can make him hilarious."Īnd if he does need anger assistance, Simmons jokes that all he has to do is think of Black's panda Po. "Kai wants revenge, and he's a bitter, bitter guy," Carloni says. "Even if it is a little bit dark," Simmons says.ĭirectors Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni say Simmons is developing a villain who can also go for laughs.
One character trait will rise with menace: Kai will have a sense of humor. "The voice can get a little ragged at the end of the day when you are making strange animal noises that you don't normally make." "It can become a little Fletcher-esque, the screaming," Simmons says.
But that menace sure helps for an angry bull. Simmons won't reference his now-infamous Whiplash line "Were you rushing or were you dragging?" in the film. "There's a lot of vocal stuff I'm throwing out there that's somewhere between dialogue and animal growls when Kai snorts." "You have to find the nature of the beast that Kai is," Simmons says. The baddie also has a serious beef with the kung fu warrior trainer Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the Furious Five warriors: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) and Viper (Lucy Liu). Kai is the first supernatural villain in the "Kung Fu Panda" franchise, a paranormal threat to Po and the new set of pandas he has discovered (including the amorous Mei Mei, voiced by Rebel Wilson). I like being a character actor playing different kinds of guys. "I've played a variety of badasses in my career," says Simmons, 60. The even more fearsome Vern Schillinger in Oz. That would be Simmons' Oscar-winning performance as fearsome jazz instructor Fletcher in Whiplash. But trouble looms when Kai hits the scene, voiced by the actor who has breathed life into some tough hombres.
The trailer shows a reunion between Po (Jack Black) and his father, Li (Bryan Cranston).