Original-Cin Q&A: Nimona's Chloë Grace Moretz Touts Film For 'Anyone Who's Ever Felt Other-Than'
By Bonnie Laufer
After suffering corporate slings and arrows – and maybe a little LGBTQ+ animus - the new animated movie Nimona has found a home at Netflix.
Based on the popular web comic and graphic novel by ND Stevenson, the film was almost scrapped. It was originally to be produced by Blue Sky Studios, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox. But after The Walt Disney Company acquired Fox, the film was delayed and then inevitably canceled when Blue Sky shut down.
Many of the staff members of Blue Sky admitted that they felt it was shut down due to the LGBTQ+ themes that were present throughout the film.
Nimona makes her point with knight Ballister Boldheart
But tenacious directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane willed the project back to life.
The story centers around Nimona (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) a mischievous teen and shapeshifter - usually a human girl, but able to grow and shrink and take any human or animal form. When a knight named Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) in a futuristic medieval world is framed for a crime he didn't commit, he joins forces with Nimona to prove his innocence.
Our Bonnie Laufer spoke with Chloë Grace Moretz about the important messages the film delivers and why she wanted to be involved.
Nimona starts streaming on Netflix on Friday, June 30th.
CLICK the links to watch Bonnie’s interviews with: Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang and directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane.
ORIGINAL-CIN: I loved Nimona because she's not just vulnerable, but she's reckless, destructive and also relatable. How did you connect to her?
CHLOE GRACE MORETZ: I think everything that you just said are many of the reasons that I connected to her.
I think one thing that really struck me with Nimona is how she's just so unabashedly herself. When she's asked during the movie, “What are you? Who are you?” She simply says, “I'm Nimona and that's all I want to be.” I think that's just so important. And also I love that she's constantly throwing up the heavy metal rock symbol all the time. She was fun to play.
O-C: Were you familiar with the graphic novel before you started this?
MORETZ: Yes, I was. I knew about the webcomic that ND Stevenson created. But I honestly hadn't read the graphic novel fully.
Then once I got the conversation going about possibly coming on to the project, I read through the graphic novel really quickly and fell in love with Nimona. I really wanted to find her vocality and what that looked like. And so I worked with the directors to capture it.
O-C: How much fun do you have doing voiceover work? Is it more freeing for you or do you find it a little bit more challenging because you didn't really have anyone to work off of other than the directors?
MORETZ: It's both freeing and more difficult at the same time. I think one of the big hurdles in this was, we recorded the film during the pandemic and recording is usually a solo kind of thing.
But there's such an important relationship between Riz’s character and mine, and so much of this movie is us going back and forth with each other. It's all conversation.
The funny thing is that I didn't even meet Riz for two years until we were pretty much done with the project completely. We actually met at the Met Gala last year, and it was funny because we hadn't actually heard each other's voices in person. I was like, “Oh my god! You’ve been in my head for so long!”
O-C: The film delivers quite a powerful message. Here you have this girl who is feisty on the outside, but we know that there's a lot going on with her internally.
She has the ability to become someone or something else when she shapeshifts to get out of her own skin so to speak. I think a lot of kids and adults will find her very relatable.
What's the best message you think that this delivers and what are you hoping that audiences will get from it?
MORETZ: I brought a lot of friends of mine, that are my age, to go see it. The resounding response was, “Man, I wish we had this when we were younger.”
This is a story for everyone that's ever felt “other than.” This is a story that, like I said, when I brought my friends to go see it, It landed with them in a different way for different reasons.
I thought that was so important and also so rare in a story. It really speaks to who Nimona is and exactly whoever she wants to be whenever she wants to be.
I hope that when people see it, they can really feel seen and heard and also have a whole lot of those gut wrenching tears coming as well which also happens.