Netflix’s Thelma the Unicorn is a sweet and silly love letter to music, friendship, and finding one’s voice, all wrapped around solid songs and goofy gags. Directed by Lynn Wang and Jared Hess (the latter of whom co-wrote the film with their partner, Jerusha Hess), Thelma the Unicorn is an adaptation of Aaron Blabey’s book of the same name. The film focuses on the titular unicorn, whose musical talents are ignored by everyone except her best friends.

However, an accidental shower of pink paint and shiny sparkles makes her into a “unicorn,” drawing the attention of the entire world. Thelma finds her opportunity to make a name for herself while facing off with homicidal rivals pop stars, predatory music managers, and her own self-doubts. During an interview with TVBrittanyF, Brittany Howard (Thelma), Will Forte (Otis), and director Lynn Wang sat down to discuss the biggest surprises of the film, the joys of voice-acting, and balancing sweet morals with broad comedy.

Brandon Zachary: Brittany, you’ve personally experienced the kind of music industry highs and lows that Thelma goes through in the film. How did you relate your own experiences to Thelma?

Brittany Howard: I have a lot in common with Thelma. We both come from small towns. We both had big dreams and didn’t know how we were going to achieve them. I also really like Thelma’s attitude and I love her kind nature, but I also love that she’s hard-headed. She’ll really give it back to someone.

BZ: This was your first experience in voice acting — congrats on the performance, by the way! It’s really fun. What was your experience in shifting over to voice acting for Thelma the Unicorn?

BH: You know, I feel extremely lucky. I don’t know if I ever would have done this otherwise, but [Jared Hess] approached me with the idea of voicing Thelma. At first, I was like, “Well, I’ve never done that before.” I didn’t know if I wanted to start venturing into that. But once I read the book [Aaron Blabey wrote]… I cried when I got to the end of the book! I had this emotional response to it. Afterwards, I was like, “I think I should do this. I think I should try really hard to get good at this.” Luckily, Lynn and Jared were great coaches. They were very patient, and they were very positive with me. It gave me the confidence to do the character.

BZ: Will, this is far from your only time delivering voice-over for animation.

Will Forte: Yeah — there are times that I’m doing this other voice for Otis, but for the most part, Otis is just my own speaking voice. It funny because you [do voice-over for animation] over several months. You come in every couple of weeks to do more. It was just long enough to kind of forget what voice I was doing each time. They’d say “Can we play you a character reference?” And then I would go ‘Oh, right, that’s just me talking normally,” [Laughter].

BZ: Will, how would you compare work playing a character in live-action versus through voice-over?

WF: It really depends on each character. It’s really the director’s job — you’ll be doing your thing and they’ll be pushing it along if you need to have more energy or if you need to take it down a notch. I was in such good hands with Jared and Lynn. Jared, I’ve known forever, and I’m so comfortable working with him. The thing I will say about animation is very early on, you realize how difficult it is to convey stuff without your face and just through your voice.

It is something you have to get used to at first. You can think you’re doing this over-the-top performance but then you hear it and it just seems flat or it’s not quite conveying what you thought it was. It’s because you don’t get to see your eyebrows arching or you hear your teeth gnashing. You have to get used to it. But once you do, it’s really fun to play around in the recording booth — especially when you get to work with people as talented as Jared and Lynn.

BZ: Lynn, the film is juggling this really sweet element and important morals, but it’s also a very entertaining goofball comedy. As a director on the film, how did you approach that balance between those tones?

Lynn Wang: I think everything I do, I always try to approach it with comedy first and then wrap that over a bunch of human emotions. I think it’s a great way to do it. I think life is really funny, no matter what. The best thing you can do is laugh at it and have that type of attitude. I think I always tried to approach everything with humor first.

We had a lot of fun on Thelma the Unicorn, just making sure this is what we want to say at this emotional point, but making that entertaining, funny, and relatable. We really focused in on that… [The scenes making fun of A.I. writing] have a bit of a kernel of truth from our real life. The whole A.I. bit, it is scary. But having that attitude of being able to find comedy in it, making fun of it– I think that’s that’s where we kind of land.

BZ: Lynn, before Thelma the Unicorn, you were on UniKitty!. What lessons did you bring from that series to this film?

LW: I think on UniKitty!, we were going very fast and furious because it was on a series schedule. I think that taught me how to think of my feet really quickly. It taught me to work with people and to try always find the funniest version of something. I think that was the thing I brought to Thelma the Unicorn — being able to find the comedy and hone in on that and push it a little bit more. It’s like how [Thelma’s] a unicorn. We want to see the cute unicorn, but then we push that silliness in there so we can subvert the unicorn idea.

BZ: What would you say surprised you the most about Thelma the Unicorn?

BH: I think what caught me by surprise is that I would get emotional watching the movie. I didn’t expect that! This movie does have a lot of heart. But it’s also really, really funny. So I didn’t expect to get choked up watching the film. Just Thelma trying to keep herself intact… it’s really all just about loving yourself and letting your friends love you for who you are. I didn’t expect to get so emotional.

WF: Jared and Jerusha are such amazing writers. I love their stuff so much. It’s always so quirky and so unusual and it’s always got so much heart in it. Some things have heart and it’s just like, it’s an overwhelming amount of heart. It kind of comes at you and it’s trying too hard. Then there’s this stuff, that’s just so weird and yet so accessible. It has this very earned resonance and heart. They’ve done it before and they’ve done it again here.

Then, with Lynne Wang directing with Jared, they both did such a great job. Every choice they made was the unexpected one. It’s so fun… Some of the extras in the background are so fun to watch to. If you watch a couple times, all these new fun characters will pop up in the background of some of these scenes. There are just so many little easter egg characters. It’s really fun.

LW: I don’t know if anything surprised me as much. I think we worked with such a great team. With Jared, I think we had a really strong vision of what we wanted the movie to feel, look, and sound like. We worked really closely with our leads, our production designer and our music supervisor, and all of those people to really get that vision across. So I guess the surprise is that it all came together and that it came together so well.

Thelma the Unicorn debuts on Netflix on May 17