Elijah Kelley On Strange Magic, George Lucas and Social Good

Elijah Kelley voices Sunny in the new animated film Strange Magic. We had the pleasure of meeting with him while at Skywalker Ranch last week. He was very personable and approachable, he graciously took pictures with each blogger. Including me 🙂 After watching Strange Magic with us (it was only the 2nd time he had seen the finished film), he chatted with us!

Elijah On Sunny

Sunny doesn’t quit.  You know, once you understand that there’s a task at hand, you can’t stop until that task is finished. So throughout adversity, throughout trial, you have to keep going, and I think that’s something that Sunny carries.

I see him sort of the nucleus of trying to get everything together, and pulling everybody together, and trying to save the day, and messing up the day, it’s, you know, it’s a lot like me.

Elijah On George Lucas

George has surpassed, he surpassed, I think what we are on Earth. He’s become an idea. It’s like every time I come here (Skywalker Ranch), I get so inspired because everything that we’re sitting on, everything that we drove up on was spawned from an idea. And when you have an idea, and when you have an idea that you’re convicted about, and you can change the world from that idea, you don’t stray away from it, and you dedicate your life to that idea.

So every time I’m around him, it reinvigorates the passion for art in me that it only takes one thing. It only takes one idea. It only takes one thought to pretty much change your universe, and that’s why I love working with him because I can, I’m constantly reminded of that. Thanks, George.

Elijah On Social Good

I have a foundation, the Elijah Kelley Foundation, and basically what we do is I try to be a liaison between underprivileged kids back from where I’m from (LaGrange, George) and their dreams in arts and entertainment.  I’ve given out four scholarships over the last five years with students from low-income housing that are going on to pursue careers in performing arts.

He’s also working towards establishing a performing arts school as well. There is no website to donate to yet but I plan on keeping my out for one!

Elijah On Voiceovers

First of all, I’ve never done a voiceover before in my life. So it was a, it was a little bit of a challenge because you see he’s like hyper and super into everything that he always does. So I thought that it was gonna be so easy; I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake but I would go in there and guarantee you, I would leave lightheaded and sweaty from .. everything. It was like P90X.

What’s the difference between doing a voice for an animated feature versus like what you did in Hairspray or even singing?

The difference between doing a voiceover in a movie and a real movie is you can literally look horrible [Everyone started laughing when he said this :-)]. You can look like crap. You can just go in the studio and just be the most disgusting looking person ever, but nobody will ever see you. But Hairspray, you know, you’ve gotta do hair and makeup.

 

Elijah On Music

I grew up in church all my life. My mom was in ministry; my dad was in ministry, so we, we had a traveling singing group that we go all around the southeast to different churches and we would just sing and congregate.

Oh, right now, I’m currently producing an album right now. I’m producing an album for a group – it’s a Somalian duo- their names are called Faarrow- F-A-A-R-R-O-W. They’re the first  young ladies from their country to get a national record deal, or international record deal and they’re signed to Warner Bros. I’m producing, songwriting and pretty much the whole package of their record; and I’m working on my own album.

Elijah definitely is a talented singer. He performed for us before the interviews and had everyone standing up and clapping along.

Elijah as Sunny singing “Three Little Birds” in Strange Magic. 

Elijah’s favorite song didn’t actually make the cute in the movie. If you read my George Lucas post, you learned they started with like 100 songs in Strange Magic but only ended up with about 25. Elijah’s favorite song was “Hold On, I’m Coming” and I can totally see how it would have it in with the story. He’s holding out hope for a possible Strange Magic sequel. 🙂

But my favorite song in the movie is not even a full song. It’s when the little birdies sing  Gotcha Looking So Crazy Right Now.

Elijah sings several times during the movie, you can head over and hear more of it on the Strange Magic soundtrack. I am not usually big on buying movie soundtracks but this animated musical is made up of existing love songs from the past 60 years, so it would really be a fun mix to own.

Don’t take my word for it! Strange Magic opens in theaters tomorrow (January 23rd), just come back and let me know which song gets stuck in your head. For me it’s a tie between “Say Hey” and “Three Little Birds”. 🙂

I attended press events with Disney to promote #StrangeMagicEvent and #PixarInsideOut. I was provided with an expenses paid trip to San Francisco in exchange for my coverage about the events.  No other compensation is given. As always, opinions and experiences are my own. Photos courtesy of Disney.