Ayo Edebiri

How would you describe April?

AYO EDEBIRI: April is a young high school student. She’s dealing with a lot, she’s got a lot of feelings and a lot of things she wants to do, but she doesn’t always have the confidence that she might present at first…. She’s a very dedicated journalist, and she wants to get a good story. As soon as she meets the four Turtle boys, she’s like, there’s something here; I gotta crack this.

Why is she so important to the Turtles in this film, and why are they important to her?

AE: April and the Turtles really help each other, and they find each other in spaces where they really need friendship. It maybe starts out as a bit more of a transaction. The boys are like, “We wanna be cool and know a human.” And she’s like, “I wanna win a Pulitzer.” But they’re just beings who are looking to belong and looking for friends.

Talk about the energy performing with these four teen boys.

AE: It was an unforgettable experience;

As April

being in a room performing with four teenage boys who were just sort of talking and making jokes. It really was so cool and so helpful for me because I think something that [co-writerdirector] Jeff Rowe and [co-writer and producer] Seth Rogen really wanted to prioritize in this iteration of the movie was the fact that they are teenagers… and the energy of the boys is just so infectious. You can’t really replicate that, the way that they bounce off of each other. I feel like it gave me more leeway when I would be with them or when I would do a recording with something that they had already recorded to sort of figure out how April would speak and respond in that situation. It just left room for a lot of play, and I think the sense of humor feels really authentic because of that.

What is different and interesting for you about this project, as opposed to the movies, cartoons and comics in the past?

AE: I think the thing that stands out to me the most is that they feel like real teenagers in a real New York City, and