A third of the way in Luca, Pixar’s newest Disney Plus-exclusive publication, the eponymous young sea monster meets his strange uncle Urgo, a transparent deep sea dweller who enjoys the darkness and silence of the seabed. Urgo is strange even for a sea monster, and he keeps talking about how much he loves the nothingness of the deep sea. Although not immediately recognizable, the anglerfish-like creature was brought to life by none other than Sacha Baron Cohen.
Luca’s parents call on Urgo in the hope of sending their son to the bottom of the ocean and dispelling his curiosity about the human world. But according to director Enrico Casarosa, Urgo shouldn’t even be one character first. He represents everything that Luca fears, which originally took on a less tangible form.
“We needed Luca’s worst nightmare. I thought, ‘Well what’s the worst nightmare for a curious child?’ It was like nothing. Darkness. Black, ”says Casarosa. “So we started thinking about the depth. Then we ask ourselves, ‘How do we embody it?’ Let’s make a moment of imagination [where] he imagines being there?
A potential exile in the depths of the sea only prompts Luca to run away from home and venture to the surface with his best friend Alberto. That’s the last we see of Uncle Urgo during the film’s runtime, but Cohen did so much for the character that the Luca
“It was a pleasure to see,” says Casarosa. “[Cohen] came in and he was improvising so much that we even put a little button at the end of our movie to include more of the improvisation he did for us because it was so much fun. “
Luca it’s outside Disney Plus now.