Talking to Rob Paulsen is like taking a guided tour through an exhibition of the last three decades' most beloved animated characters. One of the most prolific and versatile voice actors of his generation, Paulsen can still slip into his most famous voices at the drop of a hat, from Pinky's (of Pinky and the Brain) Cockney twang to Carl Wheezer's raspy whimper. And after almost 40 years in the business, he's lost none of his love for and delight in his profession.
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| Animaniacs LIVE!. Credit: Rebecca Sapp/WireImage |
"Those of us who are lucky enough to make a living doing any sort of performing, we're incredibly fortunate," Paulsen says. "I'm so glad that I get how fortunate I am to do things like this, and to let people know that folks who do this completely understand how lucky we are to do it. And all that does is inspire us to do it better."
His latest stroke of good fortune: reprising his iconic roles in a revival of beloved '90s animated series Animaniacs alongside costars Tress MacNeille (Hey Arnold!, Rugrats), Jess Harnell (Big Time Rush), and Maurice LaMarche (Hey Arnold!, Futurama). With the reboot now streaming on Hulu, Paulsen spoke to Entertainment Weekly about some of the highlights in his storied career.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1995, 2012-2017)
Paulsen’s breakthrough came when he scored the role of Raphael on the original TMNT animated series. Decades later, he swapped shells to voice Donatello on Nickelodeon’s 2012 reboot, voice directs the current iteration of the franchise, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in which he even guest starred in an episode along with LaMarche.
ROB PAULSEN: At the first recording session [for the reboot], I sat next to Sean Astin, [the new voice of Raphael], and he had a line that was a bit of a tongue-twister, and he had trouble getting through it. So about the fourth try on the line, I said [to the director], “I just want you to know, if he’s having trouble, I can do it if you really need me to.” And everybody laughed, and Sean’s face turned bright red. He goes, “Oh my God. Raphael is here, telling me that he can do Raphael better than I can.” It was great.
Turtles was a total game-changer. It was the first thing I got involved with where I had any tangential celebrity, but moreover, it allowed me to do unbelievable amounts of charity work, stuff that I never in a million years thought that I’d be able to do. Turtles is a big deal to millions of people, and not just kids. That is really what was the glorious aspect — it showed me the power of joy, and the power of these characters. I don’t even know how to quantify what that means to me, [when] somebody says, “My older brother is 36 years old, and he’s going through pancreatic cancer, and he’d really love to talk to Raphael.” And that happens all the time. That is what was such a game-changer, to know that something I would do for free has such a deep connection to millions of people. And I’ve gotten two cracks at it!
Animaniacs (1993-1998, 2020)
The Steven Spielberg-produced series gave Paulsen not one, but two of his signature characters — the mischievous Yakko Warner and the dull-witted mouse Pinky — and became a cultural phenomenon that took his career to a whole new level.
RP: Animaniacs was the only time in my life, before or since, that I was really aware and very cognizant of that axiom that luck is when opportunity meets preparation. I had already had five years of Ninja Turtles, which had changed my career. You get involved with something that becomes iconic and sells a lot of product and gets hundreds of episodes, all of a sudden people pay attention, so you get more auditions and all that stuff. But [with Animaniacs], I really felt like, “Holy smoke. If I can book this gig, this is going to be a big deal.” And I was right. If Turtles changed my career trajectory, Animaniacs changed my life, because it really played to my strengths. Singing, singing in character, working with people I knew, creating new characters — not having to try to do my version of something that was already well-known by millions. It was overwhelming, truly, in the most glorious sense. And personally, the dividends were far, far more than just a nice paycheck.
A Goofy Movie (1995)
Paulsen voiced Max Goof’s best friend P.J. on Disney’s Goof Troop and its big-screen adaptation. Though not a major success upon release, A Goofy Movie has become an unexpected cult favorite in the decades since.
RP: Five years ago, I got a call from Disney about [coming to] their D23 event for the 20th anniversary of A Goofy Movie. And I said, “Oh, sure. I'm really flattered that they're bringing us down there.” And the guy said, “Oh, dude. You don't know? It's huge.” I started laughing, and I said, “You're kidding me.” “Oh my God, no. We have a thousand-seat auditorium, and it'll be full.” And it was! They had to turn people away. I truly didn’t know. It turned out to be a really good movie, and it has really withstood the test of time. I think the reason is because, like a lot of other Disney projects, it really hits people where they live. Let me tell you, [Goofy voice actor] Billy Farmer is one really fine actor, and when you watch the scenes between Max and Goofy, the joy and the heartbreak and the difficulty in understanding one another, all that s--- that real humans go through, is beautifully portrayed. Billy is wealthy in spirit and bank account for very good reasons.
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2002-2006)
Another of Paulsen’s roles that took on a life he never expected was Carl Wheezer, Jimmy Neutron’s hyper-allergic and much less intelligent best friend. The actor voiced Carl in the 2001 Nickelodeon film as well as its spin-off TV series.
RP: I love Carl, because it's a totally different character for me, and I made some conscious choices that I think helped define the character. I appropriated P.J. and tweaked him a bit [for Carl], but I decided to add that sort of lazy L — Tom Brokaw is a great example, [where] the L is a glottal L, it’s in the back of his throat. It's a subtle thing, but it’s an endearing little vocal hook that played really well. And that was a total choice from yours truly. And the cool thing is that the folks making the show heard it and said, “Let's keep that in.” Also, I'm a fairly good improviser, and I would add things like, if Carl would fall off a llama, I’d say, “I think I dislocated my scapula.” Scapula is a funny word, and it also has an L in it. And when I say “scapula,” it works perfectly for Carl.
Carl's kind of become iconic in a backhanded sort of way. I just joined TikTok six weeks ago; [there are] like 115 million Carl Wheezer interpretations! Talk about the sincerest form of flattery. I’m so incredibly humbled by that. People love that guy. I put my own [Carl voice] on there and said I'm really who I am, and people said, “Oh, you're not really the guy.” I was like, “Why would I lie about that?” [Laughs]
Rick and Morty (2013)
If there’s one project besides Animaniacs that Paulsen knew right away would be something special, it’s Adult Swim’s acclaimed sci-fi series. The actor played super-intelligent canine Snowball on “Lawnmower Dog,” the show’s second episode.
RP: When [co-creator] Justin Roiland called — and Justin is also the voice of both Rick and Morty, in addition to being a remarkable writer — he said, “Rob, I gotta tell you, you, Tress [MacNeille], and Maurice [LaMarche] were people who I grew up watching. And I thought, if I ever,” dot dot dot, “I'm gonna hire [them],” and he did. He lived up to his own commitment, called me and got me in right away, and Maurice too.
The first lines I had on Rick and Morty were, “Where are my testicles, Summer?” I looked up at him and said, “This is great!” That episode is a pretty excellent example of why Rick and Morty is so freakin’ good: it was a really interesting, clever way to proffer that insight into what dogs would do if they had the power that we have over them. And it was a real privilege to be part of it. I hope [Snowball] comes back. I would work on that show anytime, for scale. You can print that. I love that show.
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From Forbes:
Rob Paulsen On Voicing Your Childhood, Beating Cancer And TikTok’s Carl Wheezer Challenge
To quote Fight Club: “His name is Robert Paulsen.”
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe these will: Carl Wheezer, Yakko Warner, Mark Chang, Pinky the mouse, Jack Fenton, Donatello, and Raphael.
Over the course of almost four decades, Rob Paulsen has cemented himself as a legendary icon of the voiceover world. He grew up on a healthy diet of Looney Tunes, Johnny Quest, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and The Flintstones, eventually following in the footsteps of his personal heroes, like Mel Blanc and June Foray.
“I don’t pretend to put myself in that category, that’s for other people to decide once I’ve gone to that big animation corporation in the sky,” Paulsen told me during a recent phone interview. “I remember working with Mel and June the first times when I was 28 or 30, and it really got my attention. I’ll never forget it. [Their] characters certainly made an indelible mark on myself and others.”
While my call with Rob was originally pegged to Hulu’s reboot of Animaniacs, our interview soon snowballed into a much larger creature that had us merrily chatting away for over an hour. Like most of us, I grew up hearing Rob on television. He is, quite literally, one of the voices of my childhood.
“You know it’s funny,” he said, “every now and then, people say, ‘Man, I grew up watching Pinky and the Brain or Animaniacs’ … We’re all good, as long as you don’t say, ‘I threw up watching Pinky and the Brain.’ I’m sure there are those who would say that, too, but already, just the fact that you say that, you can imagine what a remarkable, humbling remark that is to me.”
Rob constantly hears about the profound impact of his work at various fan conventions around the country (back when it was still safe to hold them, of course).
“It’s not about me, it’s about the characters — they are so profoundly impactful. I don’t even know how to tell you how humbling that is,” he added. “It gains in its power to me. Every time I hear that, it reminds me that this is something that is timeless and will be around much, much longer than I am. That is what this legacy is about.”
He recounted some truly moving stories from fans, who got through incredibly difficult experiences by watching his shows. Here’s just one example: “Mr. Paulsen, I was in the Marine Corps and I did two tours of duty and I need to show you something. Here’s a picture of me and my friend who didn’t make it back, but we both had our Pinky and the Brain T-shirts on.”
While those inspirational stories never cease to amaze Rob, he also has one of his own. In 2016, he was diagnosed with a voice actor’s worst nightmare: throat cancer. “Not only is it deadly, but it’s a really bad way to go,” he explained. “When you get cancer of the throat, mouth, neck, and they gotta start hacking pieces of you off to save you, it’s not a great way to go. It’s really messy.”
Fortunately, he received the proper treatment via Gardasil (a vaccine originally developed to prevent HPV in young women) and kicked cancer’s big fat behind. He then detailed the harrowing experience in a 2019 memoir entitled Voice Lessons.
“This is about everything we discussed: humor, the power of joy and getting me through my own time in the cancer cage; the power of joy in helping parents reconcile the loss of their children. It boils down to the way people react when I say, ‘NARF!’ or ‘Hell000000 Nurse!’ or ‘Turtle power!’ ... You see my point, all of it makes you smile.”
These days, Rob serves as the official 2020 spokesperson for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, a role he happily inherited from former Buffalo Bills quarterback, Jim Kelly. “They were very smart because now they know that my story (and specifically because of what I do for a living) can be helpful, informative, and maybe even inspirational,” he said. “Right away, they can say, ‘Hey, what if I told you the guy who’s responsible for being the voice of your childhood had throat cancer?’ You’d say, ‘Oh my God, really? Did it kill him?’ [They can now say,] ‘Actually, no, it didn’t. It would’ve, but he went through the treatment.”
As our discussion began to wind down, Rob and I talked about the most important topic of them all: Tik Tok’s “Carl Wheezer Accent Challenge,” in which Jimmy Neutron fans attempt to replicate the nasally voice of the nebbishy Nickelodeon character.
“I fired up Tik Tok and I noticed that, ‘Jesus!’ There were thousands of people who did their own Carl Wheezer thing,” he said. “I wrote a few lyrics to an old Barry Manilow song and just did an a capella version of it [as Carl]. Then I put up a bunch of stuff with different emphasis on ‘Are you gonna finish that croissant?’ One of them got like 3 million views or something in the first week.”
“I don’t know what it is, but people sure love Carl Wheezer and I could do it all day,” he continued. “It’s the greatest thing in the world, man. It’s great and I’m really looking forward to spending more time on Tik Tok and learning how to access it ... I’m gonna do more Carl stuff because people just love that guy. Stay tuned!”
Rob is as genial and down-to-Earth as they come, always happy to do a voice or two when you just so happen to mention your favorite characters among his long list of credits. Even when he name-drops some of his famous friends (Tress MacNeille, Mark Hamill, Nancy Cartwright, Billy West, Kevin Conroy, and John DiMaggio, to name a few), he’s a little self-deprecating about it.
“My buddy Dave Coulier had a great joke, years ago. He said, ‘I gotta stop dropping names, Bob De Niro told me that,’” Paulsen concluded. I have very famous friends, movie star friends — not because I’m a movie star, but because they worked on cartoons and we hit it off and we’ve become buddies ... I’m a fan [of these people too], I pinch myself all the time.”
The new Animaniacs is now streaming on Hulu.
The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance will be participating in this year’s Giving Tuesday (taking place tomorrow). You can get more info here.
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