Ben Stiller returns in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the sequel to the 2006 hit Night at the Museum, where he plays Larry Daley- the night security guard at a museum where the exhibits come to life after hours. This time around Larry is a successful entrepreneur, and must save his friends Owen Wilson (Jedediah Smith), Amy Adams (Amelia Earhart) and Robin Williams (Teddy Roosevelt) from the evil pharaoh, Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) who wants to use the tablet of life to bring forth his army from the Underworld. Ricky Gervis plays the Smithsonian’s director and Shawn Levy directs the film.

The cast shared their individual experiences about working on this film, and what they wished they could take home from shooting in the Smithsonian.

Q: Did you think about your own rise to success when you were approached him the second time?

Stiller: Well, I thought that it would be something that would be different than the first movie. Really, I thought it was important to have a way into the second movie that was different than the first movie, because we had already done the idea of everything coming to life and Larry being amazed by it, and the guy sort of had nothing to do with his life, and the night guard becoming the thing he was happy doing. So to start the second movie, I felt we had have a new idea – the idea of being successful and then in some way that not making him happy. The idea of what he thought would make him happy, not make him happy? I just felt like it was a new idea to start the movie off, and that was really the idea behind that.

Q: Amy, your portrayal of Amelia Earhart is very spunky. How much of that is based on the research you did on her versus your own personal interpretation? 

Adams: You know, we wanted that spirit of adventure in Amelia, definitely, so did Ben. Somebody who could hold their own in a man’s world, someone who wasn’t going to take that, and she became such a fine, spunky character to such a foil to Ben. I followed the script and followed history and put them together in one way or another for the movie.

Q: What do you think this movie teaches not only kids, but their parents?

Levy: Well, we certainly never set out to with any purely moralistic or educational agendas. But for me, what I did was going off with what Ben was saying; I think it was astounding when I realized that the title of Amelia Earhart’s autobiography, one of her memoirs, was The Fun of It. And I kind of couldn’t believe it when I stumbled on that title because it encapsulated the theme of the movie, which I don’t think is necessarily limited to kids, which is the blessing of doing something you love with people you love and respect, and getting, frankly, like most of us that are here - to go to work every day and do something that you enjoy. I think that’s a fantastic lesson, and certainly a great aspiration to young people.

Q: Ricky, you play the stuffy, bumbling director. Who was the inspiration for that?

Gervais: I like playing awkward sort of putzes. The most fun for a comedian, the kind of character to play, is a man without a sense of humor because it’s already funny, because you know this man wants to be respected and articulate and all those things. But he just hasn’t got the tools.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for your statue persona and how did you come up with all those voices that are so different than your villain voice?

Azaria: That was done on the fly. We really just kept those in while we were shooting, We didn’t know that they were going to end up in the film. Lincoln was hard because you want to not diminish him and yet you want to try and be funny. We went through a lot of versions of that. And I still wanted to keep doing them, but they cut me off.

Levy: Hank would still be laying down new Lincoln voices if I allowed it.

Azaria: I really would still be because I wanted another four cracks at it. I couldn’t stop.

Levy: In truth, Hank really did those voices as a favor for me so that I could edit the scene. The intention always was to hire other voices. In fact, I did go out and hire other voices but no other voice, no other actor was working quite as great as Hank’s was, so they stayed until the end.

Q: There are so many cool props and costumes in this movie. Were any of you able to take any home? Owen, were you able to keep a figurine of yourself? Or Robin, what about the horse?

Williams: It’s so nice to try and take a horse home. ‘Sir, you have to put that in a carryon bag.' Even the horse said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’ That’s not right.

Wilson: No, I didn’t get to keep a figurine. I just saw the figurine for the first time last night. But the boots that I wore I was able to take those home. They’re actually the same boots that I wore in Shanghai Noon so it was kind of funny.

Gervais: The only thing that I wanted to take home was the American flag because I love America.

Williams: You really want to be a citizen, don’t you? Ricky’s available for adoption. Madonna refused. 'Please help right now. A lovely English man to adopt, call now. Angelina, our lines are open.’

Q: How did you get permission to film at the Smithsonian?

Levy: You say, 'I won't break anything.' But I think it did help immensely that our first movie was well-known enough that people knew, and the Smithsonian knew that we were going to treat it respectfully and with humor and wit and definite reverence as well. And also the fact that it was the first movie to actually increase attendance at the New York Museum, I guess. I was told that [attendance went up] close to 20% after Night at the Museum came out. When I met with the Smithsonian, they knew that our first movie had actually increased museum attendance, and I think that anything that can kind of capitalize interest in these institutions is a good thing. It was very welcoming from the get-go.

Q: How much of the film was actually shot in Washington or on soundstages? What was your experience like in D.C.?

Stiller: Well, we were here for the first week of shooting, right? So we shot here as much as we could get away with shooting without disrupting everything. Shooting in the Air and Space Museum, the real one, was really important in establishing the scale of it because it's just so huge. And we went back and built sets that were pretty immense in Vancouver, but nothing close to what the real size of the museum is here. But I was really happy to be here that first week because it just helped to ground us in what it really is, get connected with that just to be able to see the real stuff.

Levy: Yeah, the memorable thing for me, there were a couple of nights, one, where Amy, Ben and I had some time off and it was like three in the morning and we were waiting for stuff to get lit. So then Ben, Amy and I got to walk around the Air and Space Museum, alone, in the middle of the night. And it was silent and dark and both spooky but completely cool. And that was definitely a memory that I’ll always have.

Adams: We shot the Lincoln Memorial too at night. It was a full moon over the whole National Mall. It was just gorgeous. It was really amazing.

Q: What was the most difficult part of making this movie?

Levy: Most people ask about the visual effects of the movie, but to me, the best part of the movie is the cast and the performances. I can’t think of a comedy that’s assembled this level of ensemble, so one of the biggest challenges is when you have a scene with Robin, Ricky or Hank or Ben, or everyone up here, and add to that Bill Hader and Jonah Hill and Steve Coogan, and people that aren’t here today, there was a lot of improvisation. And any time you do a complicated movie, you plans things pretty meticulously, and almost every day we would throw out a plan, because the actors came up with stuff that we couldn’t have anticipated. But I would say wrestling these very, very long improvisation scenes down to some kind of useful shape was challenging. I think a great example is Ben and Hank, the whole 'Don’t Cross that Line' scene. That scene is 100% improvised. I mean, we had a script, we shot a couple of takes, and before we moved on, I said, ‘You know what guys, do one without the script,' and they just made that up for about five minutes and it’s in the movie.

Q: Owen, you had so many special effects to work with. Were you actually physically present with the other actors when you were doing your part? How do you create such a big character in such a small guy?

Wilson: I was just saying how we were never together. I never saw Ben either. Coogan was there for most of the matte stuff. Yeah, Jedediah doesn’t see himself as a miniature little cowboy. He sees himself as kind of bigger than life. It was just kind of easy to play a character that you never had to worry about Shawn saying, ‘Give me less.’ It couldn’t be too over the top.