Eugenio Derbez is on fire! The actor and comedian stopped by On Air With Ryan Seacrest on Tuesday, July 30, and you’ll never guess which of your favorite characters he’s secretly behind. Plus, Eugenio dished on his brave journey from Mexico to America and his latest projects Dora and the Lost City of Gold and The Angry Birds Movie 2.
“Imagine Adam Sandler one day saying ‘I’m done here; I’m going to go to China [to] start a career in Chinese’ and especially imagine that in China nobody knows him so it was really scary and everyone thought I was crazy, but I felt it was the right moment and it was now or never,” Eugenio recalled of packing up his life and heading for the States. “I took a leap of faith and I shut down my life, my office, everything [in Mexico] and I moved here. … My accountant was like, ‘You’re crazy! What if it doesn’t work?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know? I can come back again.’ … I had this feeling and it was burning inside me.”
And time has proven it was the right move, with a bevy of credits behind him, Eugenio revealed he’s even been voicing characters you never knew about.
“This is the first time I’m doing an original voice in English because usually I’m the voice for Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy in Latin America,” Eugenio shared while chatting about his role in upcoming Angry Birds 2. “Really — if you have the DVD of Shrek, just switch to Spanish and that’s me, I’m the donkey in Shrek … and I’m also in The Secret Life of Pets … I’m Snowball so I’m Kevin Hart!”
In Dora, the funnyman portrays the villain Alejandro Gutierrez and confirmed the film is for the whole family.
“She’s not an 8-year-old kid anymore, she’s a teenager,” he said of the beloved children's cartoon making it to the big screen. “And she’s going out in the jungle for the first time ever and it’s really funny how she faces the world and society.”
Watch back the on-air moment above for more, including to watch KIIS FM’s Patty Rodriguez pitch Eugenio an original script she wrote!
Catch Dora and the Lost City of Gold in theaters August 9 and The Angry Birds Movie 2 on August 16!