Meet Ivy: Juno Temple on Voicing a Fabulous, Anxious Bird in Netflix's 'Swapped'

Picture Credits: Netflix / Getty Images

Following in the lineage of 2025’s K-Pop Demon Hunters and In Your Dreams, Netflix’s latest animated adventure is Swapped, an eco-focused odyssey helmed by Tangled director Nathan Greno.Swapped follows Ollie (Michael B. Jordan), a rodent belonging to the fictional species Pookoo, who comes across a mysterious power that allows him to embody other animals. His main companion to this adventure is Ivy, a bird and natural predator to the Pookoo, who, like Ollie, learns not to judge a book by its cover.

Voicing Ivy is Juno Temple, an actress who came of age on screen through working with her father, Julien, and got her big mainstream break in 2020 through the Apple TV+ sensation Ted Lasso. 2026 has already seen her take on a major role in Gore Verbinsky’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die before switching over to the world of voice-over.

We caught up with Temple to discuss adjusting to voice acting, the themes of Swapped, and studying birds of paradise.

You grew up acting on camera in your father’s films, but when was your first voice role?

This is the first time I’ve done a voice for a movie ever. I did a voice in a cartoon, which was a much smaller part a while ago. I was sort of coming in and leaving, and I wasn’t a part of the whole process, whereas with this, I’m a part of it from the very early stages, seeing sketches, but it’s not filled with color, and it’s not necessarily immediately in motion, and all these things. Swapped was my first time really getting to see it from an angle that I never expected I would get to see, to be honest with you. It was a really beautiful process, a really interesting process, and so it’s still fresh to me.

Was it a big adjustment?

I would say it’s more like a new state of learning, because you’re walking into a space with a team of people who are guiding you through an entire story, the entire script, and you record it, which is new for me, you know. But also, you don’t have to be off-book, which is also new for me. So you think, ‘God, do I have to have learned all of those pages? Oh, my God.’ I would relate the first session to doing a read-through, but at the same time, you start being shown images and what your character is, maybe going to start to look like. What’s really lovely is you’ve got a group of people who, because this is something that they are so knowledgeable about and have done before and are so excited about, there’s a childlike quality in the room that I felt really excited about because I’m such a child myself. Everyone involved in doing this project was having so much fun telling this story, it’s really the epitome of bringing imagination to life.

Was it a challenge to match your voice to something that suited the look of the character?

Interestingly enough, because I was able to be part of it from quite early on, the character morphs with the person who was cast. They gave her these incredible feathers as a stand-in for my hair. I was like, ‘Oh my God, she’s so fabulous.’ I was just more nervous about the fact that I’m in the room with the creators. You’ve got the animation team in the room with you at the same time, and you’re like, I just hope that my voice is what they wanted it to be. Because I hate my voice. Can’t stand it. So I think the fact that somebody was interested in my voice, I was like, wow, okay. But the playfulness of figuring out where you can push your voice to, the places that you would maybe be told to bring it down a notch on camera, like being squeaky, or allowing yourself to panic in a shrill way, and things like that, that really work with animation. Is it like a heightened version of your voice, kind of isn’t it? It’s also different because you don’t actually go into the room and do any talking with the other actors, which is an interesting process too. What a pleasure to be working with these actors, but then I actually haven’t met them yet.

Picture Credit: Netflix

So you still haven’t met Michael B. Jordan or Tracy Morgan?

Nope. I’m in a film with them, I feel like it would be weird if I don’t ever meet, our characters literally become each other.

Did you look back on some of your favorite performances in animation history to prepare?

I did watch a lot of animation, but again, I didn’t know what happens when you walk into the booth. I didn’t know if they’d already created a cartoon, and it was almost like doing ADR, and you match your dialogue to mouth movements. But also, I did a movie called Maleficent, where I played a tiny fairy godmother to Sleeping Beauty. There were beats where we were kind of animated, but we were in wet suits with dots on our faces and wires flying around in entirely white rooms. I think truthfully, the animation characters that work and are the most impactful for me are the ones that really feel emotion.

Weirdly, a movie that is one of the most important animation films to me, it’s a film that I check in with on a monthly basis, is Wall-E, and that film showed the ability to not have a lot of dialogue and the different ways you can say Eva and Wall-E and the different emotions you can bring into that was something that I thought was quite important to pay attention to. Another thing I watched a lot was just YouTube videos of birds of paradise because they have so much personality. I really enjoyed watching their emotions and their body language, especially when you see these birds kind of doing their rituals. It’s normally for mating, so it’s not what I was going to be doing, but you see their precision in their movement.

What appealed to you about the character of Ivy when you first read the script?

She learns a lot throughout this movie, and the main themes of the movie were really impactful to me. I’m a really big believer in not judging books by their cover. This one takes it to the nth degree of getting to actually step into the skin of the person you’re judging, which we don’t always get to experience. That’s a really important thing to take forward always, whatever you do in life, no matter how old you are, and then also the idea of friendship and really being there for each other. Surviving something like what the creatures in this movie go through, you wouldn’t be able to do it alone.

Also, I wanted to be a part of an animation that is really about sustainability and the planet and the environment that we are living in, and we are slowly wiping out, not so slowly anymore, and all the incredible animals and creatures that are going to be displaced and be some of them lost forever if we keep doing that. It’s an incredibly important message. I think when you tell stories through animation with important aspects to them, people pay attention more because it feels somewhat palatable, and I think our environment and all the things that that come along with it being beautiful and a place that is worth protecting is something that I think we do need to keep talking about all the time. So doing it in a way where it’s incorporated into a film for the family, is a way that you can create that as a discussion for people from young ages, understanding that there may be animals that they’ll never get to see again if we keep wiping out the rainforest. I found the story really, really moving and all of those things encompassed together, what an honor to be a part of it.

SWAPPED – (L-R) Ivy (voiced by Juno Temple), Violet (voiced by Ambika Mod) and Lily (voiced by Lolly Adefope). Cr: Skydance Animation/Netflix © 2026

Ivy is a very particular character who is energetic and idiosyncratic. How much did you relish those jittery outbursts and monologues she goes off on?

They were so much fun. Having the director in the room, reading the lines opposite me, and being able to listen in a way where I couldn’t, was really helpful. Her having this overwhelming responsibility, but actually enjoying being the boss and being the big sister, the one that’s in control, what that’s done to her has made her quite an intense person. The anxiety of that is definitely making her jittery and blurting out monologues and things like that. I think that was something I can relate to, being jittery and sometimes blurting things out, maybe not always monologues, but it was a place to allow some of my nervous energy to become something creative. But then that also being an arc for her, to learn that she can also celebrate the people around her, and how great they are, and what is going on in front of her doesn’t always need to be controlled. I think it’s a fun arc for a very chic, very fabulous, slightly anxious, slightly overwhelming bird.