The Sheep Detectives cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicholas Braun, said the family-friendly mystery is ultimately about embracing others and celebrating friendship.
“There are important life lessons for everyone,” Louis-Dreyfus, who voices sheep Lily, told us in a recent interview.
“The idea of exploring and really understanding pain and loss in your own life so that you can move forward and beyond it — not repress it, not forget it, but really carry it as a part of you — is a hard lesson to learn, but a good one to learn,” she said.
“And then, the idea of inclusivity and really thinking about your own life and how inclusive you are in your own life. I think, to a certain extent, we all, even with the best of intentions, sometimes aren’t as inclusive as we might be. And what are we missing as a result? Yeah. So it’s an interesting idea to consider.”
Nicholas Braun says the film is also about finding connection
Braun, who plays local cop Tim, said one of his favorite parts of the film was figuring out how to make his character “really relatable in the beginning of the movie.”
“I’m known as sort of faking it,” he said of his character. “As if I’m good at this thing, and I don’t think I actually am. And nobody believes in me, but, you know, he’s not a quitter either.”
“It’s trying to figure out where does he get his confidence? What does that look like? And it was written really well — a guy who’s sort of alone. He’s literally the only cop in this town. He’s trying to be helpful, but he’s not respected.”
Braun added that Tim’s connection with the sheep becomes the emotional core of the story.
“And over the course of the film, these extremely unexpected little people — these sheep — actually believe in him. And they realize he is the guy they need to work with and they need to show him he can do it, you know?”
“It really is such a sweet thing that these two — the sheep who have lost something enormous for them, the person that they love the most, and Tim, who has no one, a very lonely soul — find each other,” he continued.
“And so it’s a beautiful part of the movie and trying to figure out how to bring that to life and not miss any moments along the way.”
Watch the full interviews with the cast below. The Sheep Detectives is in theaters now.