He’s Stuart, Bob and Kevin. Meet Pierre Coffin ,the Man Behind the Minions

WHEN PIERRE COFFIN is asked who his favorite Minion is, he instantly replies Stuart.

“It’s Stuart. Stuart is me,” the director and co-writer of “Minions & Monsters” tells TODAY.com, referring to the one-eyed, laid back, yet mischievous Minion with hair parted in the middle. In fact, Stuart also plays the ukulele, just like Coffin.

“I started playing the ukulele and I thought, ‘Oh, I should give that to that Minion.’ So Stuart plays the ukulele. And Stuart doesn’t care about anything, I don’t care about anything,” Coffin says, adding that Stuart is the rebellious teenager compared to big brother Kevin and innocent, naive and lovable Bob.

But the thing is, Coffin really is Stuart — and Kevin, and Bob, and Dave, and Otto and Gus. The list goes on. And that’s because Coffin is also the man behind the voice of the Minions — literally all the Minions.

Minions were first introduced in 2010’s “Despicable Me,” an animated film that followed supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), who, on his quest to steal the moon, adopts three orphan girls. Stuart, Bob and Kevin, along with the rest of the silly capsule-shaped henchmen, would go on to become stars of their own. They captured the hearts of many with their playful antics, their love for their “big boss” and going bonkers for bananas.

The franchise has since successfully expanded with four “Despicable Me” films and now three “Minions” spinoffs. In 2024, Universal announced that the “Despicable Me” franchise crossed $5 billion globally.

The latest film, “Minions & Monsters,” out now, has Coffin returning to not only voice and co-write, but also be the sole director of the film.

“It made it certainly more fun,” Coffin says about helming the film. “From the moment I knew that I had to write it, I was becoming highly responsible of the outcome. So when you accumulate the roles of writer, director and voice actor for all the main characters, you start having fun, for sure.”

“But,” he adds, “(I’m) a little bit scared of this moment when the movie is going to come out — and hopefully didn’t goof things up a little too much.”

“Minions & Monsters” earned $160 million worldwide in its debut week, according to The Associated Press.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE and many years to produce an animated movie, three years specifically for “Minions & Monsters,” Coffin says.

At first hesitant to return to the franchise due to the extensive work, Coffin became intrigued with the idea of Minions in a 1920s backdrop during the era of the silent film, with hopes of creating their own monster movie.

And that’s where viewers discover James, a creative and passionate Minion who loves to draw and tell stories. He, along with pals Henry and Ed, set their sights on bringing his horror film to life — and it definitely comes to life when monsters are summoned and try to take over Hollywood.

“I wanted it to be fresh, not like another ‘Minions’ movie,” Coffins says, explaining that setting the film around the invention of sound made for a unique perspective.

So how are the scripts drafted when it comes to Minionese, the nonsensical, gibberish language the Minions speak?

On “Minions,” writer Brian Lynch wrote Minionese as gibberish, Coffin says. “But it was hard to read because I didn’t know what the gibberish was.”

“So then he started writing in English,” he continues. “We sort of established that principle where he’d write the dialogues in English, and I would do whatever I wanted in the edit stage or when I had to do the voices.”

“We spent at least a year out of three trying to figure out a way of writing this thing, trying to make sense of it,” Coffin says.

Challenges also arose when it came to translating the films in other languages. He estimates that he uses “at least half a dozen” languages or “slightly beyond” to create Minionese.

“Apparently I say a lot of swear words in all these different countries without knowing,” he says. “I’m thinking I’m inventing words, but I’m saying words that are highly offensive. So … I spent a week correcting those mistakes.”

He then finds other words to switch out and spends an additional two weeks or so “redoing voices (for) different countries.”

For instance, he says, South American audiences prefer “grande jeje” rather than “big boss.”

“So I redo all that, and I spent two weeks redoing all these voices for everyone.”

COFFIN DOES NOT speak Minionese. “I have to write it down.”

“For one thing, I’m a very bad actor, and the second thing, I’m a very bad improviser,” he says, explaining that the secret to understanding Minionese is “not in the words I’m saying, but more in the melody.”

The inflection and the tone, which he described as “little music,” is how Minionese is understood.

“It’s just that little music, the tone at which I perform, so I just go literally, ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,’” he says with his tone going up and down. “And then see if that means what I’m hoping the thing means, and then I replaced all the ‘blah, blah, blahs’ with words, food or famous pop stars or stuff like that.”

He says that because they have the “gift of time,” they’re hoping audiences understand what they’re trying to express. “But you’re not 100% sure. So you have to test that,” he says, and if it doesn’t work, “We got to go back to the writing table.”

Getting into the technical part of it, he doesn’t use a filter to voice the Minions, “Because it destroys the quality of the sound.” Instead, he records his voice in slow motion and when played back at real speed, he’s sped up. “But pitched up also,” he says. “And that’s when the magic happens … But most of the time it’s me just trying at different speeds and different tones.”

When asked if he hopes to pass the torch to someone else to voice the Minions, he replies, “Oh, sure, yeah,” explaining that he’s not keeping the little guys to himself. “It’s natural for me to do it, particularly when you’re making and telling the stories. It feels like the two are linked together because, in some cases, you can come up with the idea and then I start voicing it.”

FOR “MINIONS & MONSTERS,” Coffin embraced the idea of friendship, connection and inclusivity.

Ed, for example, is another Minion that Coffin really embraced. He liked the idea of incorporating a hearing impaired Minion that expressed himself in sign language.

“But he expresses himself with the same gibberish as the Minions, which I’m hoping people will notice,” he says, adding that the creative team had a counselor to help. “Because sign language is also a per country thing. So (the counselor) sort of mixed it up, so that hopefully in all the countries it’ll work at a specific level.”

It’s those tiny but specific details that Coffin really enjoys when creating a “Despicable Me” franchise film.

When crafting James, Coffin knew he was an artist. Meanwhile, Henry “likes having a life, but his main character trait is that he loves his buddy,” Coffin says.

As for how you illustrate friendship in visual form? Coffin likens the Minions to kids. “And from the moment you depict them as kids, as we have always done by the way, it works magically,” Coffin says.

“It’s just them fooling around, getting mad at each other, but two seconds later they’re friends again. It’s all about the expressive connection and how physical they are with each other. They’re kids.”