we were doing it. We were exploring the characters together, as we were doing it. I was really just trying to find my character because these guys had done it before, but their characters had changed and evolved as well. Really, I’ve done theater experiences that have been less united and less of a gratifying experience. That's George. The environment he sets there was extraordinary. A lot of the work was very emotional. It wasn’t just funny. Both for the improvising and for the emotional stuff, it was a tremendously supportive, creative environment. I’ve never experienced it before in any other situation, honestly."

"Also, we did so many takes; we explored so much. There were two people there, just in charge of keeping track of what was going on in each take, so they could somehow find it again later. Especially with Robin, you need to keep track of what’s going on. It was fantastic, though. It really was extraordinary."

Robin Williams: "You do end up moving because you do get excited in working together that you’d sweat through stuff. At the end of the day, I’d go, 'I’m just doing a voice, but I’ve sweated through a shirt.' But, because of the activity and you move off each other and you build a rhythm - and also because I'm working with amigos and I'll give them a shout-out right now: Carlos Alazraqui, Lombardo Boyar, Jeff Garcia, Johnny Sanchez. I want send a shout-out to my amigos! But they're in the same room and you just build a rhythm. It is like an old radio play. Even though they would have the baffles between us, we would always break away from them and start to work together. It was part of the drill. That was because of the maestro."

Hank Azaria: "I had never done that before. A few times, we’d be recording across the room and then like, 'Let's get on the same mic and just be close, at George’s suggestion, which I was excited about when I got to do it with Pink. I’m actually not joking. That was a first for me. You have to always physicalize when you do animation recording, otherwise you won’t get the performance right. But, that was unique."

Elijah Wood: "Sometimes George would grab a hold of me as well. I had to react to something physically, and he was down there and he grabbed onto my leg for a reaction. Sometimes we would get on the floor to record things. It was incredibly physical. For some of the more emotional bits, I remember doing that shared mic thing. I think E.G. [Daily] and I shared a mic for a scene for an emotional moment, and that was beautiful. It really goes far and above the standard recording process. It was very immersive."

Robin and Hank, did you ever have a voice-off?

Robin Williams: [Laughing] "That sounds pretty sexual. 'We'll do a voice-off right now. Bring it! 400 voices, no waiting! You're going down!' ...No! That would be too crazy."

Hank Azaria: "I'd be much too terrified."

Robin Williams: "I'd just sit back and watch. He's done so many amazing things I'd just go, 'Yeah!'"

Common, can you talk about playing Seymour and the elements of hip hop that you added in there?

Common: "Playing Seymour, what I got from George and what he said he wanted from the character was somebody who had compassion and was a leader in his own right. He was a fatherly person, but he was cool too. He has something cool about him, and was about the community. I felt to the core that’s some of the elements of who I am, in many ways, and I felt that I could bring that essence to Seymour."

"Along with that, just as far as being able to bring hip-hop to it was really cool for me because George allowed us to do improvisation and different things that would come about from the other actors that I was working with. Everybody was bringing something, and it would just allow us to just go forward with it. If George heard something that he liked, he would say, 'That's it. That's it right there.' It was really like being in a freestyle session, to a certain extent. You could improv and come up with great songs and riffs, and different things like that."

"When I got to know what a lot of the music was going to be, I was really overwhelmed. I loved how the music had a universal tone to it. Like, no matter what walk of life you’re from, you could appreciate the music. Even if you don’t know a particular song, whether it was a hip hop song or a rock song, for some reason these songs resonated with me in my soul and my heart. It really, to me, expressed the universal appeal of the film and what the story is about. It relates to so many walks of life and humanity. I love being able to be a part of that type of music. That's actually, as an artist, that’s the type of music I want to create. It was great to be a part of it."