Bill Hader on dad duty, heart in new ‘The Cat in the Hat’

Bill Hader was once just a tired father sitting in the warm glow of a bedside lamp. Every night, he turned the pages of Dr. Seuss books for his three young daughters.

Those quiet nightly routine did more than just put his kids to sleep. They built gentle threads connecting his childhood memories to his children’s lives. When Warner Bros. Pictures Animation asked him to voice the iconic feline in The Cat in the Hat, Hader skipped calling his agent. Instead, he went straight to his youngest daughter.

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“I have three kids, and I would read them this book as they grew up,” Hader said in an interview shared with INQUIRER Entertainment. “It was very cool when I told my youngest daughter about it, and she got really excited. So, I was like, ‘Well, I have to do that.’ I’m also just a big fan of animation, and I was honestly just incredibly flattered that they thought of me for such an iconic character.”

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For the Saturday Night Live alum, Dr. Seuss represents a deeply personal heirloom. He still remembers the day his parents brought home a giant box of Seuss books. That box opened a door to worlds without rules.

“Because he created his own world, you feel like you kind of own it,” Hader reflected. “My dad grew up with these books. Because they’ve been around for so long, it’s a weird sort of cultural shorthand that you can have with everybody. When they announced I was going to be the Cat in the Hat, everybody I knew texted me: ‘Oh, my God, are you kidding?'”

Stepping into iconic roles often frightens actors. However, the recording booth quickly became a cozy sanctuary of trust. Co-director Erica Rivinoja had written alongside Hader on “South Park” 15 years ago. Co-director Alessandro Carloni also directed Hader in a previous animated feature. Together, the duo created a collaborative space that felt like play. Production emails swapped rigid recording schedules for coffee catch-ups.

"The worst thing you have as an actor is that feeling that you’re going to say something and everybody’s going to look at you like, 'Why did you do that?' This was much more like, 'Hm. Let’s do something else.' And you’re like, 'Okay.' It’s a nicer vibe."

That supportive room encouraged Hader to take bold risks. During one session, he threw out an unscripted joke to make his old friend laugh. When he returned for his next recording session, the team blew him away. The directors had expanded his short line into an entire script sequence.very nice.”

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“They said, ‘That weird thing that you improvised—we incorporated it into the script,'” he recalled. “So, they wanted me to do more and fill it out. The whole sequence grew out of that, which was very nice.”

Beneath the wild rhymes, the story hits close to home. The Cat works for the Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration (I.I.I.I.). His newest mission tasks him with helping siblings Gabby and Sebastian. The kids are coping with a lonely move to a new town. finding joy when everything familiar has been left behind.

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To bring that emotional core to life, Hader was surrounded by a powerhouse voice cast. Quinta Brunson plays Sherrie from HR—the single soul who sees goodness and potential in the Cat—while Bowen Yang voices Gary the Intern, and Matt Berry brings his unmistakable warmth to Waffles the goldfish.

Working with young stars Xochitl Gomez and Tiago Martinez, who play the siblings, gave Hader a front-row seat to the film’s emotional anchor. “My kids are obsessed with Xochitl because of The Baby-Sitters Club—when I said I was recording with her, they lost their minds,” Hader laughed, crediting her bright energy with pulling him out of his self-described low-energy shell. “Tiago and Xochitl are able to portray a lot of emotion, which I think is difficult in an animated movie. But they’re genius.”

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In the end, Hader’s performance as the Cat is a love letter—not only to the timeless books that shaped his childhood, but to the children he reads to every night. It’s a reminder that no matter how big or scary the world feels, a little imagination, a lot of heart, and a touch of mischief can always bring us back home. /edv