Peyton Elizabeth Lee grew up on screen as the star of Disney Channel’s Andi Mack. In Wildwood, Laika’s stop-motion feature that arrived in theaters last Friday, she voices Prue McKeel, a Portland girl who crosses into a forbidden forest to rescue her baby brother. The film, directed by Travis Knight and based on Colin Meloy’s novel, took Laika 16 years to make, and Lee has been part of it for five of them. A week of interviews around the release found her returning again and again to the same subjects: the human hands that built Prue, and what playing her taught Lee about growing up.
The role started, as her voice auditions tend to, under a blanket. “I just go under my blanket and record voiceover into my phone for auditions and send it off, and then forget about it,” Lee told JoySauce. This time, the answer came while she was in Hawaii filming Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. “I was in Hawaii shooting Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. when I got the call that they wanted me to do it, and it was just so exciting for me,” she said. “I loved the story of Wildwood, the character of Prue, and the legacy of LAIKA.”
What she talks about most, though, is how the film was made, and she placed it squarely inside the current argument over artificial intelligence and art. “There are places where we need to evolve with technology and make space for what’s new and modern, and then there are places where we need to protect humanity,” she said in the same interview. “Art is one of those places. Art reflects the human condition, and something that is not human cannot create something that reflects the human condition.”
“Being a part of a film that is so deeply committed to human creation and artistry, and allowing every frame to be delicately created by human hands, it’s a love letter to all that we’re capable of,” she continued, “and a great way of proving that what we do is irreplaceable.”
Speaking with Animation Scoop, she described what all that handiwork adds up to on screen: “I also think that the handmade aspect of the film, the fact that it was really artists physically creating these worlds and characters and building these homes, allows the film to feel incredibly immersive, like you could just reach in and touch this world.”
The company she keeps in the film recalibrated how she hears her own voice, too. Jacob Tremblay voices Prue’s classmate Curtis, Carey Mulligan voices the villainous Alexandra, and Angela Bassett voices the General, the giant golden eagle Prue rides across the forest. “I think this film gave me a new appreciation for my own voice in the sense that the [same] people who wanted Carey Mulligan’s voice and Angela Bassett’s voice also wanted mine, which is a big honor,” Lee said. “It allowed me to give myself a little more grace and appreciate my voice, especially [hearing] it in combination with the artistry of this film.”
Because the production stretched across five years, Lee recorded Prue closer to the character’s age and has since outgrown her, which she says changed what she sees in the performance. “It’s been really fun to have this experience with the film because, when I recorded it, I was closer to Prue’s age. Now I’m a little bit older, and I feel like I have a bit more perspective on the experience of being a young girl growing up,” she told Pop-Culturalist. “In a sense, I feel closer to her now than I did then because I understand her journey a little more fully.”
Asked in that same interview what she hopes younger viewers take from Prue, she landed on the lesson at the center of the character’s story: “I hope young people feel confident and proud going out into the world, knowing that they’re going to be wrong about a lot and that being able to recognize that, learn, and grow is a strength, not a weakness.”
The press tour has also been an education in how stop-motion works. Lee told Awards Radar this week that the animators film themselves performing each scene as reference before animating it. “There’s definitely an entire cut of the movie out there somewhere where it’s just the animators acting it out,” she said. “I think I’m trying to get them to release that.”
And if Laika ever returns to the woods, she is in. Meloy’s story continues in the books Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium, and Lee told ScreenRant she would love to come back, with one practical caveat. “They just finished making this film, like, three weeks ago!” she said. “So, I think they probably want a little break from the story. But when and if they come back around, I’d definitely love to be part of it. Even if just to work with this creative genius [Jacob Tremblay] once again!”
Wildwood is in theaters now.
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