If you want to know how Kimiko Glenn got cast as the hyperactive squirrel Kiff in Disney’s latest animated sugar rush, you just have to hear her talk. Not in character—just talk. That’s the voice.
“I always try to do a weird voice,” Glenn laughs, “and then they end up saying, ‘Just use your regular voice.’ So apparently I sound like a cartoon.”
Kiff, the 2D fever dream that feels like Rugrats met Rocco’s Modern Life in a South African coffee shop, is one of those rare shows that can sneak an existential crisis past the babysitter. Glenn plays Kiff with the boundless energy of a squirrel who just chugged a smoothie, but she’s not dialing it in. “Every time I go into the booth I feel like I’m just playing,” she says. “It’s like being a kid again.”
Of course, this kid was raised on Celine Dion, Lea Salonga, and Shania Twain. “Celine was my first album,” she says. “I used to mimic her all the time—she makes such weird, bold choices.” Glenn credits that early mimicry with helping her find her comedic voice, too. “It’s how I learned to perform,” she says. “Imitating Celine probably made me an actor.”
The show features a new song in every episode, which for someone who starred in Waitress on Broadway, is kind of a flex. “It’s not how I would sing it,” she says. “It’s how Kiff would sing it. There’s a rhythm and musicality to her. Sometimes it’s a genre I’d never even think of—it just depends on the story.”
But before you go thinking it’s all singing squirrels and cartoon hijinks, there’s also Mel Brooks. Glenn appears in History of the World, Part II, a sequel so overstuffed with comedians it basically qualifies as the Coachella of sketch comedy. “It’s every funny person in LA,” she says. “And somehow, me.”
If this is what Saturday morning cartoons have become, we’re in good hands. Just don’t ask Kimiko to call Celine. “I’m too embarrassed,” she says. “I love her, but I can’t—I don’t know how to make that happen.”
Someone get her that hotline.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
