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DeBlois picks up the tale. “I remember the moment it stopped happening,” he says. “There was a moment when (then-DreamWorks Animation CEO) Jeffrey Katzenberg and a few people had dropped in to hear a recording session. It was a line that included the word sorry. And so Jay was saying in a very Canadian way, ‘sore-ee.'”

“I could hear them chattering in the back, and they said, ‘Can you ask Jay to say sah-ree? Sore-ee sounds a little too Canadian.’ And he was already getting to the end of his rope; it had been a long session. And so he kind of bowed his head for a moment and said: ‘Oh, I’m SORE-EE, were the Vikings American?’ It never happened again after that.”

Baruchel has been hanging on this tale, and is suddenly all elbows and knees as he cracks up at the memory of it. Clearly you don’t make three movies about a young Viking and his best friend, a dragon named Toothless, without developing an easy familiarity with your director.

After he’s calmed down, I ask how he manages to act opposite Toothless, who has no human voice and is thus completely imaginary until brought to life on the screen by the animators.

“For better or worse, I’m a chronic daydreamer,” he says. “I like to say I’m crippled by my imagination, so my head is always in the clouds. It’s not hard to pretend you’re talking to a dragon. Chances are if I’m not talking to a dragon, I’m talking to my cat or having conversations with Sir Isaac Brock in my basement.”

And while DeBlois credits the actor with bringing Hiccup to life, Baruchel is quick to return the compliment. “I just follow him,” he says, nodding at DeBlois. “Everything springs from his head and his heart.”