Exclusive: Mikaela Hoover Names the DC Legend She Wants to Share the Screen With in Man of Tomorrow

Actress Mikaela Hoover has been popping up in movies and TV for two decades, usually somewhere in James Gunn land. Lately, though, she has been on a very particular heater: a gut-punch voice turn as Floor the Rabbit in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a stealth-important arc in Beef season 2, James Gunn tapping her as Cat Grant in Superman, and now she is the voice (and face capture) behind Tony Tony Chopper in Netflix 's One Piece. I caught up on her latest during an interview she did at the LVLUP Expo in Las Vegas, where she walked through the roles, the emotions, and the very funny way she landed Chopper without knowing who Chopper was.

• Cat Grant in Gunn's Superman (working at the Daily Planet with Clark, Lois, and Jimmy) and hoping to return in the sequel, Man of Tomorrow
• Voice and facial capture for Tony Tony Chopper in Netflix's One Piece, with tear-jerker material coming in season 2 episodes 7 and 8
• Floor the Rabbit in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (yes, that scene)
• A key supporting turn in Beef season 2

Cat Grant has a favorite Kent

Hoover is very clear on how she plays Cat: Clark Kent is the draw, not the cape. In her words, Cat sees Clark as the good stuff you hope still exists in the world, and she has not met many like him. If she gets her way in the next chapter of Gunn's DCU ( the Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow), she wants more Clark-and-Cat time at the Daily Planet over any flirtation with the mythic guy in blue.

"Cat really likes Clark. She doesn't care as much about Superman... I'd love to see more with her and Clark."

Worth flagging: that perspective tracks with what Gunn has been hinting at for this DC run, which skews character-first even when the universe gets big.

The Chopper audition she almost skipped

Here is the very showbiz chain of events behind her One Piece casting, which is both charming and a little chaotic:

Hoover actually turned down the first audition. The breakdown only said three episodes of a Netflix animated series, and after Guardians 3 she had been swinging at a bunch of animation reads without much response. A week later her agent, Stephanie, called back: casting had asked for Hoover specifically and wanted her to look at the sides.

What she saw was coded and vague: a small forest creature, bullied and ostracized, considered ugly and monstrous. Hoover pictured a slimy, green, one-eyed goblin of a thing. That sounded fun, and the job included facial capture, so she went in.

The audition sides were essentially the scene where Doctor Hiriluk locks Chopper out. Hoover went all-in, got emotional, and for once could not shake the audition afterward. Then came a producer session. She doubled down on her creature idea — hunched over in the chair, playing with the idea of one functioning eye — still with zero clue she was reading for Chopper. One producer teared up and told her audiences were going to love Chopper. Her response, verbatim: Who is Chopper?

Things moved fast after that. Netflix hustled her into its Tudum showcase before she had even fully processed what Chopper looked like. When she finally saw the design: shock — he is adorable. But the misunderstanding turned out to be a gift. Hoover plays Chopper from the inside out, as someone who feels like a monster rather than a mascot. So when fans at conventions shove cute Chopper pics at her, she gets it — but she never plays him as cute.

James Gunn, heartbreak, and why Floor was never a robot to her

Hoover and Gunn go way back, and even with that relationship, he usually makes her audition. Cat Grant was the rare exception where he just told her she was the one. On Guardians Vol. 3, he warned her not to get attached to Floor because the plan was to cast a recognizable name with a mechanical voice. That note freed her up to ignore the robot-voice idea and build a different version of Floor — a gentle soul who keeps loving people despite constant hurt. That is the piece of Gunn's writing she loves: he can slide you from a laugh to a lump in the throat in about a minute, and the characters always have a beating heart under the genre polish.

Going to dark places (with help from a 14-year-old dog)

When Hoover needs to crack open emotionally, she reaches for something brutally personal: her dog, who is 14 and, as she puts it, her soulmate. She uses that bond as a key for characters like Floor and Chopper. When the scenes turn devastating, she imagines something bad happening to her dog. It is bleak, but you can hear it in the voice cracks. And it lingers — she says she is puffy and wrung out for weeks after those days.

About that Guardians scene: she still cannot watch it. It takes her right back to set, which was a tear-streaked day for pretty much everyone involved. One Piece season 2 has its own landmines, especially episodes 7 and 8. There is a reason those stories flatten people: animals with big eyes and open expressions flip a protective switch in us, and the heartbreak goes straight in.

All told, Hoover is in a really interesting phase: toggling between earnest newsroom banter opposite Clark Kent, giant-hearted tragedy in a Marvel blockbuster, and a beloved reindeer-doctor with impostor syndrome on the Grand Line. Not a bad spread — and by the sound of it, she is just getting warmed up.