Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the third installment in the Ice Age franchise. Life is beginning to change for our favorite prehistoric characters as Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) are getting ready to have a baby mammoth and Sid (John Leguizamo) is feeling the pressure to start a sloth family too. Diego and the nut-chasing squirrel are back with their usual antics as well.

Romano, Latifah, Leguizamo and director Carlos Saldanha all share what is was like returning for a third time around and what the new character Buck (Simon Pegg) adds to their already large, dysfunctional family.

Q: Are there any new challenges coming back for a third time?

Romano: Well, the same challenges as always, just recording without the other actors being there. We had to do one scene, particularly, the laughing scene because Manny never really laughed before. That was a little difficult.

Saldanha: I had to tickle him.

Romano: Yeah, yeah. The hardest part was just the physicality of it, standing in front of the microphone and pretending that you're wrestling with a dinosaur. It's kind of weird. You've got to get used to it.

Latifah: Probably the only difficult thing for me was trying to be pregnant and in labor but hide it from these guys at the same time. So it was like, 'Ooh, oh, everything's okay. Just go on.' Fake these labor sounds and the difficulty and pain that's involved in that, but other than that it was good.

Q: How tricky was pretending you had a lisp?

Leguizamo: The whole thing is pretty tricky. This one, I was trying to…I was a single mom, representing single moms - two jobs, three kids, T-Rexes are like teenagers - so it was trying to find that vulnerability. I guess it's easier being alone in that room, if you guys have been there. I don't know about everyone's vulnerability. It's kind of embarrassing to be that soft, whatever. But it was cool to go that far. What Ray said, it's always really hard to make that voice really pop on screen so it feels alive. So when you're getting hit and choked and all that, to get yourself really in that physically agitated state so that it really doesn't get flat, doesn't feel kind of like.

Q: How did you decide to acknowledge the timeline and let dinosaurs exist in the film?

Saldanha: That's funny because when we did the first movie, we went to the museum and did the whole research and all that stuff. We were talking to this very great guy from the Museum of Natural History, the paleontologist. He was saying, 'When you do the Ice Age, everything's good. But there were no dinosaurs in the Ice Age.' So we knew it. So when the third one came, when the concept came through, discovering this world of dinosaurs, it's not so much that dinosaurs lived in the Ice Age. The concept was more they discovered this world of dinosaurs that nobody knew existed. So we tapped into that. We weren't going for the Discovery Channel-kind of accuracy. We were going for the fun of like what if these two worlds lived in the same spot and how much fun we can have with that. Also, we played through the whole thing about Manny as a character was always the biggest thing on earth. That was some of his lines in the first one. We had it again on the third one and we said, 'Okay, let's play with that.’

Romano: Also, in your defense when you say dinosaurs weren't in the Ice Age, well, animals don't really talk either.

Saldanha: Yes, technically. We created, too. We took creative liberty to make something that was entertaining, fun, and not trying to go for the scientific accuracy. We just created this parallel world that they never collided until this movie.

Romano: By the way, 90 percent of the population doesn't know that dinosaurs didn't exist during the Ice Age so don't tell anybody.

Q: Did you go back and watch the other movies to get into the same mindset? Why don't the dinosaurs talk too?

Latifah: That's for Ice Age 7.

Leguizamo: Dinosaurs speak.

Romano: Now, come on. dinosaurs don't talk. That's ridiculous.

Saldanha: Well, the concept behind it was that dinosaurs were creatures from a long time ago and they discovered that, so that's why they don't talk. They didn't evolve as much as our guys.

Q: Does having the experience of stand-up comedy help?

Leguizamo: Yeah, I think doing one-man shows, you're used to being alone and having to create the whole thing by yourself made it a lot easier. At first it was kind of shocking. You're like, 'So where's Ray? Where's Denis? Are they late?' They said, 'No, they're not coming.' So I said, 'So where's the film?' Then there's no film, there's just this script that you've got to make come to life. Then you start to go, 'Wait, maybe this is kind of fun. I don't have to be worried about being embarrassed. I could be here in my underwear. They wouldn't even care.' You just have a great time.

Romano: But you've got to get used to it, as a comedian. Except for Carlos and the sound guys, nobody's really there laughing at what you're doing, so you've got to believe that it's funny.

Saldanha: I'm laughing on the inside.

Q: Is it easy to get into character right away?

Leguizamo: It's harder to get out of character than it is for me to be into character. I end up talking like this for about a week. I realize, 'Oh shoot, I'm still...' I even hear myself right now sounding like that. So that's what happens for me.

Romano: Mostly I just do a couple of the lines and I get into that voice that I think Manny is like. It's funny because everybody thinks the couple movies I've done; people just think you're you. But in your head, you hear your voice. You're doing a character. You're hearing your voice different. It's maybe only to your ear, but you are doing it. I mean, does this sound like Manny right now?

Saldanha: A little bit, yes.

Latifah: For me, this go round was a lot easier than the last one because I just came onboard on the last film. It was kind of rough at first trying to figure out Ellie's voice and match it with the idea of what the character and what the animation was supposed to be, and just trying to find that whole thing and then I also perform. I sing. I do shows, and so sometimes I'm coming in and my voice is kind of hoarse. And then I come back and do it again when my voice is better, so I'm always fighting that challenge of being in the right voice because I've been somewhere singing or rapping or whatever. For this one, once we found who the character was, it was pretty smooth. Ellie, she's sweet and she's funny and she's nurturing and she really cares about the big family, like she's part of this family. So back to her question, I didn't really need to watch the last movie because Ellie has grown so much since the last movie. She's married now. She's got a baby on the way.

Leguizamo: She got married? When did you guys get married?

Latifah: Yeah, just assume that we're married. She's making it these days. I'm going to go with tradition on this one. Say they got married first. It's mammoth style. Yeah, that's my baby daddy right there. But she grows so much between the last film and this one because the last one she thought she was a possum. She was kind of like a big kid. She wanted to play with her brothers all the time and she hung from a tree by her tail for that matter. Now she's a little more mature, so it's really about  making sure she had that nurturing warmth in her voice. And she seems to be a voice of reason, really pushing him to go make up with Sid. If things are wrong, she's always trying to push people back together. So it was really just trying to bring that kind of love to the character.

Romano: What's funny is that the dynamic, not to bring up my show, but Everybody Loves Raymond, my show was like I was the voice of reason because there were crazy characters. The brother, the mother, they were all nuts, and I kind of had to keep that glue together. But then the wife was really the overall voice of reason because then I was the crazy one, which is kind of the same. I thought he was crazy. It was about me trying to keep him, but then you kind of reel us all in.

Leguizamo: Everybody Loves Manny.

Q: Can you talk about the new character, Buck played by Simon Pegg?

Saldanha: We brought in Buck, which was a great little character, a swashbuckling kind of fun dude. It was also dysfunctional, which was great because our families are this kind of odd 'no matter where you come from, who you are, you're part of the family.' We all embrace him and it was a wonderful cast choice. I love his movies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz. I always love that, his comedic timing and his voice, the quality of his voice. His energy I think worked great with these guys. When we bring somebody into the family, it's like bringing your in-laws. You have to see how everybody feels around it, so we have to listen to all the voices with that voice in the middle to see if that voice belongs to the family, and he belonged.