20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: The Force Awakens
4. Bill Hader & Ben Schwartz Helped Create BB-8's Voice
Though you likely assumed that BB-8's various bleeps and bloops were simply produced by a computer, they actually received some vocal human input from two unexpected performers.
Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz were hired as "vocal consultants" for BB-8, which amounted to the pair speaking into a microphone while J.J. Abrams used an iPad app to manipulate their voices. Their work was then used as the aural template for BB-8's sounds throughout the entire sequel trilogy.
The idea was to give a palpable human flavour to the various sounds BB-8 makes throughout the movie, and to call it one of the film's big successes is quite the understatement indeed.