The Movie Stars Worked With Music Legend on SpongeBob Film

Plankton: The Movie stars Mr. Lawrence and Jill Talley spoke to ComingSoon about the new SpongeBob musical. Mr. Lawrence, who voices Plankton, also co-wrote the film, while Talley voices Plankton’s wife, Karen. The duo discussed working with Flight of the Concords’ Bret McKenzie and Linda Perry, while also talking about the Netflix movie’s themes. It begins streaming on March 7.

“Plankton’s world is flipped upside down when his plan for world domination is thwarted,” says the film’s logline.

Tyler Treese: Mr. Lawrence, you have a story credit here, and you co-wrote the film. You’re a writer on the show, so that’s a very natural fit. But what were the biggest challenges of doing a full feature film versus a short episode? There’s a lot of meat to this.

Mr. Lawrence: Yeah. There’s a lot more to consider when you’re doing a movie, of course. […] The idea came from a special that I wanted to do. But then that’s where you realize what, when they came up with, “Hey, we’d like to try to do some movie with Sandy and with Plankton,” and clicking that into it, I said, “Oh, wow.” A special would’ve been great with this idea, but I think it was sort of made for a movie, and it would’ve been something that normally we would’ve been racking our brains for a year trying to figure out. “What is the Plankton movie gonna be?” And instead it was kind of sitting there [laughs] when I was already working on it.

So just luck, you know. Some kind of zeitgeist thing happening at the same time for us. So it worked out. But to me, that’s what made it, that we could really go epic with the story and really have Karen dominate and do her thing. And that in a special, I think it would’ve been lost a little. I think it would’ve it wouldn’t have been enough time to feel that this is serious.

You know what I mean? It’s kind of like that feeling of, “This isn’t epic.” This is a big deal happening here. It’s not just a short or a shorter version, which I think would’ve kind of clipped its wings. I think we got to spread out a lot with these characters in this movie.

Jill, I wanted to ask you, because as Mr. Lawrence was saying this might be called Plankton: The Movie, but it’s kind of like Karen The Movie.

Jill Talley: Thank you, Tyler, for correcting the name [laughs].

We see her break out on her own. She has her own plan of world domination. There’s a sense of empowerment there. What did you like most about that aspect of the plot?

Talley: Well, I mean, who doesn’t wanna be a villain? Who doesn’t wanna play a villain? When you’re like a kid and you’re playing games with your siblings, everyone wants to be the bad guy. It’s the meatiest thing, you know, you can have more fun with it.

So I loved that. I loved getting to stretch, ’cause Karen gets mad at Plankton, but to really be, to turn evil is just like a whole new level of… trying to think of the right word… Hamming it up for me [laughs].

It was fun! I loved it. I loved taking this character that we’ve been doing for so long and finding a new place for them. You know?

Mr. Lawrence, the musical numbers in this film are great. I saw Brett McKenzie worked on some of the songs along with Linda Perry. I love Flight of the Concords and 4 Non Blondes, so that was a real trip when I saw the credits. How was it getting to perform their songs and knowing they were coming from such great artists?

Mr. Lawrence: It was super awesome. Like, that was like one of the coolest things. ’cause they were asking who would we wanna work with? And Brett McKenzie was one of the things in my head right away. ’cause I know he writes songs in a freelance way, and Flight of the Concords is one of my favorite things. That show, their albums, the whole thing. So I was really happy about that.

Linda Perry, I didn’t even think about. I didn’t come up with that one, and I couldn’t believe it. I was like, going, “She’s gonna work with us?” [laughs]. Like that’s… oh my. You know? So I got to go to her studio and work out the songs with her, the two songs that she worked on. And that was just… just that alone. Just to kind of touch on the actual music business, like a real song. A real song.

[Perry is] a genius, you know, somebody who aside from 4 Non Blondes has written so many songs for so many people that are amazing. I’ve known about her for years, and all of a sudden there, I’m standing in front of her. I’m like, “oh my God.” This is….

Talley: Yeah. This is crazy. It’s intimidating.

Mr. Lawrence: It is. Yeah. I really wanted her to like what we were doing. I didn’t want her to go out. She had told me some horror stories about some of the pros, I won’t tell you what they were, but she said some of the crazy things she was dealing with, with people in projects she was working on at the time. And she said that we were really great to work with, so I was so happy about that.

Talley: She was so patient. You work with someone that that’s what they do for a living, and that’s not what you do for a living. I mean, we do voice stuff, but like singing, you know? And then you come up against someone like that and you don’t wanna disappoint them, you know? It puts a whole extra level of stress, you know? And she was so comforting. She was so patient and nice. That really helped a lot.

In the film, as Jill mentioned, we see some character development for Karen. She goes to the next level. She gets quite the upgrade — three heads! How is it kinda finding your voices for the different Karens?

Talley: My first thought, and I guess this speaks to like my own personal insecurities or whatever as an actor, but my first thought was, “I can’t do that.” “I’m not gonna be able to do that.” “I’m not gonna be able to sing, not gonna be…” You know.

And then you have your initial panic attack of, “I don’t know how to do this.” And then you start playing and start trying and start thinking of the voices. And then you find it, and then […] it’s fun. Then you start playing, and then you lock in. And that’s kind of how the process was. It was sort of like, “Jill has a panic attack. Find the voice, do the voice. Hey, this is fun.”

Mr. Lawrence: Same with the singing. We do that too at the sessions too. There’s like that sort of initial, we get in and we’re talking and we’re doing our voices and clearing our throats, and then… Yeah. Yeah.

There comes that moment — you could feel it in the recordings – where we all get loose. Where all of a sudden there’s no more pretension, there’s no more worry. We’re just enjoying being there and going back and forth. Not just on this movie, the whole everything we’ve done together. I love that.

Mr. Lawrence, this show’s been on for so long that obviously kids are gonna watch this, but also adults. There’s a lot of nostalgia for SpongeBob. This film has this wonderful theme of kind of not taking your partner for granted and being appreciative. How was it kind of layering that? This is a really fun watch for kids, but even the adults that check in on this are gonna leave with something to think about.

Mr. Lawrence: Yeah, we had to steer it certainly because we’d go too far into… You could take that way too far. And then, and then it’s not fun anymore.

Talley: It’s just sort of real life and a couple arguing.

Mr. Lawrence: Yeah, yeah. But because Jill’s married and I’m married, we know what that is. We understand married life. So you wanna bring something to it that feels authentic with the characters, which I think we did initially when the show started. But I feel like the show is always about being fun. Even if we do something sad, even if we do something angry, we sort of undercut it with humor, which is the style of our show. And it has been the style of all the movies, just the characters in general. Spongebob has always been trying to stay funny. We just want to be funny all the time.

So even though we touch on these things that are adult, I think it’s kid friendly. It’s family friendly. Everybody’s will get it. ’cause You know, I mean, kids are kids, but they know their parents are married, you know? Yeah. They know who their parents are, you know, and they know they’re together or whatever the situation is.

Talley: They’re smart. They see that they’re smart. Like you can have disagreements and stuff and still love each other. Karen and Plankton are the perfect example of that. They truly love each other.

Mr. Lawrence: They stay together.

Thanks to Mr. Lawrence and Jill Talley for taking the time to talk about Netflix‘s Plankton: The Movie.