{"id":514839,"date":"2026-06-23T19:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T19:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514839\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T19:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T19:32:12","slug":"jemaine-clement-talks-kiri-and-lou-conchords-alice-steve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514839\/","title":{"rendered":"Jemaine Clement Talks \u2018Kiri And Lou\u2019 \u2018Conchords\u2019 ‘Alice & Steve\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNew Zealand actor and comedian Jemaine Clement<\/a> is having a moment thanks to recent reunion gigs for Flight of the Conchords<\/a>, his musical comedy act with Bret McKenzie, and co-starring role in buzzy Disney+ relationship drama Alice & Steve.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Deadline sits down with Clement in a sweltering lakeside bar at the Annecy<\/a> International Film Festival, it is not to talk about either of these shows but rather his long-running voice role in the Kiri and Lou<\/a> pre-school stop-motion animation series.<\/p>\n

\n\tClement has travelled to Annecy for the premiere of prequel movie Kiri and Lou Go Raaa! in which he voices Lou, a gentle purple creature with a stretchy trunk who rescues an ungrateful little dinosaur Kiri from a flood, in a difficult start to an enduring friendship.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor\u2019s involvement in the show began a decade ago came through his friendship with Harry Sinclair, the show\u2019s co-director with Antony Elworthy, and composer Don Mcglashan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTogether they had a band called The Front Lawn. I was a massive fan and Flight of the Conchords was very influenced by The Front Lawn,\u201d says Clement. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoth those guys are heroes to me. Harry just emailed me and said, \u2018I\u2019m doing this cartoon\u2019 I went and recorded a pilot. I didn\u2019t know it would go on for so long.\u00a0 They say it\u2019s eight years. but I\u2019m sure it was longer ago when we recorded the pilot, more like 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe modeled Lou\u2019s voice on the intonation and phraseology of his now teenage son as a young child.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen my son was really little he had a few phrases that have stuck in my head, like once when I was carrying him on my shoulders and he said, \u2018Don\u2019t drop me or I\u2019ll fall down and drop on the ground\u2019. Basically, my character\u2019s an expression of that one sentence and his intonation when he was the age of the audience, but obviously with a man\u2019s voice,\u201d explains Clement.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the interim, the Lou and Kiri has quietly become a worldwide favorite with pre-schoolers and their parents. After launching on TVNZ in New Zealand and CBC Canada, it was acquired for Cbeebies shortly as well as by a raft of broadcasters including ABC Kids in Australia, YLE in Finland, SVT in Sweden among many others.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt 60 minutes, voicing the movie was more of a commitment than the TV show episodes which run to five minutes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s so slow the process of stop motion that I do about four hours a month when we\u2019re in production,\u201d says Clement, who finds time to go into a studio wherever he happens to be at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve done it in Athens, New York, Auckland, Wellington, L.A,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Ben Smith, Chris Kingsley, Jemaine Clement, Duncan Jones, Stuart Fenegan and Aneurin Barnard at Rogue Trooper<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is Clement\u2019s first time at Annecy, but by chance he has voice roles in two other productions at the festival: Laika\u2019s Wildwood, the ambitious stop-motion opus from Travis Knight, and Duncan Jones\u2019 Rogue Trooper. Laika is teasing the production at this year\u2019s festival ahead of its fall release. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn Wildwood, Clement voices the role of Roger Swindon, the manipulative right-hand man of South Wood governor Lars Svik. He counters reports that his role is Owl Rex, the Crown Prince of the Avian Principality.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not the owl. I was never the owl\u2026 I think people just guessed that I might be the owl, but it was speculation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe recorded it about five years ago. I can remember it very clearly. It was during the pandemic and a very distinct time. I\u2019d wanted to work with Laika forever, since I saw Coraline. I also happened to have read the books because of my dad, or at least the first one on which the film is based.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI hope they do more, but I doubt it because it\u2019s so time consuming and expensive to make them, but I\u2019d be so excited to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Rogue Trooper, Clement is among a raft of comedians brought in to play small roles in the feature adapted from the eponymous sci-fi strip in the UK comic 2000 AD.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMatt Berry and I play a pair of war profiteers who find weapons and equipment on this battlefield and sell it to whoever. We\u2019re like two dodgy salesmen.\u00a0 I\u2019m a fan of those comics as well. I grew up with them, so it made it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough the feature, which premiered in Annecy on Monday, is classed as an animation his role involved performance capture rather than only his voice.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI got to play with the other actors,\u201d he says this makes a change from his other voice work. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever met any of the actors on Wildwood and with Kiri and Lou, I only met Liv (Olivia Tennet) once before Annecy, even though we play best friends on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tClement says his connection with animation runs deeper than working as a voice actor, revealing that he launched a stop-motion-focused animation company called Fifty Fields some 25 years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt only lasted a year or so. We made a road safety advert and some shorts and even won award. Then I started acting and writing TV shows and realized that was what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also worked briefly Taika Waititi, his longtime friend and collaborator on 2014 mokumentary What We Do In The Shadows and 2024 series Time Bandits, on the upcoming Netflix picture Charlie vs. The Chocolate Factory. Waititi is voicing the upcoming work as well executive producing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was supposed to write the music and started writing some songs, but then we did Time Bandits and were overtaken by that\u2026 we first pitched it some five years ago but that was something I had to let go of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOutside of animation, Clement is enjoying a buzzy moment thanks to recent Flight of the Conchords reunion gigs in New Zealand and L.A.<\/p>\n

\n\tClement says they are not a precursor to a revival of their hit 2007-2009 HBO TV show, which grew out of their live shows and subsequent 2005 BBC radio series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe haven\u2019t been talking about making the TV show, no, but we just did some live shows for the first time in eight years at the Greek Theatre\u2026 It was really fun, I loved it\u2026 the idea of doing a film hangs around still, but we\u2019re getting old now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tClement is also gaining recognition for his performance in the drama Alice & Steve about two longtime friends whose relationship is strained when Steve embarks on a romance with Alice\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople usually want to talk to me about Flight of the Conchords, or What We Do in the Shadows, but this week it\u2019s all Alice & Steve. It\u2019s good to have something different to talk about,\u201d he says, adding he has no confirmation of. Second season yet.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe writer\u2019s written a second season and I guess Disney will see how many people watch the first season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand actor and comedian Jemaine Clement is having a moment thanks to recent reunion gigs for Flight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[168486,196726,219750,321,93,216541,61,60,168487,219751],"class_list":["post-514839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alice-and-steve","tag-annecy","tag-annecy-international-animation-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-flight-of-the-conchords","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jemaine-clement","tag-kiri-and-lou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}