Ty Burrell takes a break from his Emmy-winning “Modern Family” chores this week to voice the world’s smartest pooch in the 3-D animated “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.”
Mr. Peabody, a bespectacled talking dog, business titan, inventor, scientist, Nobel laureate, gourmet and two-time Olympic medalist, began life on the 1960s “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” in a series of five-minute sketches called “Peabody’s Improbable History.”
Sherman is Peabody’s adopted son; it’s this relationship, Burrell said earlier this week, that makes the feature film unique and different from the source.
A fan of the original, Burrell said, “It was daunting to fill Bill Scott’s voice. The original series is very droll and glib and it’s also why I love it so much, so I didn’t want to get rid of that. I hope people can hear that in it,” said the actor, 46.
“But, by the same token, we’re after something sincere in the relationship.
“While this is a feature-length film and a huge time travel comedy history adventure thing, it’s also about the father-son relationship.
“Bill Scott’s voice was suited to five-minute shorts, they didn’t get into relationships.
“We had to make the voice a little more grounded, have a quality where we could have meaningful conversations between Peabody and Sherman.”
Burrell, married with two young daughters, had a close relationship with his father.
In fact, it’s why he’s Ty today and not his actual moniker, Tyler.
“When my dad passed away in 1989, I changed it to Ty because he had always preferred it to Tyler. I did it to honor him.”
Peabody and Sherman travel back in time, visiting notable people and events such as Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution, Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance or King Tut, ancient Egypt’s boy monarch.
Voice work’s biggest challenge is that, Burrell said, “basically you take a leap of faith that what you’re doing fits the scene.
“You’re alone in a room and the director Rob Minkoff is working hard to paint the scene for me and create the world I was in even though I couldn’t see it.
“There’s no way to know, so it’s about trusting the people around you. After all, the real stars of an animated film are the animators.”
(“Mr. Peabody & Sherman” opens Friday.)
— cinesteve@hotmail.com
