The first full-length animated Scooby-Doo adventure for the big screen is the never-before-told stories both of Scooby-Doo’s origins and the greatest mystery in the career of Mystery Inc.
SCOOB! reveals how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined with young detectives Fred, Velma, and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now with hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global “dogpocalypse,” the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone imagined.
Bringing back the franchise’s classic characters was a no-brainer including Dee Dee Skyes. Originally voiced by Vernee Watson-Johnson, Kiersey Clemons now steps into the role of Blue Falcon’s assistant in the mission to protect Scooby-Doo and Shaggy from Dick Dastardly, who wants Scooby for his own nefarious scheme.Much like the rest of the franchise, Dee Dee Skyes received a fashion upgrade from her classic red turtle-neck, blue skirt and red boots to a red, white, silver, and blue latex jumpsuit and her hair is tied in a bun but she still kept her sass, intellect and hilarious timing.
The Koalition spoke to Clemons about SCOOB! and what’s it like to portray Skyes for the new generation.
“I didn’t necessarily use the other versions as a reference per se, the 2020 version of Dee Dee more of a rebirth of a 2020 version of Dee Dee and who this person would be. The way in which she handles this incompetent boss. I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to and the way she uses humor is something I relate to. I just wanted to make her original.”
“I had a lot of fun kind of handling the ways she passively-aggressively speaks to Blue Falcon. I thought that was very fun. I kind of like got off on it; being able to talk back at your boss in a way that he doesn’t know you’re doing it. I got to get out a lot there. That was fun. Working with our director Tony, he’s a great leader and we had a lot of fun and laughed a lot while making this movie. He was a great person to be in a dark booth with, keeping the energy up with.”
First announced in 2014, SCOOB! has gone through many changes to make each character perfectly and fully fleshed out. This includes Dee Dee who wasn’t always the fun, lovable character in SCOOB! “Initially she was very serious and filled with a lot of jargon. I was kind of recording her headstrong and then I think the more we started getting into the scenes with Scooby and Shaggy and handling conflict we decided to loosen her up a nit as much as she is very intelligent and literally the pilot of this ship, she is also a really good team player and someone that you can lean on and she needed to have those qualities. I think I inspired the SCOOB! team to write her a bit more mellow than she initially was but she’s not as mellow as Shaggy.”
Clemons joined the Tony Cervone-directed feature in 2019 and loved how the animation team used some of her mannerisms to bring Dee Dee to life.
“I was able to see a sketch of the character. It was cool because once they started to actually get the animation going and I could see her moving, it was fun to see the way they would use some of the mannerisms and the way I would move my body when recording the line and had Dee Dee do it too. That was really awesome.”
When you’re recording, “you know what your character looks like and you know what the world will look like but it’s really using your imagination, reading the script and you can get descriptions obviously of what things are like and what they would feel like. So it really was a lot of literally just imagining things in your head, which is different from making a movie where you get to see a set and you get to meet the other actors and everything is literally there; this is kind of just imagining it. You get to see the movie, which is crazy in the end because someone’s been describing it to you the whole time and then you finally see the world and sometimes it’s nothing like you imagined and like in the best way it’s always a lot grander.”
SCOOB! will release on May 15th for a 48-hour rental PVOD for $19.99, or EST price of $24.99.
To learn more about SCOOB! and Dee Dee Skyes listen to our full interview below.
