Brooke Gladstone: This is On The Media's mid-week podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last year at this time, nine months into the pandemic, many of us kept apart from one another, missing out on all the gathering, yam eating, relatives screaming, football watching, and other holiday-inspired habits of Thanksgiving. Not this year. Now, vaxxed and tested, maybe even boosted, we gather once more like a bunch of gosh darned superheroes.

 

Lucius Best: Honey.

 

Mrs. Best: What?

 

Lucius Best: Where is my super suit?

 

Mrs. Best: What?

 

Lucius Best: Where is my super suit?

 

Brooke: For this very special Thanksgiving edition podcast extra, we're re-airing the story of a lovable dysfunctional family full of superheroes.

 

Helen Parr: Dashiell Robert Parr, you are an incredibly competitive boy.

 

Dashiell Parr: You always say, "Do your best," but you don't really mean it. Why can't I do the best that I can do?

 

Brooke: Back in 2005, the Academy Award-winning animated Pixar film The Incredibles enthralled moviegoers with its campy '60s noir aesthetic, its nuanced portrayal of family gender roles, and its memorable cast of superheroes. One of those superheroes, the gifted son named Dash, was played by a real-life kid, the former child actor Spencer Fox who's been trying to outrun his own brush with superheroism ever since. On The Media correspondent, Micah Loewinger has the story.

 

Micah Loewinger: When I met Spencer almost a decade ago, I was told by a mutual friend to not bring up The Incredibles, but I did.

 

Spencer Fox: The audition was crazy. They said, "If you have any fun voices or impressions, you're welcome to do them, so I did an impression of my grandpa speaking like this, like an old Jewish man who always talked about his time in the army. The Silver Eagle. I guess his nickname in the army was the Silver Eagle. They reacted very strongly. Huge stomach laughter, the hands up in the air.

 

Micah: He gets the gig and Pixar flies 10-year-old Spencer and his mom out to its San Francisco studio. A quirk of animated filmmaking is that you don't often get to record with the other actors. Spencer taped the Dash parts in a handful of intense one-on-one sessions.

 

Spencer: I was in the studio with Brad Bird the entire time.

 

Micah: Dash doesn't have a ton of dialogue, but Spencer and the director spent hours perfecting his performance. Like one scene where Dash is chased through the jungle by two killer drones.

 

Spencer: The whole thing was like, you need to sound like you're out of breath. You need to sound like you've been sprinting. I tried my darndest to act that, but my experience as an actor was very limited. Brad Bird was like, "This ain't it."

 

Micah: He has Spencer run four laps outside around the Pixar Studios complex.

 

Spencer: He did the first two laps with me. I did the second two laps by myself. It was all laughter the entire time. He was cheering me on, "Come on, you could do it. We're almost done." I remember doing the last lap and instead of taking a break, taking a sip of water, I ran back into the vocal booth and put the headphones on, and went directly into reading the lines.

 

[Music from The Incredibles]

 

Micah: In another scene, Dash is sent to the principal's office for putting a tack on his teacher's seat. He's nearly caught using his super-speed, which is supposed to be a secret.

 

Helen Parr: Dash, this is the third time this year you've been sent to the office. We need to find a better outlet.

 

Dashiell Parr: Maybe I could if you'd let me go out for sports.

 

Helen Parr: Honey, you know why we can't do that.

 

Dashiell Parr: I promise I'll slow up. I'll only be the best by a tiny bit.

 

Helen Parr: Oh, honey, the world just wants us to fit in and to fit in, we just got to be like everybody else.

 

Micah: Navigating the fear that others will judge or punish us for what makes us unique is a core theme in The Incredibles franchise and one that would actually surface in Spencer's real-life beginning in 2004. The Incredibles is one of the most praised and profitable movies of the year. Spencer walks the red carpet, he goes on Conan O'Brien, there are Dash toys in Happy Meals at McDonald's. Then, he returns to regular life as a student in New York.

 

Spencer: People were mean to me.

 

Micah: Really?

 

Spencer: I remember there was a day where, at recess, I was chased around by bullies while they were screaming, "Incredifat."

 

Micah: That's so mean.

 

Spencer: Then that later just morphed into kids being like, "What's good, Dash? Are you going to run away?" Using it as an insult but I just remember being like, "Why do I have to feel bad about this?" That developed this weird gut reaction inside of me. I just associated it as a negative part of my life.

 

Micah: Around age 14, Spencer had to make a big decision. He was outgrowing kids' roles. Once you go through puberty, it's so much harder to get work because casting agents tend to prefer adults who look and sound like teenagers.

 

Spencer: My agents were just like, "If you want to keep doing this, you need to work four times as hard. You need to probably not be in a real school. Change your life completely and dedicate it to acting." I was like, "I do not want to do that."

 

Micah: Why didn't you want to do it?

 

Spencer: I think that was right when I started developing other interests. Right when I got into music. I was not an actor.

 

Micah: He was playing guitar in a band, he read literature. He grew up, but even as a college student, Dash followed him.

 

Spencer: Walking into a party and you meet someone and they're like, "Oh, you're Dash." You could be like, "I actually know how to fly a plane and I just shot someone and they died," and they'd be like, "Cool, so did you meet Samuel L. Jackson?" That makes you feel like you don't have a lot of agency over your own life.

 

Micah: Meanwhile, his indie-pop band, Charly Bliss, was attracting press, they were racking up millions of streams on Spotify, and in 2017 they started touring the world.

 

Spencer: I'm in England. We've just released our second record. It feels amazing. Here's this great sold-out show in Manchester and in-between songs, people scream like, "Dash." Why are you screaming that at me right now? Here's this entirely different creative endeavor that I've been embarking on for a full decade now and I'm still being defined by this thing that I did when I was 10 years old.

 

Micah: Before I began interviewing Spencer for this story, I didn't know anything about the bullying or the heckling. Now I understand that his caginess was more than a fear of being pigeonholed as the Dash guy. It was about protecting himself from the nagging fear that maybe he'd peaked young, though we didn't start talking about any of this until--

 

Presenter: A sequel to The Incredibles is finally on its way. Disney has officially announced the film will arrive in theaters on June 21st, 2019.

 

Micah: I remember one time we talked about it. I was like, "Have you seen it?" You reacted very strongly and you were like, "No, I'm not seeing that stupid movie."

 

Spencer: The fact that I have not seen it it's purely just a formality of the fact that I have been touring for the past five years, almost straight.

 

Micah: I guess to push back-

 

Spencer: Yes, yes. Sure.

 

Micah: -you have had time to see it.

 

Spencer: Am I going to go out of my way to watch the sequel? I'm just not. [laughs]

 

Micah: Go out of your way, as if--

 

Spencer: This is some gotcha journalism, man. Micah showed up outside my apartment with a full news team being like, "Spencer Fox, the movie has been out for four years. What's your excuse?" I had to hold a press conference at Town Hall, "Listen, I want to address the allegations about the fact that I have not yet seen The Incredibles 2. First and foremost, I would never do anything to besmirch The Incredibles franchise." [laughter] I want the insight.

 

Micah: Okay, here. Let's backtrack. How can you possibly fall back on the excuse that like, "Oh, I just haven't got around to it." Yes, right. It seems like you have had really complicated feelings around being Dash.

 

Spencer: Yes.

 

Micah: It seems to me like it's kind of cursed.

 

Spencer: I have so much guilt in admitting to that.

 

Micah: Wouldn't watching Incredibles 2 take something off your shoulders? You're no longer Dash. Someone else is Dash.

 

Spencer: That feels like, now this is fully no longer a part of your life.

 

Micah: Do you know anything about the kid they cast?

 

Spencer: I know that his name is Huck Milner. I don't know much else about him.

 

Micah: On one hand, you have been tormented by this thing that defined you at a very young age. On the other hand, maybe part of the reason that you haven't watched The Incredibles 2 is because you're not ready to give it up.

Spencer: 100%. It's almost like watching someone you really care about just move on and prosper.

 

Micah: Do you feel that Dash has been taken from you?

 

Spencer: Some part of me feels as though I am having something taken from me. The one thing that I did know about the sequel is that it takes place directly after the first movie. Maybe that triggers the gut reaction of being like, "Keep me away from this thing." It's so close to home. I think if there was more fictional space and narrative space between the first and second movie, I would maybe have more comfort in the fact that I was not cast. It all sounds so silly because it's like, no, [sound cut] you weren't cast. You are now 27 and the character is 11.

 

Micah: You're Dash.

 

Spencer: I was.

 

Micah: I'm saying it's not crazy to identify with Dash.

 

Spencer: It just feels crazy to me because I feel like I've been trying my entire life to be like, oh, I'm better than this. I don't need to be defined by this. Now, the second movie comes out, and I'm like, "I can't look at it," but I think that's the truth behind any strong attachment that you retain during your adult life, is there's always going to be these conflicting emotions about how far it drifts away from you, and the question of how much control do you have over this relationship.

 

Micah: The one bit of control that you've had was just not watching the movie.

 

Spencer: Absolutely.

 

Micah: Shall we watch it?

 

Spencer: Let's watch The Incredibles 2.

 

Micah: We put on the movie. As super-villains continue to threaten mankind, the Incredibles family struggle to find their place in a world that doesn't seem to want their help.

 

Dashiell Parr: We want to fight the bad guy.

 

Helen Parr: No, you don't, that from now on, you can--

 

Violet Parr: So now, we've got to go back to never using our power.

 

Dashiell Parr: It defines who I am.

 

Bob Parr: We're now saying you have-- What?

 

Dashiell Parr: Someone on TV said it.

 

Helen Parr: Superheroes are illegal.

 

Spencer: This is just funny, watching this movie.

 

Micah: How so?

 

Spencer: It's just crazy. All of this imagery and all of these things are so weirdly tied to my experiences in life. It's like seeing family photos that you're not in, or something.

 

Micah: I wish I could say the movie moved Spencer to tears or provoked deep disgust or something dramatic like that, but this is a Pixar movie. It's built on emotional conflicts that set up satisfying character arcs with slapstick hijinks for comedic relief, leading to a carefully paced action-packed crescendo, and a heart-warming ending.

 

[The Incredibles music plays]

 

Spencer: It was great.

 

Micah: Really?

 

Spencer: It was super funny, yes. It was so fun.

 

Micah: What could you say wrong about that lovely film [laughter] besides the-- ?

 

Spencer: There's a little bit of magic that was definitely there in the first one that just for some reason, it just wasn't in the sequel. [laughter] I don't know.

 

Micah: What did you think of Dash?

 

Spencer: I think that Huck Milner crushed it, did an amazing job. It's silly that it's taken me this long. Just straight-up silly.

 

[laughter]

 

Micah: Before we started the movie, I told Spencer I had a surprise for him when it finished. I reached out to Huck Milner.

 

Spencer: I knew you were going to. I knew it.

 

Micah: I asked him if he would be willing to talk to you. He was like, yes, he really wants to talk to you.

 

Spencer: Oh, my God. I would love to talk to Huck Milner.

 

Micah: A couple of weeks later, I get them both on the phone.

 

Spencer: It is nice to finally meet you, man.

 

Huck Milner: Yes, nice to meet you too.

 

Micah: At first, it was a bit awkward so as an icebreaker, I had Spencer tell the story of Brad Bird making him run all those laps around Pixar Studios.

 

Huck: That happened to me, too.

 

Spencer: No way.

 

Huck: Except, I decided to run around the studio.

 

Spencer: It was your choice?

 

Huck: During a lunch break, I just decided that I wanted to get more into the role, or whatever-

 

Spencer: Oh, my God.

 

Huck: -so I just then ran around in the studio, once. I remember that day. I think I was wearing an actual Dash costume, which was really funny.

 

Spencer: No. Oh, my God. Well, I applaud your dedication to the role, man.

 

Micah: Huck, do you have any heroes? Are there any actors that you really look up to?

 

Huck: Well, I definitely look up to Samuel L. Jackson and I looked up to Spencer Fox a lot when I was five or six because I remember watching the movie a lot and a lot.

 

Spencer: Oh, my God. That's wild.

 

Micah: Huck, what was your audition like?

 

Huck: Well, what I did was I did, first, an mp3 audition. I actually listened to Spencer Fox in the movie like a billion times-

 

Spencer: Oh, my goodness.

 

Huck: -beforehand because I wanted to get it completely correct. Yes. My mom just found the original audio of me trying to imitate you.

 

Spencer: No way.

 

Micah: No way. We have to hear this.

 

Spencer: Oh my God, yes. Please.

 

Huck: My name is Huckleberry Austin Milner and I'm Dash. Can somebody say fast? Fast is my middle name.

 

[laughter]

 

Micah: We got to get you two together in real life.

 

Spencer: So true.

 

Huck: That'd be cool.

 

Spencer: Post-pandemic, we're going bowling.

 

[laughter]

 

Micah: After the Huck meeting, I called Spencer back.

 

[music]

 

Is there room for two Dashes in your life?

 

Spencer: Yes, absolutely. My relationship to the character, it was under lock and key, super guarded, very hesitant to talk about it, but I think this process has been all about opening that up. Especially after just seeing the second movie. My relationship towards all of this has changed so dramatically which has been beautiful. Dash is in good hands, man.

 

[music]

 

Brooke: Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast. Check out the big show on Friday. Usually posts around suppertime. Thanks.

 

[music]