Ben Whishaw believes his first few recording sessions for each Paddington film are discarded because his voice isn’t quite right.

The British actor has admitted that it “always takes a bit of time” to find the beloved animated bear’s voice, even though he’s now made three Paddington films and the voice isn’t much different to his own.

“I guess a lot of it’s to do with making the voice fit with the animation, and weird things like just knowing exactly where he is in the room or in (a) space, or how far away the other person is,” he explained to Metro.co.uk.

“It’s like trial and error, but I feel like my first few – two, three, four – sessions are all just discarded because they don’t work at all! But then eventually we get back into the swing.”

Whishaw “got roped in quite last-minute” to voice Paddington for the 2014 film after Colin Firth dropped out of the role. He has since reprised the voice for Paddington 2 in 2017 and the new instalment, Paddington in Peru.

When asked if he imagined himself voicing the character for 10 years, the Skyfall star replied, “No, I really truly didn’t. Absolutely not. The first film just went by in a kind of daze because I got brought in so late in the day, so I had no idea what I was doing, or really what I was involved in.”

He noted that he originally started with a child-like voice, but he and the director Paul King decided it needed to be closer to Whishaw’s own.

“When I went into the first film, I was doing a sort of child’s voice, and then we quickly realised that that was not right at all – it had to be much more like my own register, and sometimes a bit more beary and a bit more growly,” he shared.

Paddington in Peru will be released in U.K. cinemas on Friday 8 November.

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