Regardless of how charming the face of your film might be, even if it is the marshmallow like Baymax, no movie – most of the time – can stand on just the power of its leads alone. A good supporting cast can be the savior of a bad movie, and a bad one can be the death nail in a good one. Luckily for Disney’s upcoming Big Hero 6, the supporting voice cast was top notch and made sure they brought everything they had to their roles. In an interview from New York Comic Con, we took a moment to chat with T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung and Génesis Rodríguez about improvising lines, creative freedom during recording and physical requirements during production.

“Because I knew I was the comic relief,” began Miller, concerning his role in the film, “because they knew I was a comedian, and because they knew I was an improviser, they let [me and Scott Adsit] improvise, so a lot of my lines are improvised. I think a big part of that was well, you’re a writer; you’re somebody who kind of does your own comedy, so just bring it. I remember going, well, what do you want the character’s voice to sound like? And what are you looking for with the comedy? And they were like, we want it to sound like you, and I was like, right, right, but do you want it as, like, a kid…? And they were [like], no, no, it’s just your voice.’” Miller went on to elaborate that when he asked for clarification on how Fred was funny, the creative team simply replied, “Like you are. It’s just you.” The comedian added, “That was just really liberating, because then I get to sort of do my thing and not have to think like, well is this Disney enough? Or could this be Disney? You know, I do a lot of voice over, and I do a lot of stuff for children’s programming, so I know the scope and size of the box I have to be performing in – you can’t be like, let’s f**k all of this p***y juice, or whatever it is – but, you can really push the limits of what you can do within that realm, and that was really fun. I got some really bizarre stuff in the movie that I didn’t thing I was going to get in.”

Of course when you hear a statement like that from T.J. Miller, you can’t let him walk away without an example, so when asked what was the most bizarre thing that made it in, the comedian stated, “There’s a song called “Fred’s Angels,” and I can’t believe they let me sing it. It kind of comes out of nowhere, and it’s ridiculous. [There’s also] some lines where I’m just like, ‘Welcome to me casa,’ and I think I say something like, ‘That’s French for front porch!’ It’s just stuff that doesn’t make any sense at all, and that’s so exciting to me. I try and get stuff like that into every movie, so like in Cloverfield, I mispronounce some words on-purpose, and then in Yogi Bear 3D I put some stuff in there I really liked, [so] I try and do that whenever I can. The fact that Disney let me do that, and that kids are gonna be remembering those weird lines and singing the song along with it… insane.”

Of course Miller isn’t the only actor to shine in Big Hero 6. “She took a lot of energy,” said Rodríguez, regarding her character Honey Lemon’s excitable nature. “She was a lot of fun but very exhausting because she’s overly positive about everything, and six hours of that just kind of drains you. At the end of the day you just kind of want to crawl into bed and forget about the world.” When asked how physical she became during recording in order to increase Honey’s excitable tone, Rodríguez explained, “Oh my god, yeah, because it’s so hard to get that emotion. You don’t have anything else to work with, so I was jumping around in there, talking a lot with my hands, and I do that, but I had to do it a lot more for this movie.”

“It’s something the directors put into my ear,” elaborated Chung, concerning her statements during the NYCC panel about GoGo being the group’s Clint Eastwood. “She’s a woman of very few words, but when she does say something, it’s usually pretty sassy and sarcastic. She does have a couple moments in the film where she exposes her soft spot, but it’s rare… It’s tough love,” Rodríguez added. “I loved [GoGo] from the start,” continued Chung, “every line they gave me was pretty hysterical, like ‘carbon fiber underpants’ or, you know, she’s usually yelling at Wasabi and Fred a lot, [so] I felt like the most challenging part of GoGo was doing all the efforts. Like ‘know you’re jumping and you’re landing,’ or ‘you’re throwing your discs,’ I felt like that was pretty tricky. But I loved her from the beginning.”

Big Hero 6 hits theaters November 7, 2014.

Images: Disney/Marvel