It’s truly a fish-out-of-water story.
“At the heart of it, it’s a story about friendship,” he tells EW.
“So, I really was inspired thinking back about my best friend.
Disney/Pixar
I met him when I was 11.
I was very shy and timid.
My family sheltered me.
Disney/Pixar
I met this kid, who was very free.
His family situation was a little bit messy, and he could do whatever he wanted.
He was a bit of a troublemaker.
Disney/Pixar
So, he opened up my world, got me to get out of my comfort zone.
I thought many people have friends like that [who] challenge you and make you find yourself.
Alberto seems inspired by Casarosa’s childhood comrade.
He’s a bit of a troublemaker himself.
Alberto becomes the one who drags Luca to the surface world.
“We love that Alberto and Luca have this common passion of strange human things,” Casarosa says.
“Alberto also has a bit of a weird sense of what these things are.
He’s looking from afar, so he misunderstands a lot of things.
He plays the expert, but he gets a lot of things wrong.
That always gave us a lot of fun comedy.”
Tremblay believes the friendship between Luca and Alberto is “something special.”
They learn how to improve upon themselves, whether it’s being braver or being a better friend.”
There really is a really big variety.
It’s crazy!"
The resemblance to Massimo and to the adult character in the filmmaker’sLa Lunais no coincidence.
“I always like to joke, ‘It’s the same actor.
I’m just casting him for a different role,'” Casarosa remarks.
Saverio Raimondo, an Italian stand-up comedian, voices “our villain in town.”
The sea monster twist was also pulled from regional folklore.
“I always found the old sea monsters on maps really fascinating.
The mystery of the sea was so represented in the weird creatures that we used to draw.
And that area has a lot of wonderful myths,” he explains of Genoa.
“There’s a place where there was a sea dragon.
‘You don’t want to go there!’
It’s very tied to the fishing culture.
They didn’t want someone else to go in there.”
Soul skipped theaters entirely and went straight to Disney+ in December.
The thought of people seeingLucaexcites Tremblay.
He was once obsessed with aCars-themed Lightning McQueen Power Wheels toy as a toddler.
