Bette Midler Interview for Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Bette Midler is a legendary triple threat, a singer, actor, and comedian. She started out in theater, before her larger-than-life stage presence expanded into pop stardom in the 1970’s. By the 1980’s and 1990’s, it expanded into films like The Rose, Beaches, Stella, Hocus Pocus, The First Wives Club, and The Stepford Wives.

Now at age 64, Midler translates her legendary talents to a whole new medium, voice work, with the film Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore. The still-Divine Miss M gave us the 411 on her character.

“I’m a cat,” Bette describes of it, “I play Kitty Galore. Kitty Galore is an Egyptian sphinx cat. She’s hairless except for a little hair on her tail. She’s very cranky because she’s been rejected by her beloved human family and she’s determined to rule the world.”

“I came in for a number of sessions and it was really curious because, when I first started, it was just a sketch,” she continues, “As time went on, the backgrounds of the other characters got more and more filled in. That was very exciting to watch. I’ve never experienced that before.”

Bette was also asked about whether she was a cat or dog person.

“In real life, my pet passed,” Midler replies, “I’m a non-pet person at this point.

Midler described the process of doing voice work for the film.

“ It’s not just isolating,” she reveals, “it’s a little bit lonely because it’s just you in a dark room with a sketch of a character or sometimes a filled-in scene, but still you don’t work with the other actors,” It’s like one long looping session. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, ADR for days.’ The real thrill, I think, comes from seeing the finished product. The fact that [director] Brad [Peyton] could keep all these balls in the air and make all these that would form into one movie, it was absolutely staggering to me. I couldn’t imagine how you did it, because he was working with live actors, he was working with animals.”

“There’s nothing harder than working with animals,” Bette adds, “Those animals really looked like they knew what they were doing, but honestly, they’re animals. ‘Stay, stay, stay.’ I worked with animals before and it’s like, ‘Oh God.’ So the.....

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