Speaker 1: Hi Christy, Hi Will. How are you so good? What
Speaker 1: are you doing today? I'm going to sit next to
Speaker 1: you and and and just be really excited. Well I'm
Speaker 1: me too, because you know why do you know? Why?
Speaker 1: Do you know why? Ask me why why? Because one
Speaker 1: of my favorite people in the world is coming here
Speaker 1: today and I see Kevin Conrad. She jumped in. It's
Speaker 1: Kevin Conrad. I'm you're excited. It's Kevin Conroy, who is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my favorite people and has been
Speaker 1: Batman for thirty years. That is not an exaggeration thirty years.
Speaker 1: And he's coming to talk to us today. And I
Speaker 1: hear voices. I can't wait. I hear voices, I hear
Speaker 1: voices speaking of voices, speaking of voices, voices, And there's
Speaker 1: no a song that should be our our to our intro.
Speaker 1: You don't understand. So if you want to see people
Speaker 1: go insane at a convention, oh boy, Kevin. We will
Speaker 1: be sitting on a pane and Kevin Conroy will start
Speaker 1: to sing. I feel blue, Am I Blue? Am I blue?
Speaker 1: I Like that There was a time was the only
Speaker 1: one now no sad and lonely one, lonely and so
Speaker 1: sung that as Batman on The Batman, the animated series,
Speaker 1: and so he will hit the first note and you
Speaker 1: will see hundreds of people like go insane to see this.
Speaker 1: And normally he's sitting next to the people who played
Speaker 1: wonder Woman Greenland doesn't matter all eyes, Kevin Conroy, and
Speaker 1: he just owns the stage. It is absolutely, of course
Speaker 1: sitting here with look about love that will of course
Speaker 1: it's Bill loves you so much. He's men. We worked
Speaker 1: together for twenty two When do we start? Five years?
Speaker 1: Twenty five years? Seven we started, and it was my
Speaker 1: first ever animated series, and you took me under your
Speaker 1: wing from day one, and you didn't have to. You
Speaker 1: easily could have been one of those actors. But this
Speaker 1: is why we keep talking about the voiceover world compared
Speaker 1: to the on camera world. Because I walked into that room.
Speaker 1: I was as frightened as I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 1: I've never done an animated series, and now I've been
Speaker 1: cast as Batman and Batman Beyond with Drey Romano directing, Bruce,
Speaker 1: Tim Paul Deaney, Glenn Murakami, all these incredible people involved. Uh,
Speaker 1: and You're sitting there going what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting next to Kevin Conroy, who had help
Speaker 1: Batman forever. He easily could have been who are you kid?
Speaker 1: What are you doing here? But but he was, but
Speaker 1: he didn't. He opened his arms. He taught me how
Speaker 1: to sit behind the microphone. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: how did you had? Did you teach him? Do you
Speaker 1: remember meeting him? There's certain tricks in the sound room
Speaker 1: that when you come from the outside, you don't understand that.
Speaker 1: You know, every noise in the room is being recorded
Speaker 1: and when other people are acting, because Warner Brothers likes
Speaker 1: to get all the cats together, so you're not working
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. You're working. It's like recording a play.
Speaker 1: So all these other people are in the same room together,
Speaker 1: all those mics are live. So every time you turn
Speaker 1: a page it can destroy someone else's performance. Someone can
Speaker 1: give a great take and then someone rustles a page
Speaker 1: over there and their take has to be done again.
Speaker 1: Do you have any memories of anybody ruining a take
Speaker 1: that was like really some of your best work kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Has anyone ruined your perform exactly? Who do
Speaker 1: you hate? Let's really screwed up? No? But then so
Speaker 1: there's an art to turning the page by picking up
Speaker 1: the entire page and moving it over and laying it
Speaker 1: down right and turning it. You do it that way
Speaker 1: without making any noise. But you talked, someone just got
Speaker 1: to show you. It's just basics like that. So Will
Speaker 1: had never been in a sound studio like before, so
Speaker 1: he just needed someone to Did you know his work
Speaker 1: from other other things he was doing, or what was
Speaker 1: your first impression of Will? A great guy? Yeah, who
Speaker 1: I knew came from a very successful show that I
Speaker 1: had never seen. Just not that much of a I'm
Speaker 1: not a TV junker. You also were in our demographic
Speaker 1: if I wasn't, if you're honest, and but I knew
Speaker 1: he'd done a successful show, and I wasn't sure. You know,
Speaker 1: actors or people, there are sometimes if you feed them
Speaker 1: and they're not such a nice ones. There are generous
Speaker 1: ones and selfish one. Yeah, there are people you want
Speaker 1: to work with and they're pricks you just want to avoid.
Speaker 1: Did I just use a bad word? That's okay, Well
Speaker 1: we can bleep it. It's not. No, it's not Those
Speaker 1: kids have heard that by this point. But so when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with someone who came from a successful show.
Speaker 1: You don't know you're going to be dealing with you.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know. I don't know who was he
Speaker 1: going to come in with a lot of attitude, you know?
Speaker 1: And he didn't. He came in ready to work, open, giving, generous.
Speaker 1: You know. I should have known because Andrea Romano, who
Speaker 1: cast the show. She's my sister. By the way, christ Romano,
Speaker 1: I wish I still haven't better. My last name is Romano. Yes,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you're related. Sometime I kind of do.
Speaker 1: I think I've actually messed Romano. Good question. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to work with all these wonderful women.
Speaker 1: A voice has another batman, it's a Reno is a man,
Speaker 1: and I said it was a woman. I'm sorry. Is
Speaker 1: a great guy. But anyway, Um, she always brings people
Speaker 1: together who are just generous, fun, creative, not a lot
Speaker 1: of judgment, not a lot of attitude, just ready to play.
Speaker 1: That's what all the bookings have always been like for
Speaker 1: thirty years. Just no attitude. Yeah, well it is lucky,
Speaker 1: but it's not lucky. It's it's Andrea. Yes, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. There's more of a science to it,
Speaker 1: I think than just look she knows what to look
Speaker 1: for in people, and she brings wonderful people together. She
Speaker 1: also so here's here's a question for you, because one
Speaker 1: of the things that Andrea I always noticed did was
Speaker 1: she just she cares about the acting. That's all. It's all.
Speaker 1: It's about, just get the best actor you can for
Speaker 1: the role. However, at the same time, she's turned more
Speaker 1: quote unquote on camera actors into voiceover actors than anybody
Speaker 1: else I've ever seen. I've never done a voiceover role before.
Speaker 1: I now consider myself more of a voiceover actor than
Speaker 1: I do an on camera actor. Will Wheaton. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a giant group of us who look at Andrea
Speaker 1: and essentially say, we were one thing in this industry,
Speaker 1: and then you brought us into a whole another side,
Speaker 1: and now we consider ourselves a whole different thing. So
Speaker 1: there's a strange justs where yes, she wants to get
Speaker 1: the best actor possible, but then she takes that actor
Speaker 1: and brings them into this world and it's like, now
Speaker 1: you're something else, and there's something really I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you started on stage, didn't You was a
Speaker 1: New York actor, much like you're Juilliard trained as well.
Speaker 1: You know, they rejected me classics. Okay, so I pre
Speaker 1: fools them, Yes, okay, I totally see it. So I
Speaker 1: I was infatuated. My mom used to call it cross training,
Speaker 1: but she was like, yeah, let's do the dancing. Let's
Speaker 1: go to School of American Ballet. I got kicked out
Speaker 1: of there and I went to I went to Performing
Speaker 1: Arts school right there by the Fame School. I went
Speaker 1: to Professional Children's School. Anyway, long story short, I auditioned.
Speaker 1: I trained for about a year to be a color
Speaker 1: tour soprano in the pre college Juilliard program. I was
Speaker 1: not accepted into the program. They said I had because
Speaker 1: I was a Broadway kid, so I did a lot
Speaker 1: of Broadway belting. It turns out I had too many
Speaker 1: bad habits for Juilliard. Really, but my god, is Juilliard
Speaker 1: amazing And anyone that's done Juilliard training has a lot
Speaker 1: of respect. It's it's it's grueling. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a grueling experience for somebody who doesn't know anything
Speaker 1: about Juilliard. Is it a four year program, is it
Speaker 1: a two year It can be many things. There's the
Speaker 1: pre college. There are a lot of different programs you
Speaker 1: can do what you did the four years you did
Speaker 1: four you I was seventeen, I'd left high school early.
Speaker 1: I was the youngest one in the school when I
Speaker 1: went in, but I was six too, and I had
Speaker 1: a deep voice. Yeah, no one really thought about it,
Speaker 1: you know, because I just fit right in. But um,
Speaker 1: so I really wanted he's hit looking guy too, if
Speaker 1: for honest, Oh come on, forget about forget about how
Speaker 1: you're still a hugely attractive man. Show me pictures of
Speaker 1: himself back in the day. I think he's dashing. It
Speaker 1: was like, it was incredible. I mean, you're, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: he's pretty damn good looking at I'm coming back here.
Speaker 1: But it's like this company, but the whole package when
Speaker 1: it comes to especially back in the day, what they're
Speaker 1: what you're looking for as an actor, I mean, commanding
Speaker 1: the presence of the talent. I mean. But so I
Speaker 1: went for the four year program because I wanted to
Speaker 1: get a b f A. Which involved doing academics on
Speaker 1: the side. Oh where did you do? The academy on
Speaker 1: the fourth floor, So Juilliard, and they had special teachers
Speaker 1: who would come in and be you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: dealing with people in Essay, BA School of Americans, the
Speaker 1: American Opera Center. I mean, all these incredibly you know,
Speaker 1: stars of their generation with dance and singing and acting.
Speaker 1: You know, Kevin Klein's in your regular slus that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And you're talking about you know, Dickens or something.
Speaker 1: You're studying English literature with people who are really thinking
Speaker 1: about what they're going to have to perform that night.
Speaker 1: You know, what they're going to present my experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all about performance. It's all performance oriented. So these
Speaker 1: academic classes were such an afterthought. They were they were
Speaker 1: kind of a joke. Yeah, I understandably that everyone went
Speaker 1: to just to you know, get the basic training. So
Speaker 1: if you get a f A because you were spending
Speaker 1: you know, twelve fourteen, sixteen hours a day in performing fencing, dance, movement, voice, diction,
Speaker 1: acting classes, poetry classes, French mass. For e to one
Speaker 1: of those classes, you have to perform. It's all performance based.
Speaker 1: So you're doing a French mass class and I you
Speaker 1: know defense, Oh my gosh, did you know that? I
Speaker 1: did not know. I was trained by B. H. Barry.
Speaker 1: The you know, there's I don't know. He said, no,
Speaker 1: he's um, he's like the stage fighting theater stage fighting guy,
Speaker 1: a British, wonderful stage fighting. But Pierre Lefevre taught me
Speaker 1: French map. Now see that in that name. And I
Speaker 1: was in that class with Robin Williams. So my presentation,
Speaker 1: I did a scene from Peter Pan, the fight between
Speaker 1: Captain Hook and Peter Pan as the characters, and we
Speaker 1: staged a fight. And who did I do with Harriet? Harris?
Speaker 1: Harriet were wonderful character actors? Wait were you Peter? Okay,
Speaker 1: you are the bad guy because of his height and
Speaker 1: my voice. But you present these pieces and you know
Speaker 1: it takes weeks to work on these things and present
Speaker 1: them and then get judged by torn down. Oh the
Speaker 1: judgment was. But then in poetry class you're doing you know,
Speaker 1: you're preparing poetry to to have judged, and it's it's grueling.
Speaker 1: It's a grueling experience. So you don't have time to
Speaker 1: prepare academics. So I'm actually really curious about this because
Speaker 1: in speaking to somebody who's gone to Juilliard, I don't
Speaker 1: think I really have had that interaction. Did you want
Speaker 1: to leave at any point just to do traditional industry work?
Speaker 1: Or did anyone else want to just stop the grueling?
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. I was scared. I always
Speaker 1: wondered if I should leave and just start acting. Okay,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you learn more by just doing? Because the first
Speaker 1: two years are really the training there. The second two
Speaker 1: years are all performance based people application of what you've learned.
Speaker 1: But the thought of swimming in the deep pool at
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen nineteen, it scared me. I wanted
Speaker 1: to stay in the school. Now did you go to
Speaker 1: become an actor? Did you go to become a singer?
Speaker 1: Did you go to be collected? It was an actor? Okay,
Speaker 1: Now there's one thing, So going back a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier in your life, there's one thing that I'm the
Speaker 1: only one at this table that knows, which is all
Speaker 1: three of us are from Connecticut. Are you from CONNECTICUTT?
Speaker 1: Are you from CONNECTICUTT? Of course I'm from Say I
Speaker 1: was doing? I was doing from Hartford, I'm from I
Speaker 1: was born in Harvard. I'm from from a town in Avon,
Speaker 1: And you were from Milford. Where are you from? West Pole?
Speaker 1: Fancy guy? Three? Kid? Now, for anybody doesn't Connecticut, we
Speaker 1: are from three different sides of Connecticut and that's still
Speaker 1: a half hour away from each other. Um, what what
Speaker 1: kind of Connecticut's are we all from? What? What kind
Speaker 1: of Connecticut is Avon? Or was it? Avon? Connecticut? Is
Speaker 1: exactly as it sounds. It was. It was farmland, it
Speaker 1: was I mean, it was a small town, but it
Speaker 1: was upper middle class and you know, very hoity toity
Speaker 1: kind of people. And we were not that family, but
Speaker 1: I mean there were kids in high school that drove
Speaker 1: the BMW's and all that kind of stuff. Again, not
Speaker 1: our family, but that's what it was like. So it
Speaker 1: was what you would expect a place that sounds like Avon,
Speaker 1: Connecticut would be any did Yeah, there were the Avon
Speaker 1: country clubs. And again I went to a public high school.
Speaker 1: So I went to Avon High I because I had to.
Speaker 1: I was swimming in the deep end. I never was trained.
Speaker 1: So I started acting at a very young age. And
Speaker 1: I would take the bus. It was three hours from
Speaker 1: Farmington to New York, uh, and I would do that
Speaker 1: once or twice a week for auditions to be told.
Speaker 1: You'd walk in there, you go, no, you don't have
Speaker 1: red hair, and you go thank you. When you turn around,
Speaker 1: your walk out and at twelve, I was walking around
Speaker 1: New York City and in the eighties and the bus
Speaker 1: would drop you off of Port Authority. My manager was
Speaker 1: supposed to be me there. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't.
Speaker 1: I would walk to my audition and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there was no better way to grow up. I
Speaker 1: never had a problem. Uh, nobody ever accosted me. I
Speaker 1: knew the homeless people in Port Authority by name. Where
Speaker 1: I would literally get off the bus and somebody go,
Speaker 1: I break a leg today, will and I go, thanks, Harvey,
Speaker 1: And I'd walk through the you know, it was It
Speaker 1: was a great experience for me. It really made me.
Speaker 1: But you know, and then I did my first show
Speaker 1: in New York and at fifty Unit Television Studio at
Speaker 1: fifty five and ninth. What was your first show? Don't
Speaker 1: just sit there on Nicola both who else? I know
Speaker 1: that show? That was my first one, that was nine.
Speaker 1: But the idea of being trained to do it I
Speaker 1: never did, And I think I suffered because of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if you had to go back and
Speaker 1: do it again, knowing your success, would you just jump
Speaker 1: into the deep end or would you go back to
Speaker 1: Juilliard again? No? I. I learned an awful lot. That's
Speaker 1: what I was. I was emotionally very immature at seventeen.
Speaker 1: I had a lot to learn. The city was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Everything about the experience was overwhelming. My first job in
Speaker 1: the city was as a mailman, as a mail carrier,
Speaker 1: really delivering the mail for a private mail service. When
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, on a bike walking, how are you
Speaker 1: doing it? I had a card pushed card. It was
Speaker 1: one of those guys on Sixth Avenue, see pushing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you have your beat? Like the like the wow.
Speaker 1: It was like a private business mail service. It was
Speaker 1: before FedEx and and um, so they would all subscribe
Speaker 1: to this airline mail service. Basically, the mail room was
Speaker 1: underneath Grand Central. So you come in. I come in
Speaker 1: on the morning train from Connecticut at like five am
Speaker 1: and go to the mail room and start sorting all
Speaker 1: the mail. And all the guys in there were wonderful.
Speaker 1: They were all these New York tough, blue collar young men,
Speaker 1: all men, real characters like a sitcom. And I went
Speaker 1: to go to my Juilliard audition from that mail room
Speaker 1: and they were so you know. God. They used to
Speaker 1: call me Shakespeare because I was always working on Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: and I was working on my pieces and stuff. They go,
Speaker 1: go for Shakespeare, go for it. You gotta get in there.
Speaker 1: And the day I got my acceptance, they all like
Speaker 1: picked me up in the air and they carried me
Speaker 1: out and they got me drunk ish. It was such
Speaker 1: a wonderful New York moment. They just adopted this kid,
Speaker 1: you know. And so that was a job that you
Speaker 1: commuted to, like before you heard about Juilliard. So you
Speaker 1: were kind of already going into New York. Interesting. I
Speaker 1: was gonna have to get a scholarship to go, so
Speaker 1: I had to save up as much money as I could.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. That's amazing. Now what did you want to do?
Speaker 1: You got to pick your career from Juilliard. You could
Speaker 1: be a film star, you could be a TV star,
Speaker 1: you could be on Broadway. What what would you do?
Speaker 1: You're both much younger than me. It was different in
Speaker 1: the seventies, right, There was still a theater that you
Speaker 1: could make a living in. Really, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: could train to be a classical actor. Used to go
Speaker 1: to the American Shakespeare Festival Stratford, Connectquet. See the plays there.
Speaker 1: I saw brilliant, aren't they didn't it burn down recently?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. But you would see these actors who
Speaker 1: did these amazing performances, and we're making a wonderful living
Speaker 1: at the theater. And that doesn't exist anymore anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to supplement your income with other things. You
Speaker 1: have to Yes, sponsored content, sponsor. The section of Catacandra
Speaker 1: has been brought to you by m X. Now. I
Speaker 1: hate to keep bringing integrating, but I'm just so impressed
Speaker 1: by you that I'm trying to, like, like I need
Speaker 1: to tell you certain things, so like, because we're all
Speaker 1: from Connecticut, right, the worst audition I've ever had in
Speaker 1: my life was for that Stratford Shakespeare. I was always
Speaker 1: this Disney kid. I did a bunch of Disney shows
Speaker 1: growing up, and but I did actually start in theater
Speaker 1: like I was in was Mary Fagan Original Mary Fagan
Speaker 1: and parade Um with Jason Robert Brown and hell Prince
Speaker 1: and all that. And I was just a theater kid.
Speaker 1: And then Disney kind of plucked me into l A
Speaker 1: and then I sort of did a wonderful production. I was, yes,
Speaker 1: the one that closed got closed down from Live In.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was fantastic, thank you. Yeah, it was amazing
Speaker 1: to be a part of that. So theater was how
Speaker 1: I started and going back and forth as a kid
Speaker 1: from Connecticut to New York. So that's why I really
Speaker 1: resonate with that part of your story. But I will
Speaker 1: also say worst choice of my life was thinking that
Speaker 1: I could just try to be auditioning for Romeo and Chew.
Speaker 1: Now I can do. I was like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my Mom's like, go for it. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I said, literally standing there like like this, just terrified.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get through one like Stanza or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: It just just bombed. Shakespeare's not for me. I leave
Speaker 1: it to Well. I mean, I think that brings brings
Speaker 1: it to kind of an interesting point in the conversation
Speaker 1: where we're going to get into v O because it's
Speaker 1: about v O. But it seems like acting itself has
Speaker 1: changed where there doesn't seem to be the discipline that
Speaker 1: there once was. There isn't the study of acting as
Speaker 1: a craft as much anymore. And it's more I've got talent,
Speaker 1: it's natural, just hire me to be myself and arsenalitying
Speaker 1: that more. Do you see that more and more with
Speaker 1: the generations coming up? Where it's like, which is why
Speaker 1: it seems like everything we're watching, whether it's television or film,
Speaker 1: everybody's British because they still study the craft of acting,
Speaker 1: whereas we're more about being celebrities, they're still about being actors. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Acting is the art of communication, right, It's it's communicating,
Speaker 1: it's telling stories. It's as old as the caveman. It's
Speaker 1: telling stories and elevating it to an art form. And
Speaker 1: the more intimate you can make that story, the more personal,
Speaker 1: the more at risk you can make it for you,
Speaker 1: the more compelling it is. People can't take their eyes
Speaker 1: off of you. If you're risking something, if you're really
Speaker 1: exposing who you are, if you're really exposing who you are,
Speaker 1: if you're taking if you're if you're being dangerous, that
Speaker 1: makes it riveting. People have taken that to mean I'm
Speaker 1: just going to be myself in whatever role I play,
Speaker 1: it's about me, rather than taking those personal experiences, those
Speaker 1: personal emotions, that raw emotion and bringing it to the character. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Well, don't you think creating
Speaker 1: a character? American actors don't do that so much anymore,
Speaker 1: do you sound Meryl? Does there are certain actors who
Speaker 1: but for the most part it's the British actress who
Speaker 1: do that. I really love Jessica Chastain. I think she's
Speaker 1: isn't she Julie. No, there's a group that does it,
Speaker 1: but there's also I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: it shows about, especially the American society right now, is
Speaker 1: there's kind of a pervasive narcissism kind of that is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's about everything's about me. It's all about me.
Speaker 1: Whether it is I call it a narcissistic purgatory, well,
Speaker 1: there you go, but it is so when you're making
Speaker 1: everything about you, then the idea that you don't want
Speaker 1: to watch me is so strange. It's alien. Why would
Speaker 1: you not want to watch me just being me? So
Speaker 1: I don't have to study or do anything because just
Speaker 1: me is so amazing And I think you don't see
Speaker 1: that in some of the foreign actors. Um Now the
Speaker 1: question becomes, then bringing it back to what we do here,
Speaker 1: the question becomes, how do you get that same level
Speaker 1: of vulnerability that you've talked about that you need to
Speaker 1: really kind of established to make something compelling When all
Speaker 1: you have to work with is your voice. I find
Speaker 1: it easier when all you have to work with is
Speaker 1: your voice, because you don't have to accommodate the camera,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You don't have that whole
Speaker 1: crew standing around you off off camera. You don't have
Speaker 1: the boom man and the lighting guy and the makeup
Speaker 1: person and the camera coming in. Well, it's you and
Speaker 1: the microphone. So it's more intimate. It's so intimate. It's
Speaker 1: it's more of an internal dialogue that that I have
Speaker 1: with the character. So in a booth, I can really
Speaker 1: let go, whereas on camera there's so much more that
Speaker 1: you have to accommodate. I love that choice of words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I find it very liberating. I find a sound
Speaker 1: a sound room to be really liberating. It is a
Speaker 1: very peaceful place. It is. It's but it's so strange
Speaker 1: because one of the best overall scenes I've ever seen
Speaker 1: done in a recording room. You and I were doing
Speaker 1: the film Batman Beyond Return of the Joker, which was
Speaker 1: a wonderful film, and I'm sitting in between you and
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill for a week. I just sat there, going,
Speaker 1: just keep your mouth shut or you're gonna get fired
Speaker 1: because you don't belong here. And you never looked at
Speaker 1: each other because you can't. You're staring at the microphone.
Speaker 1: And yet the scene between you and Mark where he's
Speaker 1: being so familiar with her head, oh batsy and just
Speaker 1: being so hybrus and it's so unbelievable. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I've you ever seen Mark Camill work. For everybody out
Speaker 1: there who hasn't, he's devouring the microphone, he's an inch away,
Speaker 1: and he's just so passionate, shakes like a shakes Barian actor,
Speaker 1: he spits a lot. And then there's you who's taken
Speaker 1: this character that is now in his late eighties at
Speaker 1: this point, so you're trying to have that same kind
Speaker 1: of verve that you had when the first time the
Speaker 1: Joker and Batman faced off, but it's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: So there's that sense of the aged as well, and
Speaker 1: the two of you together, and I just sat back
Speaker 1: just going, I don't this, I don't belong here. So
Speaker 1: there's that sense of it's still being a stage play
Speaker 1: in voiceover that sometimes you don't get in television or
Speaker 1: on film. And it's so strange because in some ways
Speaker 1: you're so much more disconnected from your fellow actor and
Speaker 1: that you're not making eye contact, and yet just through
Speaker 1: the microphone there is that familiarity. It's so strange. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even know how to describe it. It's
Speaker 1: just so odd. It is interesting because you're you're living
Speaker 1: through your voice and you're creating the character, and you're
Speaker 1: creating the drama, and you're creating, uh, the tension, and
Speaker 1: the other actor is doing the same thing. But you're
Speaker 1: not even looking at each other, and there's this intimacy
Speaker 1: that develops, and it's only through the voice. It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's so strange when you see we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: the fact that you are the only correct answer to
Speaker 1: who's the best Batman? We're going to get into that
Speaker 1: to everybody, it's true, but just to you and to me,
Speaker 1: if you and no, no, no, I'm saying who's the
Speaker 1: best Batman? I always say he is or I am.
Speaker 1: That's is the only answer to those things. Um, I
Speaker 1: thought it was you, Now I think it's No. It's
Speaker 1: always it. He's the only correct. When you look at
Speaker 1: especially a Bruce tim drawing of Batman or Bruce Wayne,
Speaker 1: do you see yourself some hard hitting questions, No, you
Speaker 1: don't really see myself you don't I really see the character. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's not a little bit of Kevin in there now,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe the jaw. So then that's one
Speaker 1: of my questions. Let's we were do you see yourself?
Speaker 1: And Ron? Yes, you do? I do? I do? When
Speaker 1: I if, I if because it's funny. It's one of
Speaker 1: the ways that I know I'm not doing the character
Speaker 1: properly is if I can see the drawing or watch
Speaker 1: the show and I don't see myself. Okay. There's been
Speaker 1: several characters I've done where I'm like, I'm not hitting
Speaker 1: it because when I see it, I don't see me.
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Certain things where I can
Speaker 1: see myself. Ron is one of them. Terry more than
Speaker 1: Batman was one of them. But like when I did
Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxy the first episodes, my register was
Speaker 1: too high for the animation and I didn't see myself
Speaker 1: in the character, and it was weird. It was off
Speaker 1: putting to me. But going back to Connecticut, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this thing I want to bring you to your childhood.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, that's to well. No, for one specific reason,
Speaker 1: did you watch any animation, any cartoon. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: animation to us. So it was just cartoons growing up.
Speaker 1: I had never well, there wasn't a Batman cartoon. There
Speaker 1: was Batman comics though. Comics, yea, I watched the Jetsons,
Speaker 1: I mean all the stuff from the sixties. Sure, that
Speaker 1: was what I want. But were you a cartoon fan.
Speaker 1: We were allowed a certain amount of TV. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty strict house. But um, but yeah, I watched
Speaker 1: the flint Stones and the Jetsons and but I had
Speaker 1: no exposure to comic books. We didn't have comic books.
Speaker 1: When when I went into audition for for Batman, Bruce
Speaker 1: Tim said, what's your knowledge of Batman? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I know the Adam West Show. And he said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what we're doing. He said, we love Adam,
Speaker 1: but that's not what we're doing. He said, didn't you
Speaker 1: every comic books when you're a kid, the Batman's I said, well, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't. We didn't have comic books. He said, what
Speaker 1: kind of childhood did you have? Oh man, that too.
Speaker 1: So you can hear what I'm saying. You can you
Speaker 1: can hear. And so he is the one who introduced me.
Speaker 1: He said, well, it's you know, his parents were murdered
Speaker 1: in front of him as a child, and in Crime Alley,
Speaker 1: he's spent his life avenging their deaths. He's become this
Speaker 1: dual personality. He's a public face and a private face,
Speaker 1: and he's, uh, you know, he's he's living too avenged
Speaker 1: and to to bring justice to the world. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you're telling your kind of telling the Hamlet story again,
Speaker 1: it's very similar. And he said, well, no one's made
Speaker 1: that analogy. So I said, well, let me just use
Speaker 1: my imagination, and so I just put myself in that
Speaker 1: scene in Crimes in Crime Alley. Had you already been
Speaker 1: in the voiceover world or the animation? Okay, this is
Speaker 1: the first edition I ever went in on for a
Speaker 1: voice over. And you were a little reluctant. Were you reluctant? Well,
Speaker 1: I I rectant. Well, because actors, you know what it's like.
Speaker 1: You go on twenty auditions and you don't get them,
Speaker 1: so you could become kind of casual about them. You
Speaker 1: think I really want to go to this one today? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go to this Well. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm going to speak to the fact that I had
Speaker 1: done a lot of indie I had done like this
Speaker 1: really high art Broadway show and we were paid off
Speaker 1: to go like to my my mom and I went
Speaker 1: to pilot season with the money because we closed early, right,
Speaker 1: and I ended up working getting a Disney job, and
Speaker 1: that was it. I just work work, work for Disney
Speaker 1: for my whole teen years. But prior to that, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I did a Woody Allen movie. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of more like indie New York stuff. And so actually
Speaker 1: I'm going to mention her name, but because she knows,
Speaker 1: it's okay now. But it's just a chek who is
Speaker 1: an amazing voice actress. And she was a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine and is still and I love her so much.
Speaker 1: And she was like, yere, you want to work for Disney.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I was like, yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: She said, okay, you know, and I was that's my guest, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's I haven't okay to chic On on
Speaker 1: a good day. But yeah, I remember having to make
Speaker 1: that choice and that leap into the unknown of something
Speaker 1: that was sort of wildly different than the training and
Speaker 1: experience that I had, you know, on the East Coast
Speaker 1: and the whole thing. Yeah, I was totally going to
Speaker 1: blow it off because I thought, there's no way this
Speaker 1: is going to happen. Why am I bothering to go
Speaker 1: this ninety one? It was nine okay, because we're an
Speaker 1: into production. I was going to blow it off because
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, this is this is this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a complete waste of time. Put my energy
Speaker 1: into preparing the audition for tomorrow, that is for a
Speaker 1: pilot or something, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I think else, you know, I'll just go what's the
Speaker 1: worst that can happen. I can make a fool of myself,
Speaker 1: big deal. So it was a totally random audition that
Speaker 1: I did not think was going to lead to anything.
Speaker 1: But then as I started putting my imagination into the
Speaker 1: character in the booth and putting myself into that that
Speaker 1: that boy in that alley and what would happen to
Speaker 1: him and how he would compensate in life, and then
Speaker 1: I just my voice went to this place and this
Speaker 1: I started using this sound that I had never used before.
Speaker 1: It just came out, and they hired me on the spot.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what we want. Of course, of course that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. But it was totally improvised on the spot. No, no, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean to the point where I remember my dad.
Speaker 1: We were doing Beyond at the time, and something had
Speaker 1: happened where we were in New York. My father and
Speaker 1: I and you were in New York at the time,
Speaker 1: and we were waiting in the room to record something,
Speaker 1: and you were walking down the hallway and you said
Speaker 1: hello to somebody and you said in your voice, like, hey, Jack,
Speaker 1: how you doing? And my dad went, who is that?
Speaker 1: Because that voice? You have that voice, and it was
Speaker 1: like that, that's Kevin, that's Kevin. So again we've talked
Speaker 1: about this first audition ever for voiceover is Batman. It
Speaker 1: is completely Shakespearean when you actually think about the Batman
Speaker 1: character is totally Shakespearean characters. He has no superpowers, he
Speaker 1: can't fly, he can't see through walls. He's a tragic hero.
Speaker 1: He is Arresties, he is Achilles, he is Edgar in lear.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's so many of the roles that I
Speaker 1: had played, and so I just approached it that way.
Speaker 1: So now I rewatched on literally on Sunday on the
Speaker 1: plane home. I was just in Connecticut and I'm flying home.
Speaker 1: It was negative eight thousand degrees Um. Batman the animated
Speaker 1: series was just is now on all the day, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm starting over, and I went right
Speaker 1: to the pilot and the first line of the first
Speaker 1: episode of the first Batman series is what was that?
Speaker 1: And wasn't that you two helicopter? That was was the
Speaker 1: coolest thing. That was the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: So h I'm watching. And obviously the animation has changed
Speaker 1: from that first episode quite a bit, the stories instantly
Speaker 1: compelling and now getting back into the world of v O. Batman.
Speaker 1: The animated series changed the whole ballgame for animation all
Speaker 1: the way around, from the way they recorded it to
Speaker 1: the way they animated it, to the way they produced it,
Speaker 1: to the way it was it was promoted, to the
Speaker 1: way it was scored full symphony score. It was. They
Speaker 1: threw money at that show, which still show. It still shows.
Speaker 1: It's why it still looks so rich and so fresh
Speaker 1: and compelling, and young people still get turned onto it.
Speaker 1: I get approached the comic cons all the time by people,
Speaker 1: Oh I just started watching it. So cool. His fans too,
Speaker 1: it isn't They all go, oh man, you're here as
Speaker 1: Kevin Um And I'm like, hey, thanks, he's over there
Speaker 1: in the line, or I will get this a lot.
Speaker 1: This is the best one. Like I love Batman Beyond.
Speaker 1: Can you sign this for me please? Like yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's really great that you came over there, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: Kevin's line was too long. I get that a lot too.
Speaker 1: Kevin's lines too long? Like, well, it's nice to me.
Speaker 1: Did you do voices at all growing up? Did you
Speaker 1: did you do voices of your own things that you
Speaker 1: read or or have imaginary friends that you spoke to
Speaker 1: in different voices, any of that stuff. I had imaginary friends. Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds so weird. Have you seen the title of the ship?
Speaker 1: You're in a safe space? Come on, now we have
Speaker 1: I actually grew up in Long Island. We moved to
Speaker 1: Westport when I was about eleven, and when I was
Speaker 1: it was a very working class community and there were
Speaker 1: a couple of trees in the backyard dogwood trees, and
Speaker 1: when the leaves fell, I would get very, very very upset,
Speaker 1: and my mother caught me outside on a chair with
Speaker 1: tape putting the leaves back on the tree. That was
Speaker 1: the kind of affection that I had to these trees.
Speaker 1: I was trying to heal them as I couldn't hear
Speaker 1: how what's going on? And then she watched me and
Speaker 1: she saw me starting to talk and then stop and listen.
Speaker 1: And I was having a conversation with the tree with
Speaker 1: the trees. That's amazing. So my first imaginary friends were
Speaker 1: the two trees in the backyard. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: the conversation. I don't know what their names were, or
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know the personas that I put
Speaker 1: into them. She said I would go out and have dialogue.
Speaker 1: She said she'd watch me, and she thought, I hope
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with this child. I think that's amazing.
Speaker 1: So you gave boys, you voiced, gave voices to the
Speaker 1: earth essentially, but it was the loss of the leaves
Speaker 1: that that moved me emotionally to them. Then I developed
Speaker 1: this relationship with them. Those are my first voices. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Do you still love trees? Oh? I'm a real outdoor person.
Speaker 1: You are being outside. So I was trying to think
Speaker 1: you might have thought of this already, because I can't
Speaker 1: of literally other than maybe a talk show host, any
Speaker 1: other actor in history who has played a role as
Speaker 1: long as you have. And I can't think of anyone.
Speaker 1: You've been Batman now in many iterations for thirty years?
Speaker 1: Have have the Simpsons been on longer? Maybe? Maybe? Okay,
Speaker 1: so then they might have voice actors, they might have
Speaker 1: may be essentially but you right, it's up there. But
Speaker 1: you'd be one of a handful of actors in history
Speaker 1: that have played a single character for as long as
Speaker 1: you have. And what a character to play, you think,
Speaker 1: I mean, so rich, there's so much always defined there.
Speaker 1: You never get tired of playing him. Oh that's wonderful
Speaker 1: to hear. Oh you don't. It's just he's so damaged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what it compels people to him, because we're
Speaker 1: all damaged, and people read that into Batman. They relate
Speaker 1: that to Batman. It's his humanity, it's his flaws. That's
Speaker 1: what attracts people. They really are. People think of the
Speaker 1: heroic and the bigger I am, and they think of
Speaker 1: that as Batman. But it's really the flaws in him,
Speaker 1: I think that really draw people in. It's also what's
Speaker 1: recurring in any iteration of Batman, even live action that
Speaker 1: we're seeing, like with the Robert Pattinson one that's recently
Speaker 1: coming in, Like everyone's their own Batman, but they're all
Speaker 1: damaged and that's what anchors their performance. But then there's
Speaker 1: there's also something very interesting. I remember Bruce tim saying
Speaker 1: something to me that was we were talking about just
Speaker 1: the character Batman in general, and the thing that he
Speaker 1: told me that it was very interesting. As you said,
Speaker 1: bat there always needs to be a Batman for everyone.
Speaker 1: So he said, when the movies got very dark, the cartoons,
Speaker 1: the animated series got very light, so it was like
Speaker 1: Braven the Bold came out and you saw it was
Speaker 1: more of a comedy side of Batman because the film's
Speaker 1: got very dark. And then he said, when the film's
Speaker 1: got very like like like the Schwarzenegger ones, we were
Speaker 1: doing Beyond and Batman the animated series. So he said,
Speaker 1: Batman always needs to exist for everybody, so a five
Speaker 1: year old can find their Batman and a year old
Speaker 1: can find their Batman. And I thought there was something
Speaker 1: very interesting about that as well, where it's just that
Speaker 1: character that has so many levels where we both know
Speaker 1: Dietrich bad very well, who came and sat down in
Speaker 1: front of the microphone and did it completely different, I mean,
Speaker 1: such a different Batman than than you you ever did.
Speaker 1: And one wasn't better or worse. There were just different,
Speaker 1: just different Batman Adam West, who was you know, God
Speaker 1: rest him? We were I know you knew Adam West
Speaker 1: pretty well, right, Yeah, it was a funny scene. Lived
Speaker 1: in Utah and I had been at some comic con
Speaker 1: and I was changing planes at Salt Lake City Airport
Speaker 1: and Adam was waiting for a plane. That's all like
Speaker 1: they airport. We saw each other and I was like Adam,
Speaker 1: and he went Kevin. So we sat down and we're
Speaker 1: talking to each other and people started noticing that's Batman
Speaker 1: and Batman. So all the camera phones came out and
Speaker 1: people started taking pictures. There was a Batman convention at
Speaker 1: Salt Lake Airport. But I mean that because again, two
Speaker 1: completely different versions, wildly unbelievable, so strange. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: really nice, really nice man. He wasn't very nice. So
Speaker 1: then you don't ever feel territorial over Batman as a whole,
Speaker 1: do you know? Not at all? It's a you don't
Speaker 1: get to own the character. You get to sort of
Speaker 1: rent him for a while, You get to inhabit him
Speaker 1: for a while, um, and then someone else comes. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have been pretty close to owning the camera,
Speaker 1: love doing it, I love well yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: and I have a wonderful relationship with the audience and
Speaker 1: the fans through the character. But all of us other
Speaker 1: Batman are pretty much playing for a second. I think
Speaker 1: we all know that. Oh my gosh, that takes such
Speaker 1: like but it's true. I mean, but it's true. It's
Speaker 1: there's there's times where you just go, I mean again.
Speaker 1: People always ask me, all right, Michael Keaton, Christian Bale,
Speaker 1: who's your Batman? And I always Kevin Conroy's Batman. Like
Speaker 1: you know, anybody who's in conect who knows anything about
Speaker 1: animation or any or this world or is truly a
Speaker 1: Batman fan. This is how I look at it, because
Speaker 1: you get a lot of people that are Batman fan
Speaker 1: fans when it comes to like the films, like but
Speaker 1: truly and all around Batman fan when you're reading the
Speaker 1: comic book, whose voices in your head? Kevin's voices in
Speaker 1: your head? And I think, don't you hear that from
Speaker 1: most of the fans that say there, when I read anything,
Speaker 1: when I do anything, it's your voice. Well, I hear
Speaker 1: that from the fans because they're talking to me and
Speaker 1: They're not going to come to me and say, oh
Speaker 1: I hear you know you to me and say I
Speaker 1: hear Kevin Conroy, You're pretty good. But I hear Kevin Connor.
Speaker 1: Maybe they know how much you love him. This is
Speaker 1: like I think it's I mean, of course, what we've
Speaker 1: talked about that any times to where the you know,
Speaker 1: the Bruce and Terry relationship was was kind of similar
Speaker 1: to yours and mind it was to actually doing the show. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was so funny you mentioned the Simpsons. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't think of another actor that has played
Speaker 1: a single role owned a role for thirty years. Yeah, unusual, Yeah, epic,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it's epic. So we are going to
Speaker 1: get into and then the Games came along. Well okay,
Speaker 1: so that's what actually games, we were just going to
Speaker 1: jumpe just amazing. Now, how is that difference in recording?
Speaker 1: That's what I want to know. How please, It's like
Speaker 1: it's like root Canal. It is so different because you
Speaker 1: know that when you do a recording in the studio
Speaker 1: with the other actors, especially for Warner Brothers, everybody's there
Speaker 1: together and it's like doing a radio play. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: all interacting you. You have the other actor feeding you.
Speaker 1: You have Mark Hamill feeding you a line. I mean,
Speaker 1: how can you not feed well in response? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? He just brings it out of you.
Speaker 1: But when you go into do games, everything's got to
Speaker 1: be on its own track because of the way the
Speaker 1: games are played, everything is on their own algorithm, you know.
Speaker 1: So they can't do people together, so everything is isolated.
Speaker 1: So you're in a room alone, a soundproof room, and
Speaker 1: you're creating the situation of the character, the character, the
Speaker 1: what what does he want? What is he after? What's
Speaker 1: just happened? Where are you going? And then keeping the
Speaker 1: voice alive, line by line by line by line by line,
Speaker 1: and they do them all at one line at a time,
Speaker 1: so it's totally different. Hundreds of cues, thousands of cues,
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousand lines come on in Arkham Night, the
Speaker 1: third of the Arkham series, thirty seven thousand lines, because
Speaker 1: depending on how the game's play, take thousands of different things.
Speaker 1: There two years, four hours at a time alone in
Speaker 1: a booth. You come out and you're just sweating, and
Speaker 1: then they give you an hour for lunch, and then
Speaker 1: you go in four hours more and you're just keeping
Speaker 1: just keeping the drama alive in your head and keeping
Speaker 1: it straight. What's happened to him? Now? Where is he going?
Speaker 1: Did he just get in a fight? Is he? You know?
Speaker 1: All that stuff you're keeping alive in your own head,
Speaker 1: and it's it's exhausting. By the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're just depleted. You're depleted and you're exhausted. And then
Speaker 1: they do that for about a week and then you
Speaker 1: get a few weeks off while they're writing more stuff
Speaker 1: than they bring you in for another week. What's really
Speaker 1: tough work? People, I think assume that just because you're
Speaker 1: talking into a microphone that it's not a hard work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you always hear that. Well, you're a voice over, you
Speaker 1: can come in your pajamas. It's like, yeah, that's somebody
Speaker 1: who's never actually done the work. The building games is
Speaker 1: really hard work? Is there? When you prefer act from
Speaker 1: an acting standpoint? Arkham Knight, the third of the Arkham trilogy,
Speaker 1: I think is that one with the thirty seven thousand
Speaker 1: because the end of it, I don't want to I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give away share. But Batman goes through
Speaker 1: this this transition, this this this Catharsis that is was
Speaker 1: so challenging as an actor to do. You know, you
Speaker 1: like to be challenged by things like that, and I
Speaker 1: was so proud of the way it it came out.
Speaker 1: I was really really happy with that one. So I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever asked you this and you can't
Speaker 1: say me, because it's obviously the answer you would give,
Speaker 1: being that it's our podcast and you can't say you.
Speaker 1: Who's your favorite Batman? Oh man, I'm not sure if ever,
Speaker 1: I can't say you can't. You can't say you, and
Speaker 1: you can't you can't see me either? Course would who
Speaker 1: would I? But I I thought it was really crazy
Speaker 1: for Warner Brothers not to give the franchise to one person,
Speaker 1: the on camera franchise, because traditionally that's what always happened.
Speaker 1: You know, you have one person play a character, do
Speaker 1: you know, like a James Bond, kind of like James
Speaker 1: Bonner or Peter Sellers, you know, Clusseau, and there'll be
Speaker 1: certain you know, the character would just do that franchise.
Speaker 1: So when Michael Keaton did the first of the Batman movies,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, he's nailed it, He's got it, and
Speaker 1: he's going to get the whole franchise because I love
Speaker 1: him as an actor. He's a brilliant, such an amazing Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's one of my favorites ever really, and so I
Speaker 1: think it's impossible to pick one because they're all so different.
Speaker 1: When I started seeing the different characters, I mean, Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck is fantastic. He's fantastic and good. It was the
Speaker 1: best part of Batman Versus Superman. Christian Bale is a
Speaker 1: little sketchy with his Batman voice, but as Bruce Wayne great,
Speaker 1: Bruce Wayne phenomenal, Bruayne phenomenal. So everybody brings something different
Speaker 1: than it's I realized after a while why they did that.
Speaker 1: It makes it makes it so interesting to see what
Speaker 1: different actors bring. But to be honest, Michael Keaton, I
Speaker 1: thing I had to pick one down would now? Don't
Speaker 1: you think that Batman the animated series is partially responsible
Speaker 1: for actors realizing that Batman and Bruce Wayne are two
Speaker 1: different characters. Well certainly that they should have two different
Speaker 1: voices and two different personas. That hadn't been done before.
Speaker 1: And I asked Bruce if I could do that, because
Speaker 1: I said, wait a minute, because I was so new
Speaker 1: to all this I said, he's he's the richest man
Speaker 1: in Gotham. He's the most desirable bachelor. He owns half
Speaker 1: the city and he puts on a mask and no
Speaker 1: one knows it's him. I said, seriously, that's that's stretching credulity.
Speaker 1: That's to a ridiculous point. I said, can I, you know,
Speaker 1: change the voice up a little bit, And so we
Speaker 1: decided my my image was of a playboy sophisticated, almost
Speaker 1: a David Niven kind of character. That's what I was visualizing.
Speaker 1: And it just was a lighter register of my own voice.
Speaker 1: It was just slightly lighter and a little more. I
Speaker 1: used a lot of irony, a lot of humor. I
Speaker 1: went a lot for the humor, but you definitely it
Speaker 1: was it was Batman and Bruce Wayne were two different people,
Speaker 1: and that was never I don't think that had ever
Speaker 1: really been done before, explored to that extent as it
Speaker 1: had in Batman the Animals. They decided over time to
Speaker 1: have me tone it down because when the artwork came back,
Speaker 1: the show was so dark. It was all painted on black.
Speaker 1: It was the first time the show had been painted
Speaker 1: on a black so it was very dark, and that's
Speaker 1: the music was so dramatic and the stories were so complicated.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, when you go to that light,
Speaker 1: ironic voice, it's it's a little too jarring. So they
Speaker 1: had to tone it down. They liked the distinction, but
Speaker 1: they just wanted it less less. So so actually I'm
Speaker 1: back and re recorded the first few episodes. Really, there
Speaker 1: is quite a harmony involved in the like you're saying this,
Speaker 1: the music mixed with the actual animation to the voices.
Speaker 1: It kind of is all synergistic. Really, like if the
Speaker 1: characters that he and I were blessed to play, our
Speaker 1: characters were Kim and Ron. We kind of massaged it
Speaker 1: over the first season of Trying to Find so that
Speaker 1: you know, when we you've mentioned that, like sometimes if
Speaker 1: you watch some of your work, you're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't do that right, I'm taking I'm taking myself out
Speaker 1: of that character. It's not blending well, like he can't
Speaker 1: see himself in that character, and it's true, and it's
Speaker 1: it's just it's one of those things where I don't
Speaker 1: know I always thought about because the exact opposite thing
Speaker 1: happened to me when I was doing Beyond, where they
Speaker 1: pulled back my gravel, where Andrea would constantly say, you're
Speaker 1: getting too gravelly into our should stay to piraty with
Speaker 1: the with the Batman voice, because with Terry it was
Speaker 1: as a seventeen year old kid when he went and
Speaker 1: put on the cowl, going hey stop, no, nobody was
Speaker 1: going to be afraid of him. So it was interesting
Speaker 1: that we mirrored ourselves in that aspect as well, where
Speaker 1: they pulled you back from the higher register and they
Speaker 1: pulled me back from the lower register, which I thought
Speaker 1: was was kind of fun. But again, I think anybody
Speaker 1: who knows animation and or like's animation knows that Batman
Speaker 1: the animated series changed the whole ballgame. Oh definitely. I
Speaker 1: I lived through that too as a as a viewer,
Speaker 1: so I completely came became It was no longer a cartoon,
Speaker 1: it was an animated It was a movement and that
Speaker 1: was huge. Yeah, that's really interesting. The actors they brought him,
Speaker 1: everything about this show was extraordinary. I mean, going in
Speaker 1: every week was like an acting lesson. The people I
Speaker 1: got to work with, Mark Hamill, Roddy McDowell from Zimbilis Jr.
Speaker 1: Stacy Keach, I saw Stacy keach Is Hamlet when I
Speaker 1: was in high school. I mean, I had always admired
Speaker 1: his work. And that's Andrea, and that's all these different actors,
Speaker 1: and she went way outside the traditional pool of voice actors.
Speaker 1: She brought them into. I was gonna say, what was
Speaker 1: the traditional reach of actors then people off of certain
Speaker 1: types of that's a good question. What was the voiceover actor? Well,
Speaker 1: Andrea always referred to a lot of it as pukey.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that with with like, well, there were
Speaker 1: some it would be, but the acting itself, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the act It was overly saccharin and overly cartoony. Was
Speaker 1: the term, don't be cartoon? Yeah, because you know, like
Speaker 1: when she would always say that when somebody would come
Speaker 1: in and they it was always newscasters, a newscaster would
Speaker 1: come in with it with something and they'd go, you know,
Speaker 1: and this just in in Gotham and she go, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like you're a newscaster, say it just like you. And
Speaker 1: I remember sitting there going like, oh, that's what she
Speaker 1: means by pukey, Like, don't do it cartoon like it was?
Speaker 1: And she was always had that doubt. Uki, that's so interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think that it was real is. It was
Speaker 1: the word I would use for Batman the animated series.
Speaker 1: It was real. She brought an actors to acts. So
Speaker 1: if there was any voice character that you would want
Speaker 1: to do, I'm doing it again. Something else besides Batman
Speaker 1: to do? Who would you do? Betty? Oh? Have his laugh?
Speaker 1: I don't have his laugh? I think an episode I
Speaker 1: have his sinister Yeah, yes, I could see that. I've
Speaker 1: done actually a voice for a new animated show that
Speaker 1: hasn't been I don't know what's happening with it. But
Speaker 1: he's very sinister and it's really fun. It's good to
Speaker 1: play a villain after all these years. I am also
Speaker 1: officially advocating for somebody to write an episode where Mark
Speaker 1: Hamill and Kevin Connray get to switch roles for one
Speaker 1: for one episode. Oh they did that with Keep Remember
Speaker 1: we did the body switch switch. I want to see
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill is Batman and Kevin Connery is a joker.
Speaker 1: I think that would be very very cool. His laugh
Speaker 1: is just otherworldly. I mean it's just incredible. Well that was,
Speaker 1: but that was the thing is so many people saw
Speaker 1: Star Wars and kind of went, oh, Mark Camill cute.
Speaker 1: Well that's what I knew of him from and then,
Speaker 1: but his actual acting, he's a he's a character actor
Speaker 1: and a ridiculous slee good one. He's not a young
Speaker 1: leading man, which is what he was pigeoned hold into
Speaker 1: because he was such a good looking god had haircut,
Speaker 1: but my really good looking god. Oh he is such
Speaker 1: as really a character actor. He's crazy and not only crazy,
Speaker 1: but insanely talented. It's just watching that, all right. So
Speaker 1: we've come to a portion of our podcast here that
Speaker 1: um makes us a little different than all the other
Speaker 1: podcasts out there. So while we're just starting, it's not
Speaker 1: fully interactive yet, but eventually we are going to be
Speaker 1: fully interactive, and kids, young adults, and even some adults
Speaker 1: are going to get to skype in, come in talk
Speaker 1: to their favorite voice over actors. But more importantly, artists
Speaker 1: are going to send in pictures and have some of
Speaker 1: their favorite voice over actors add voices to their character.
Speaker 1: So we have a stack here, oh that was sent
Speaker 1: But to completely put you on the spot, we've had
Speaker 1: for our first couple episodes, we've had some kids, some
Speaker 1: adults send in some pictures. Put you on the spot,
Speaker 1: isn't it? This is the joys in the muscles, and
Speaker 1: we would like would you like us to pick or
Speaker 1: would you like to pick? Here we go? Here we go?
Speaker 1: Is he picking at random? It's up to you. Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful. Some great artists and some inspiring artists. Certainly,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool. These are fun. Again, imagine being
Speaker 1: a little kid and getting Kevin Conroy to put a
Speaker 1: voice to the character you've drawn. These are fun. These
Speaker 1: are fun. Okay, I grabbed a couple. You grabbed that's awesome. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this first one is a beautiful fish with it
Speaker 1: almost looks like a very disnified fish. It's a beautiful fishes.
Speaker 1: Uh is this from Sam? Who did our logo? Here? Sam?
Speaker 1: This is a beautiful fish. Beautiful beautiful fish. And Kevin
Speaker 1: Connray grabbed your fish right out of the stack. So okay, Kevin,
Speaker 1: you're you see that you're an audition comes in front
Speaker 1: of you. We want Kevin Conroy to read for the
Speaker 1: part of Sam the fish. This is my butterfly, and
Speaker 1: this is my favorite butterfly. This is my pet butterfly.
Speaker 1: I'm caressing my butterfly because fish love butterflies. That's a
Speaker 1: great voice. That's a great voice for Sam. The fish.
Speaker 1: And here we have a cat who's also from Sam Portly.
Speaker 1: He's partly that very Portly cat. This is King pussy Cat,
Speaker 1: King pussy Cat, and I am Emperor for the Day
Speaker 1: for the day. There you go, look at that sale.
Speaker 1: Kevin Conroy just put voices to two of your characters.
Speaker 1: We got them both up there. We do. We have
Speaker 1: this one now too, So King pussy Cat and what
Speaker 1: was the fishy name? Sam? Well? I really I think
Speaker 1: I like Sam. I really like Sama Butterfly. So, Kevin,
Speaker 1: what's next? What's what's next for you? Down the line? Um?
Speaker 1: This thing I just started doing that. I'm you never
Speaker 1: know what you can talk about something awesome coming out.
Speaker 1: It's by an Australian creator, Aborigine, right cool, which is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah. And then there was another one that
Speaker 1: I did a couple of episodes of that. These are
Speaker 1: things that are waiting to be picked up. I never
Speaker 1: know what I'm allowed to say the names yet, on
Speaker 1: the side of caution and just say you've got some
Speaker 1: really cool stuff coming out, right Yeah, But then it
Speaker 1: sounds like you're just an actor. Line to make it
Speaker 1: sound like you're working. I do that all the time.
Speaker 1: I do that all the time. I've got amazing things
Speaker 1: coming out. I don't know which one to pick. I was.
Speaker 1: You know when you do the the upfronts for the networks,
Speaker 1: when you're doing a TV show, and so they bring
Speaker 1: in to New York and you meet all the advertisers
Speaker 1: or anything. And I was doing one for a show
Speaker 1: that I was on with an actor and I was
Speaker 1: doing interviews with him and he said, he's literally said
Speaker 1: during the interview, I had a pile of script this
Speaker 1: high and I picked this one off the top, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, this is a show I want
Speaker 1: to do. And I was thinking, what a load. This
Speaker 1: guy was so excited to get that job. And he's saying,
Speaker 1: I had a lying Actors just act. They just act
Speaker 1: actors acting. Oh gosh, that's actors being act That's the
Speaker 1: way it is. That should be a podcasting. It's just
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of whispering into the camera about so
Speaker 1: where did you find your motivation? That's an r exactly, exactly,
Speaker 1: Welcome to NPR. Actors on unctive. So again, we've now
Speaker 1: got Batman for thirty somebody years. Batman ain't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: You're constantly being cast as Batman, Because you're Batman, Where
Speaker 1: do you what would you like to see from the
Speaker 1: Batman character that maybe you haven't done yet? Is there
Speaker 1: any part of this character in thirty years that has
Speaker 1: not been explored that you'd like to see? They've explored
Speaker 1: so much. I love it when his identity gets challenged.
Speaker 1: Those are scripts that I really get excited by. There
Speaker 1: was one called Perchance to Dream where he gets drugged
Speaker 1: and he goes back into his childhood. And so I
Speaker 1: was Bruce Wayne, I was Batman, I was drugged to Batman,
Speaker 1: then I was adolescent Bruce Wayne, and I was Thomas Wayne,
Speaker 1: the father. So he did five voices in that in
Speaker 1: that show that all have to be believably connected but distinct,
Speaker 1: But those kind of because it's the psychology of the
Speaker 1: character that makes him so interesting. Yeah, So any of
Speaker 1: the ones that challenge that I love, Like at the
Speaker 1: end of Arkham Knight, Yeah, the game, that's what happens
Speaker 1: to him. He gets his identity gets challenged. So I
Speaker 1: I love it when that happens. It does it seems
Speaker 1: like kind of the toughest fights ever for Batman are
Speaker 1: really the fights Bruce Wayne has to do against himself. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the cool thing I ever wonder.
Speaker 1: I have a great big collection of cells. I've been
Speaker 1: collecting them all the time i've been doing the show.
Speaker 1: So I've got like sixty or seventies cells, and one
Speaker 1: of them is Batman struggling with Bruce Wayne. Oh that's
Speaker 1: that's that's very cool that you know. I've got to ask,
Speaker 1: do you sign your own seals make worth more? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course you have to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is the greatest thing. I'm gonna hang
Speaker 1: it on my wall to I started collecting other ones
Speaker 1: like Looney Tune and Hanna Barbera and You're still talking
Speaker 1: Andrea Romano Barbara. It's like the original n F T. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of pinky in the brain. I've
Speaker 1: got a Carrot Blanca. Come on, it's a classic. It's
Speaker 1: a Looney Tunes where Bugs Bunny plays. Um, it's Sam
Speaker 1: yeah from Casablanca. It's it's a spoof Casan but he's
Speaker 1: a carrot right. Oh, okay, he's did. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: THEA went to the Carrot one and Tweety Bird is
Speaker 1: Sydney Green Street. They're incredible. They're great cells and it's
Speaker 1: a classic. So I've got some great cells. Is that
Speaker 1: your nerd um? Like if you if you pick a
Speaker 1: nerd um? Is it kind of animation history? It's becoming
Speaker 1: so I knew nothing about it when I got into it.
Speaker 1: Mark is the maven about animation history. He can tell
Speaker 1: you the episode number of the Obscure show and what
Speaker 1: color the cape, what you know? I mean, he knows
Speaker 1: everything about animation. It's amazing. Well you can tell you
Speaker 1: can see it in his passion. But you I mean again,
Speaker 1: I got to it was honored enough to sit next
Speaker 1: to you for many years at the microphone and to
Speaker 1: see the passion is honestly I've I've honored that you
Speaker 1: were here today. Thank you so much much, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. This is, by the way, second this has
Speaker 1: been recorded. No, I don't think this is a rehearsal.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna shoot rehearsal, but decided against it.
Speaker 1: We are going to be doing it. You know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it live next time. Yes, no, God, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming in. You were by far
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people in the world. Your mind too,
Speaker 1: now I've adopted you too. Yeah, well, nobody has helped
Speaker 1: me more. No, No, he's my mentor. Don't you don't
Speaker 1: get to Yankees to stick together? That's true, Connecticut together
Speaker 1: because it's important. So Milford Westport, Avon representing. Um okay,
Speaker 1: So Kevin, you know well, I mean in the con world,
Speaker 1: you kind of sometimes don't know where you're going until
Speaker 1: you land. So I'm going to Dubai. Goodness, but that's
Speaker 1: in like three weeks. Have you been there before? That's
Speaker 1: going to be a fun trip. Crazy, That's gonna be
Speaker 1: a fun trip. I'm going to Wales with me. I'll
Speaker 1: see you there. Yeah. And I've got I've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of them lined up domestically and I just don't remember.
Speaker 1: Well what's where on Twitter? Um real Kevin Conroy? Okay,
Speaker 1: so please check out the site. You're also on cameo too,
Speaker 1: and I'm like cameo, I do cameo, So make sure
Speaker 1: that to hit hit Kevin up on cameo as well.
Speaker 1: Cameo experience has been fascinating. How's that much more fan
Speaker 1: interactive than I than I thought? And interesting over the
Speaker 1: last two years how it's changed during the pandemic, isn't
Speaker 1: it My cameos went from um, happy birthday, happy graduation,
Speaker 1: happy anniversary, and and they gradually started morphing into hanging there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not alone. We're in this together. It's
Speaker 1: it's dramatic change and people just need that. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's so important. People are reaching out to each
Speaker 1: other so much more now because we've all been so isolated. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's been a really extraordinary experience and kind of
Speaker 1: a privilege to provide a service like that during this period.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of them, a lot of
Speaker 1: them like that. Yeah, but that's good though, So we
Speaker 1: can if you want, if you want something personalized from Kevin,
Speaker 1: hit him up on cameo and then uh, come to
Speaker 1: a convention and you'll find him real Kevin Conroy, real
Speaker 1: Kevin Conroy. You may have to wait a little bit
Speaker 1: for what. Yeah, exactly, you're gonna have to say, bring
Speaker 1: a sandwich, Bring a sandwich, because it's gonna be or
Speaker 1: just come see me in the meantime, because that's what
Speaker 1: Kevin's line was. Too long, You hear that quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Kevin Conroy, Thank thanks so much again, including the lovely
Speaker 1: answer to who's the best Batman? Kevin Conroy, I am Vengeance,
Speaker 1: I am the Night, I am Batman. Cannot end on
Speaker 1: anything better than that, Thanks everybody. I Hear Voices assosted
Speaker 1: by Wilfrid L and Gristi Garls and Romano, produced by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Joy Windham and executive produced by Brendan Rooney and
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Speaker 1: Windham and our video editor is at Guardo Gamba and
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