The Sheep Detectives, Hong Chau Interview

 My first impression of Craig Mazin's screenplay was that I loved it. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and that's really all you can hope for from a script. Craig has such a diverse array of a great body of work from, you know, The Hangover to Chernobyl, so it made sense that Craig wrote this amazing script. It has a lot of heart, a lot of humor and intelligence.

Beth is the innkeeper and she is a little bit of a busybody I would think. I guess that's what you would call her. She kind of has her nose into everybody's business and knows what's going on in town. And Beth also has a secret that she's keeping and it's something we don't find out until later in the movie, but I think it definitely reveals a lot of who Beth truly is underneath her sort of stern exterior.

This film will appeal to people of all ages because it's just funny. It's a very simple story, it's funny, and there's a lot of quirky characters in the village. And then all of the sheep are just so funny. I think the best lines actually come from the sheep.

Emma's been such a great team captain. She's obviously the most, you know, seasoned of us and the moment she arrived onto set, it was all... we all just sat up a little straighter, you know? But she's great, great fun and even though she does have this natural gravitas to her, she's just a really silly, playful woman as well, so it was... it was great to do all of the scenes with her.

This is a really great ensemble that we've got here. I think everybody is coming into this from different points in their career, so it's really fun when the ensemble gets to be together during like the the will reading scene. All of the cast members are really great, very playful, very collaborative. It's really nice to, you know, when I'm in a scene with Nick Braun or with Nick Galitzine or even with Molly, you know, they're always coming up with ideas of things that they'd like to try and alternative takes on things, so it's really fun.

I've never worked on anything that had been storyboarded so much. Every... he obviously did a lot of preparation. Kyle comes from an animation background, so that made complete sense that that he would prepare in that way. And there's also the element of the the sheep, which we don't get to see until, you know, much later when VFX gets in there and does their magic. But in terms of the way that Kyle works with the human actors for the human characters, he's very collaborative. We're able to just throw ideas and bounce ideas off of him and he's he's very receptive, and I've been surprised that he's been able to sort of be flexible and veer away from those storyboards as well.

It's been really sweet. It's a it's a really sweet cast. Everybody gets along. This is probably the huggiest cast I've ever worked with. Everybody likes to give hugs. And, you know, it's a family-friendly movie and there's so much love between the sheep characters and with George and his sheep. So it's it's a really sweet story to be a part of, and so I think that just sort of seeps into us on set what we're doing. And also Kyle Balda, our director, is such a sweet man himself, so it's just a sweet set.

I hope that audiences just feel a lot of warmth when they're watching the film, and I hope that they're able to give their their dog or their cat or whatever animal in their life a really nice hug and also a family member a really nice hug after the movie is done.