Zach Braff on playing a monkey in 'Oz'

Zach Braff has lent his voice to animated projects in the past, namely 2005's "Chicken Little." But the 37-year-old actor said that playing a flying monkey in "Oz the Great and Powerful" was unlike anything he's done before.

Braff told The Hollywood Reporter that director Sam Raimi wasn't simply content with him voicing the part of Finley. "He wanted me to fully act this 36-inch tall monkey out," he said.

In some cases, the "Scrubs" actor said, that meant donning a bluescreen onesie.

"We figured out that if I was on my butt, hunched over, I was 36 inches tall," he told THR. "And then other times there was an actual life-size puppet of him that I would operate around and act out."

Then there was the "puppet cam," Braff added. "When (Finley would) fly and do stuff I couldn't possibly do, they would put this monitor on the end of a stick, and I'd be in the video booth and James (Franco, who plays Oz,) had a tiny earpiece in his ear and we could kind of do it via the monitor.

"Oz the Great and Powerful," which also stars Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams, hits theaters on Friday.