For Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan, landing the role of Louie Duck on Disney's DuckTales reboot was like a dream come true. A fan of the 1987 original series, he admits he cried when he heard the news. At the same time, however, he was convinced that it wouldn't last.
"We'd only recorded like two episodes, and I was like, 'I think they're going to replace us with children,'" Moynihan recalled to CBR and other outlets at the D23 Expo. "But it didn't happen, thank God. I was so worried. I was going to be so devastated that it was going to go away. Now I'm going to be mad at a child for the rest of my life."
One of the best elements of the new DuckTales is the attention paid to the character interactions, with Scrooge McDuck having a distinct relationship with each of the triplets. "I think [Louie and Scrooge] have a lot of similar interests," Moynihan said, "which is just cash and swimming it. It's funny, I love how you see people online, all the fans talking about how, 'Oh, Webby hangs out with Dewey more,' and it's just, I love all of it. I love all the minutia of it."
Asked which of the boys is Scrooge's favorite, Moynihan seriously considered the question before admitting, "I feel like it would be Huey. I feel like if we had time and I was able to give a dissertation about it, I feel like it would be Huey. I'm going to disappoint myself, and [Scrooge] would want it to be Louie, but he would screw it up somehow. ... It's interesting to play. Huey is the adventurer, the rule-follower. Dewey is the one who'll bend the rules, the Han Solo to Huey's Luke Skywalker. And then I'm kind of everyone else. I'm Chewbacca, I'm C-3PO, I'm whoever you need me to be. He's sitting there on his phone, listening to everything and thinking to himself, 'Well, I have to deal with that.'"
Of the three nephews, Louie has proved to be both the most self-sufficient but also the most vulnerable. He doesn't open himself up often, because when he does it can affect him more harshly than any other character. "[There's] a lot of the acting I've been doing with Louie lately, Moynihan reflected. "There's been a lot of Louie coming into his own as this little businessman, and Louie Inc. is starting to happen, and he's starting to feel confident in his schemes. But he's also having to be like, 'Oh, I have to be a good person.' That's fun as an actor to go in and [explore]. I'm in a lot of cartoons, to some of the most dramatic acting I have to do is for Louie. Louie does a lot of realizing that he's being a real pile of garbage sometimes, and I think that's a good thing for kids to realize sometimes."
Returning Sept. 3 on Disney Channel, DuckTales stars David Tennant, Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, Bobby Moynihan, Kate Micucci, Beck Bennett, Tony Anselmo and Toks Olagundoye.