Ellen DeGeneres Dishes 'Finding Dory' Details, Says 'Nemo' Fish Shouldn't Be Pets

Ellen DeGeneres and her friends from Finding Dory have been working on the film for three years now, and they can finally talk about it.

The Ellen Show host presented a first look at the long-awaited sequel to the 2003 Pixar sensation Finding Nemo at this weekend’s D23 Exposition in Anaheim (the movie’s due out next year). Then DeGeneres and castmates Ed O'Neil and Kaitlin Olson joined Yahoo Movies for an exclusive chat, which you can watch above.

“Dory is searching for her parents — she realizes [she] has parents — and comes across some characters who are somewhat helpful,” DeGeneres said, summing up the animated adventure’s premise. Those characters include Olson’s kind-hearted whale-shark named Destiny and O'Neil’s cranky “septapus” (an octopus short a limb) Hank. Nemo and his dad Marlin (Albert Brooks) also return, while other new voices include Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, and Idris Elba.

Related: D23 Report: Everything You Need to Know About Disney-Pixar’s Upcoming Movies

Though it will be a full 13 years between Pixar’s aquatic adventures, DeGeneres said often dialed up Dory’s voice during the intervening years, especially when friends would ask for her to leave voicemails for their kids. “They want me to speak ‘whale’ a lot, which is draining,” the comedian-actress admitted, referring to Dory’s beloved interspecies jabber. “It’s hard to speak whale. So I speak whale only on occasion.”

Thanks to the box-office success of Nemo, fans began adopting orange-and-white clownfishes and the blue tang fishes as. But DeGeneres made it clear she doesn’t keep any of such species in an aquarium. “I think that fish should be in the ocean,” she said. “It’s what this whole sequel is about: It’s about rehabilitation and putting them back in the ocean… And we have to protect our oceans. Hopefully that discussion starts with this film, because we really need to protect that environment.”

Finding Dory opens in theaters June 17, 2016. Watch highlights from this year’s D23 presentation: