With the release of Christopher Robin right around the corner; Jim Cummings, the voice of both Pooh and Tigger, recently sat down with Collider to discuss the process of bringing the beloved characters to life.
The film follows Christopher Robin -- now a family man living in London -- as he receives a surprise visit from his old childhood pal, Winnie-the-Pooh. With Christopher's help, Pooh embarks on a journey to find his friends -- Tigger, Eeyore, Owl, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo. Once reunited, the lovable bear and the gang travel to the big city to help Christopher rediscover the joy of life.
Cummings explained how and why he voices the two, arguably, most popular stuffed animals - that is one at a time:
Yeah. I always like to do Pooh first because he’s right at the bottom of my falsetto, on top of my tenor. I don’t know if I have a tenor, but vocally speaking, he’s in that neck of the woods. I just want to get him done because it’s a feathery sound. It’s basically just doing Sterling’s original voice and dipping it in honey. He wasn’t really doing anything. That was just him talking, and I have to be true to the original sound, as best I can. And then, Paul’s Tigger was a little more gruff with a little more gravel and sand in there. I just do Tigger second.
Originally, the lovable honey-obsessed bear belonged to Sterling Holloway - a famous voice-actor known for Winnie The Pooh, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, The Aristocats, and many other Disney classics. Holloway unfortunately passed away in 1992 and Cummings has been playing Pooh ever since. Here's what he had to say on taking over from the original voice-actor:
Gosh, back then, Pooh hadn’t been around for 20 some years. Back then, I thought, “Oh, wow, that was so cute. I enjoyed that a lot.” My little brother liked it more than I did ‘cause I was too old, but I thought, “This is great. What a cool thing.” And then, I ended up being Tigger, as well, when Paul [Winchell] retired. God bless ‘em, they’ve both since passed away. There wasn’t trepidation so much as excitement.
At this point, I feel like it’s a duty to do it right. I have to preserve it and keep it going. In 1929, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and Snow White all came out, and they could all be released now and they’d probably do rather well. The point is that they last forever. These movies don’t go anywhere. They’ll always be there. I just hope it comes across and everybody loves it as much as we all did. It’s a beautiful thing.
What's interesting is that, given the nature of the live-action/CGI-hybrid, Cummings and Ewan McGregor (the film's lead) never actually interacted during production.
The way we did it is that they recorded me first, a long time ago, over in London. Scenes change, the script changes and dialogue changes, but it gave them a chance to play it back, so that he wasn’t in a total vacuum. So, it was just me talking, and then the puppeteer subbing in. That’s how they did it. And then, after they got the principle photography done, they put in the CGI animals. It’s so realistic, I can’t believe it. And then, I went in and re-looped and fixed all of the lip-flaps to make it look organic. It looks pretty good.
What do you think of Cummings comments? What do you think of his voice-acting work as Tigger and Pooh? Check out the featurette below on the topic of the franchise's legacy:
Christopher Robin arrives in theatres on the 17th of August.