LOS ANGELES, USA – Many of us know Ronnie Del Carmen as a highly-respected animation artist, director, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter. But in Disney and Pixar’s Elemental, Ronnie tackles his first major role as a voice actor, and guess what? He does a very good job.

The Filipino-American filmmaker had minor voice acting credits in Pixar films such as Soul and Inside Out. When I entered the Palais des Festivals to watch Peter Sohn’s Elemental as the closing night film of the recent Cannes Film Festival, I didn’t know that Ronnie had a big part.

So what a pleasant surprise it was to hear Ronnie’s voice inside the Palais as Bernie Lumen in Elemental, in which writers John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh imagine a place called Element City where fire, water, land, and air elements live together, provided they do not mix.

The film revolves around a fire family, the Lumens, headed by Ronnie’s Bernie and Shila Ommi’s Cinder. Bernie plans to retire and turn over his shop business to his daughter, Ember (Leah Lewis). But the dad won’t do it until the fiery Ember learns to tame her hot temper.

Ember’s life dramatically changes when she meets Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a water element. When these fire and water elements fall in love, they face a lot of challenges, especially the belief that elements should not mix, a view strongly held by Bernie.

A metaphor about race and immigration, Elemental was inspired by Peter’s years growing up as the son of Korean immigrants in New York. The urban setting of various anthropomorphic elements provides the Elemental filmmakers with a rich source to go to town on, with dazzling visuals.

In my latest interview with the Cavite City-born Ronnie, we talked about this major voice role in Elemental. It’s the latest feat of my fellow University of Santo alumnus. He cowrote Inside Out, for which he, Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley, earned an Oscar best original screenplay nomination.

He also codirected (with Pete Docter) Inside Out, the 2016 Oscar and Golden Globe best animated picture winner.

Being a family man – he’s married to Theresa, with whom he has a son and daughter – Ronnie said he identifies with Bernie.

After years with Pixar, Ronnie now works for Netflix where he plans to develop stories that reflect his identity, roots, culture, and heritage.

The following are excerpts from our video chat.

I watched Elemental at the recent Cannes Film Festival. It was a treat to hear your voice in Cannes and in a film that was the closing night movie of the festival. Congratulations!

Oh, thank you very much. I’m so proud that Elemental is the closing movie at Cannes. I wish I was there. That was fantastic to see how people received it. And there was a standing ovation, if I read correctly.

How did you land the role?

Well, I’m good friends with Pete Sohn. He was making the movie while I was still there at the studio (Pixar). We help each other all the time with our individual movies.

He asked me to do the role casually in the early reels of the movie when they were just starting out. I would say, “Whatever you need, I’ll do it. You go and hire whoever you want to when you have to cast the actor.”

But the whole time, Pete Sohn was saying, “Ronnie, I really like your voice in the reels.” “That’s good, Pete, but you hire whoever is good for your movie.”

And then eventually one day, I got a call from Pixar. And they say, “Ronnie, you got it. You got the role.” “What are we talking about?” “You’re Bernie.” They cast me in it. Great!

You’ve done voice acting before but this is your first major role as a voice actor. Did you ever imagine that you would voice a major character in a Disney and Pixar movie someday?

No, it was never one of those aspirations. Ruben, I grew up wanting to be an artist. I’m always behind the scenes. You would never see or hear me in the movie.

But I have done little voice acting in the movies at Pixar – a line of dialogue here, a lot of dialogue there. And you can see my name credit crawl up but not as a major character in a movie.

And this is a landmark moment for me. It’s really earth-shattering. Not only that but I’m so proud to be part of a Pete Sohn story because he’s a good friend of mine and in such a heartfelt family movie, too.

And I get to play someone I feel like I’m very close to. He’s a dad so it’s fantastic.

I almost did not recognize your voice. And that’s a compliment because you really embody the character of Bernie. How did you arrive at the voice and manner of speaking of Bernie? And how did Peter guide you with his own ideas about how Bernie sounds like?

Pete actually made it very easy for me to play Bernie because he just says, “Be who you want to be. And just make sure that you can relate to your daughter,” in all of these moments and lines that I have to speak.

I didn’t have to turn myself into someone else but I did have to turn into what Bernie is. And that is a father who has a daughter in Ember and has to bequeath the store to her. There’s a certain aspect of his personality that has to enter in my voice.

And that’s as much of it that I had to do. I’m so glad actually that you can’t quite recognize my voice in it because even my wife can’t quite recognize my voice in it.

I am going to quote from a review of Elemental by Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter: “By far the most moving element in Element is the character of Bernie, a hardworking foreigner doing everything he can to support his family in the big city, breaking his back in his modest minimart while striving to preserve some of the traditions of his homeland.” Congratulations, Ronnie!

Wow. Please send me that quote. That is amazing. That is so close to my own story. That’s fascinating. That’s quite an honor.

Are you a fire element or a water element? You can guess from what I am wearing today that I identify with Bernie although I am a Gemini so I can be both fire and water.

I don’t know if you’re going by the astrological signs. I’m Capricorn which means I’m a water sign, I think (Capricorn is actually an earth sign). Right. But I wear fiery colors today, native fabrics from the Philippines, hand-woven. But very, very flame colors.

Being a fire element like Bernie, how passionate can you be about the people and things you care about? And how temperamental are you?

I am very passionate about my family. And I am known to my friends as being someone who’s very calm and also very low-key.

But my family, and some of my friends, will be able to tell you, I have a temper that not too many people see all the time. But the few people who have seen it – my close friends and, of course, my family has seen it – ah, they don’t like seeing it.

The idea of whether water and fire could connect or not was inspired by Peter Sohn’s growing up years in New York as the son of immigrants. A scene shows your character and his family getting off the boat to start their lives in a new place. How do you relate to this story?

I can relate very easily to that. My family immigrated here to the US from the Philippines. We were looking for a better life. And not only that, there was so much that’s unknown.

You don’t know what you’re going to do, if you’re going to be accepted. And that, if you have one thing that you know how to do, will you be successful at it?

All of those things were uncertain. I gave myself a year here in the US to see if I could make it, and if not, I will have to admit that I failed.

But thankfully, the country actually gave me a career. I landed in animation. And that’s really amazing to me because through animation, I got to express myself as an artist.

But here we are talking about a role I’m in. I get to play Bernie, whose story is very similar to mine. And I get to do it in an animated feature. That’s like the grand slam of dreams come true.

And you mentioned that you actually did voice performances in other films like Soul and Inside Out but can you backtrack and go through films that you did voice in? If you could just briefly describe your experiences in those.

I’ve done scratch for all of those things but then a lot of the times, I get replaced by actors. But in Inside Out, I get to be one of the characters inside Riley’s (one of the characters) mind.

And I get to say one line there. It’s like the line is, “Loneliness.” You can find that in the reels and then that will be it.

In other movies, which I have very faint memories of, I think I was in Up but I’m not sure now. Don’t talk to an old man whose memories are fading.

As a director and animation artist, you have seen talents record their scenes in animated movies. Which voice recording sessions with actors or artists were very memorable to you?

Oh, the most recent ones, for me it’s Eddie (Edward) Asner as Carl (Up) and Amy Poehler as Joy (Inside Out), Bill Hader as Fear (Inside Out). Those guys, they were just amazing to work with.

Among all the other ones, of course, that I can’t name because all of them are very special to us. Because all of those voice actors, those amazing talents, actually gave them (characters) their life, their voices.

When Amy Poehler speaks the lines for Joy, she becomes Joy for us. I can’t hear anyone else other than, well, that’s Joy.

And Bill Hader had actually done so many voices to help us out when we were making Inside Out. He did the treadmill workout of exercising almost every emotion that we were trying out. But he was definitely perfect to be the voice of Fear.

What do you consider are among the most memorable voice-acting performances in animation films?

To me, in acting, it was Robin Williams as the Genie (Aladdin). He ran away with that movie.

As a feat, that feels like it obliterated any other version of what you might think what a genie might be. For me, Robin Williams is it.

In your growing up years, did you ever work in a store or a shop like Bernie? What were you like?

I helped out in some of my uncle and aunt’s sari-sari stores. I was a kid. And every now and then, you have to go to the back room and imagine making animation. It’s fantastic.

Can you give an update on your coming projects? What’s next for you?

Personally, I have many stories that I want to tell. I’m developing as many of those as I can. And development is a very long process about what is valuable to them, to me.

It’s not one of those things where you get assigned to a movie or someone picks you to do this story or that story.

I’m developing the stories that matter to me. And I hope to one day be given the chance to make that movie and then people get to watch it. – Rappler.com