HANK Azaria talks about finding the right voices for his various roles in Night At The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, working with Ben Stiller yet again and why he was yet another cast member to become distracted by co-star Amy Adams’ tight trousers.

Q: How many voices did you actually read through before settling on the one you actually use with? Also, with regards to The Thinker – when it was written was it not as stupid as we imagined?
Hank Azaria: The Thinker was definitely written to be stupid. The Thinker and Abraham Lincoln, I just did temporary versions of them on the set just so they had something to animate to and they ended up using them. We tried a bunch of different things. Abraham Lincoln was hard because you had to be reverential but also make him funny. And the dignified ones weren’t funny and the funny ones were too silly. I got kind of addicted to recording Abraham Lincoln; I never wanted him to stop. I still wanted him to keep going and they’d say: “No, you’re cut off, that’s enough, it works!”

We also tried a bunch of different versions of Kah Mun Rah and I did about five or six for a camera test and as a joke I said [affects voice]: “What about Boris Karloff, he’d have been a good mummy if he were still alive?” And I still can’t believe that we actually used that.

Q: You’ve worked with Ben Stiller about four times now. How has it been?
Hank Azaria: Yes, but I didn’t really take to him those first three times.

Q. Were you distracted by Amy Adams in those trousers because every male journalist has been talking about them?
Hank Azaria: I was open with Amy about my distraction over the trousers. I think I said something very clever and went: “Nice pants!” She said: “Yeah, they really hug you from behind. If it works, great, if not, I’m ok with it.” I said: “I think it’s working.”

Q: There are a couple of scenes where you’re seated on top of some of the goodies from the Smithsonian institute.
Hank Azaria: I didn’t know where you were going with that…

Q: If you had to take home anything from any museum in the world and think, this is really cool, what would it be?
Hank Azaria: I’d probably find out what the most expensive thing was. I’d go with the Hope Diamond.

Read our review of Night At The Museum 2

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