New Zealand actor and comedian Jemaine Clement is having a moment thanks to recent reunion gigs for Flight of the Conchords, his musical comedy act with Bret McKenzie, and co-starring role in buzzy Disney+ relationship drama Alice & Steve.

When Deadline sits down with Clement in a sweltering lakeside bar at the Annecy International Film Festival, it is not to talk about either of these shows but rather his long-running voice role in the Kiri and Lou pre-school stop-motion animation series.

Clement has travelled to Annecy for the premiere of prequel movie Kiri and Lou Go Raaa! in which he voices Lou, a gentle purple creature with a stretchy trunk who rescues an ungrateful little dinosaur Kiri from a flood, in a difficult start to an enduring friendship.

The actor’s involvement in the show began a decade ago came through his friendship with Harry Sinclair, the show’s co-director with Antony Elworthy, and composer Don Mcglashan.

“Together they had a band called The Front Lawn. I was a massive fan and Flight of the Conchords was very influenced by The Front Lawn,” says Clement.  

“Both those guys are heroes to me. Harry just emailed me and said, ‘I’m doing this cartoon’ I went and recorded a pilot. I didn’t know it would go on for so long.  They say it’s eight years. but I’m sure it was longer ago when we recorded the pilot, more like 10 years.”

He modeled Lou’s voice on the intonation and phraseology of his now teenage son as a young child.

“When my son was really little he had a few phrases that have stuck in my head, like once when I was carrying him on my shoulders and he said, ‘Don’t drop me or I’ll fall down and drop on the ground’. Basically, my character’s an expression of that one sentence and his intonation when he was the age of the audience, but obviously with a man’s voice,” explains Clement.

In the interim, the Lou and Kiri has quietly become a worldwide favorite with pre-schoolers and their parents. After launching on TVNZ in New Zealand and CBC Canada, it was acquired for Cbeebies shortly as well as by a raft of broadcasters including ABC Kids in Australia, YLE in Finland, SVT in Sweden among many others.

At 60 minutes, voicing the movie was more of a commitment than the TV show episodes which run to five minutes.

“It’s so slow the process of stop motion that I do about four hours a month when we’re in production,” says Clement, who finds time to go into a studio wherever he happens to be at the time.

“I’ve done it in Athens, New York, Auckland, Wellington, L.A,” he says.

It is Clement’s first time at Annecy, but by chance he has voice roles in two other productions at the festival: Laika’s Wildwood, the ambitious stop-motion opus from Travis Knight, and Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper. Laika is teasing the production at this year’s festival ahead of its fall release.

In Wildwood, Clement voices the role of Roger Swindon, the manipulative right-hand man of South Wood governor Lars Svik. He counters reports that he his role is the Owl Rex is the Crown Prince of the Avian Principality.

“I’m not the owl. I was never the owl… I think people just guessed that I might be the owl, but it was speculation,” he says.

“We recorded it about five years ago. I can remember it very clearly. It was during the pandemic and a very distinct time. I’d wanted to work with Laika for ever since I saw Coraline. I also happened to have read the books because of my dad, or at least the first one on which the film is based.”

“I hope they do more, but I doubt it because it’s so time consuming and expensive to make them, but I’d be so excited to do it again.”

In Rogue Trooper, Clement is among a raft of comedians brought in to play small roles in the feature adapted from the eponymous sci-fi strip in the UK comic 2000 AD

“Matt Berry and I play a pair of war profiteers who find weapons and equipment on this battlefield and sell it to whoever. We’re like two dodgy salesmen.  I’m a fan of those comics as well. I grew up with them, so it made it easy.”

Although the feature, which premiered in Annecy on Monday, is classed as an animation his role involved performance capture rather than only his voice.

“I got to play with the other actors,” he says this makes a change from his other voice work. “I don’t think I’ve ever met any of the actors on Wildwood and with Kiri and Lou, I only met Liv (Olivia Tennet) once before Annecy, even though we play best friends on the show.”

Clement says his connection with animation runs deeper than working as a voice actor, revealing that he launched a stop-motion-focused animation company called Fifty Fields some 25 years ago.

“It only lasted a year or so. We made a road safety advert and some shorts and even won award. Then I started acting and writing TV shows and realized that was what I wanted to do.”

He also worked briefly Taika Waititi, his longtime friend and collaborator on 2014 mokumentary What We Do In The Shadows and 2024 series Time Bandits, on the upcoming Netflix Charlie vs. The Chocolate Factory. Waititi is voicing the upcoming work as well executive producing.

“I was supposed to write the music and started writing some songs, but then we did Time Bandits and were overtaken by that… we first pitched it some five years ago but that was something I had to let go of.”

Outside of animation, Clement is enjoying a buzzy moment thanks to recent Flight of the Conchords reunion gigs in New Zealand and L.A.

Clement says they are not a precursor to a revival of their hit 2007-2009 HBO TV show, which grew out of their live shows and subsequent 2005 BBC radio series.

“We haven’t been talking about making the TV show, no, but we just did some live shows for the first time in eight years at the Greek Theatre… It was really fun, I loved it… the idea of doing a film hangs around still, but we’re getting old now,” he says.

Clement is also gaining recognition for his performance in the drama Alice & Steve about two longtime friends whose relationship is strained when Steve embarks on a romance with Alice’s daughter.

“People usually want to talk to me about Flight of the Conchords, or What We Do in the Shadows, but this week it’s all Alice & Steve. It’s good to have something different to talk about,” he says, adding he has no confirmation of. Second season yet.

“The writer’s written a second season and I guess Disney will see how many people watch the first season.”