Justin Timberlake signed on to star in the new Trolls movie because he wanted to set a good example for his goddaughters.
The singer/actor plays Branch in the movie, which came out earlier this month (Nov16), but he explains he was initially reluctant to sign on to the film because he thought it would lack substance.
However, he ultimately committed to the movie because he found out it featured a female lead character.
“I have a son who's almost two, but my best friend has two daughters, so I have two goddaughters,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I think I was afraid to go into Trolls because I was like, ‘Well, there's probably going to be more frivolity to it than substance’.”
“But then I looked at the story and I'm like, ‘Wait, hold on, we have a female protagonist that has a belly, crazy hair’ — and thinking about my two goddaughters and what women must go through from such a young age of being ashamed of their body and their appearance,” he added. “And I'm like, ‘Wait, she's a troll!’ For young females to get to see that, I was like, ‘Whoa, that's not frivolous at all. That's so important.’ And what a cool way into getting them into the theatre — ‘I wanna be like Princess Poppy, not Barbie’.”
And he was thrilled he was also able to share the film with his young son Silas.
"One of the perks of doing this film was I got to stream it early for my son and he already knows all the characters," he told recently told Ellen DeGeneres. "He knows, like, 12 different characters. He's a genius. He really is, you can clap for him… He loves Trolls."
