'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem' director says he and Seth Rogen are now 'experts in Gen Z speak' after working with a young cast
- "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" is in theaters now.
- Director Jeff Rowe told Insider that he learned several Gen Z phrases while making the film.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" director Jeff Rowe said that he learned lots of new phrases from the movie's Gen Z cast members.
Rowe and producer Seth Rogen cast teen actors, whose ages range between 15 and 19, to voice the titular turtles, Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael.
The cast — Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Brady Noon, and Nicolas Cantu — recorded their lines together in the same booth in order to allow them to riff off each other.
In an interview with Insider, Rowe said that some of the conversations between the turtles in the movie were improvised by the actors.
"There's this very funny scene where the turtles are just talking about bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. Like, 'Hey, we're gonna be like real New Yorkers. Get a bacon egg, and cheese sandwich.' And they're all like quoting different YouTube videos that they watch and they just go off for like a minute talking about that," Rowe said.
"We didn't script that. They just did that in between takes. I think they were just legitimately talking about bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. And then they were like, 'Make sure you're rolling,'" the director continued.
Rowe added: "And then we just put that in the film. It's totally improvised and totally not planned. It's unwritable. I don't think you can write that."
Rowe said that he and the producers had to check if the teens' conversations were appropriate for the PG-13 movie, especially when they used Gen Z slang.
"I learned what 'rizz' is," Rowe said. "They would say stuff and then we'd be like, 'Cool. Just say it like that. Wait, is that offensive? Is that beyond PG-13? What? Okay. No? It's cool.'"
Rizz is short for charisma and is used in romantic situations when a person is able to effortlessly charm another person.
"Seth and I are now experts in Gen Z speak," said Rowe.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," which has a star-studded cast including Jackie Chan, Ayo Edebiri, Ice Cube, and Paul Rudd, is in theaters now.