Unquestionably, “Shark Tale’s” all-star cast was among the film’s most important collaborations. “This is certainly one of the most extraordinary casts ever assembled for any kind of movie—animated or live action,” Jenson attests.
“It was hard to imagine a cast like that coming together for any movie, and it was even more wild to imagine getting to work with them,” Letterman adds. “I’ll admit there was a moment of complete fright, especially when I saw Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese coming in, but they were all great and generous and couldn’t have been nicer.”
Will Smith voices the central role of Oscar, who, Jenson says, “is a small-fry fish at the bottom of the food chain. He has a job at the local Whale Wash where he works the tongue shift, which you can imagine is a pretty disgusting job.”
Oscar may despise working in mouths, but his own mouth rarely stops working. Damaschke reveals that Smith’s own energy and rapid wit were among the reasons the role was created with him in mind right from the start. “The story evolved over the years, but the one thing that never changed was that Oscar was always imagined with Will Smith playing him. The role was designed around him and everything that he could bring to the story,” he states.
“In many ways, Will is just a big kid,” Jenson observes. “He loves to play, which was just perfect for Oscar. Will is endlessly inventive, so we had a lot of fun with improv in the recording sessions. We got to explore a variety of options for every scene, and Will came up with so many of what became pure ‘Oscar-isms.’”
“I love the process of doing animation,” Smith says. “I found a real freedom in it because you can do almost anything with the character, especially with a character like this. I got in there and didn’t allow myself to hold back anything. There were no rules for Oscar; I just got to play.”
Smith describes Oscar as “a small fish in a really big pond, but he sees big things for himself, so there’s a clash of reality and perception. He’s willing to do just about anything to be rich and famous and live at the top of the Reef because that’s where the ‘somebodies’ live…and Oscar wants to be somebody. He’s so busy looking up to the top of the Reef that he can’t see the beauty that’s right in front of him.”
The beauty right in front of Oscar is an angelfish—appropriately named Angie—who works with Oscar at the Whale Wash. Oscar thinks of Angie as a friend, but Angie has long been pining for more. Segan explains, “Angie is desperately in love with Oscar. She is the one who believes most in him, who has always believed in him, even with all his harebrained schemes. When other fish are rolling their eyes at Oscar, Angie thinks he is wonderful, and she is waiting for the day when Oscar wakes up and realizes that his life is truly fabulous and everything he wants is within his reach.”
Renée Zellweger is the voice of Angie and Segan says, “The minute Renée started recording Angie, she came alive. Renée would give us lines 25 different ways and we could have used any one of them; she just nailed it every single time. She brought tremendous compassion and charm to a character who could have come off like more of a doormat to Oscar.”
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