‘Despicable Me’ Creator on Mormonism, Minions and ‘The Best Calling in the Church’

This interview session was originally published to Religious News Service by Jana Riess. The following is an excerpt:

Tomorrow, one of the summer’s most anticipated movies will hit theaters. Minions is a prequel to the Despicable Me movies, which were co-written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. Those movies were hugely successful, with Despicable Me 2 grossing nearly a billion dollars at the box office in 2013.

Cinco and Ken have stepped down from the franchise temporarily to work on The Secret Life of Pets (2016) before returning with Despicable Me 3 (2017). So while they didn’t pen the script for Minions, its release this weekend seemed like a great time for me to check in with Cinco about the intersection of his career and his LDS faith. –JKR

RNS: Were you raised Mormon?

Cinco Paul: I grew up in Phoenix and my mom was a member of the [LDS] Church, and my dad was a non-practicing Catholic who did not go to church. My dad was pretty anti-Mormon in a way, so our exposure to church was limited. There was only so much he would let us do. In those days, Sunday School and sacrament meeting were separate, so we would only go to Sunday School, which was in the morning. But the rule was always that when we were sixteen we could get baptized. So I attended church through my childhood and watched while all the other boys got the priesthood and got to pass the sacrament. But by the time I turned sixteen it was not high on my list of priorities. I still attended church, but I had a lot of questions and wasn’t sure what I believed.

It wasn’t until I was about to go to Yale, all the way across the country, that I felt like it was time for me to really decide if this was what I believed and how I wanted to live. That was a time of real soul-searching and heavy praying. I think I got baptized the day before I left for college. It was small, with just my mom and sisters and a couple of missionaries. I was baptized in a swimming pool!

RNS: Did you go on a mission?

CP: I turned nineteen after my first year of college, and I had a desire to serve a mission, but my dad gave me an ultimatum that if he was going to pay for school then I was going to finish college first. I loved my four years at Yale, and then after that I put in my papers.

Read Riess’ full interview session at religionnews.com.