Lucy Liu Talks ‘Moonfish,’ Indie Animation and Venice Premiere

For Lucy Liu, who has voiced memorable characters in everything from “Kung Fu Panda” to “Strange World,” being part of the independently made, black-and-white animated film “Moonfish” was all about lending her name and support to first-time filmmaker Daniel Zvereff.

“These are the people that are not just the creatives, but the ones who are going to be the future,” Liu tells Variety. “I’m just fascinated by how people work and how things start when there’s not all this red tape.”

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 6 after receiving a grant from Biennale College Cinema, “Moonfish” follows a pair of astronauts, voiced by Liu and “The Gilded Age” star Morgan Spector, as they embark on an isolating mission to the moon with a corporate quota to meet if they want to return home.

“I really wanted to have the film take place in an environment that was an allegory to our current human condition we’re all experiencing right now, where society is very plugged in, but simultaneously we’re all growing a bit disconnected,” Zvereff says.

Zvereff designed the 2D-animated film so that he could finish it completely on his own, if need be. Thankfully, as Zvereff worked over the course of nine months, he managed to bring on two animators, Hoss Wheeler and Devin Grover.

“When I watch 2D-animated films, I feel like I’m being exposed to the subconscious of that artist,” Zvereff says of his approach.

Liu adds, “It’s amazing what digital has done for the speed of animation but you can really feel the appreciation and the craftsmanship [here]. There is a tenderness and an imperfection that I appreciate.”

Unlike Liu, Spector had never done an animated film before “Moonfish.” The trickiest part was getting into his character’s mental headspace as he goes “a little mad,” as Spector puts it.

“This particular class of people has come to live on the moon, and they’ve evolved, essentially, as moon people. But they’ve also evolved as an underclass; they are the group of people without rights, assets or any real hope for the future,” Spector says of Zvereff’s worldbuilding.

Liu, of course, also voices the talking fish that accompanies the pair (which Zvereff likens to how miners brought along canaries to know when they had to leave) amidst the mundanity of the corporate tasks at hand.

“The future that Daniel’s imagining is one in which the relationship between human beings and their tools has been totally inverted. The corporation has merged with the computer in a sort of perfect authoritarian machine that uses human beings as fodder, basically,” Spector says. “It’s a vision of the world that feels continuous with the one we live in.”

While the film explores isolation and loneliness in space, with the dialogue sparse and to-the-point, Zvereff realized during the writing process that it needed to ultimately be positive about the future of humanity.

“That’s something that happens as an artist. When you’re making something, you’re taking in all these feelings you’re happening and running them through this prism,” he says. “And out comes this beautiful, unexpected light.”