October 10, 2022 • 59 mins
If it’s famous voices you want, it’s famous voices you’ll get in the form of Alan Tudyk. Ice Age, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Aladdin, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto…and so much more!
Alan joins Will and Christy as he shares the bizarre beginning to his career. How it led him down a shady path that included a murderer and ultimately to the success he has today.
They discuss the art of a joke, dream roles and Will drops a major bomb about an encounter he had with a Hollywood legend!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Christy, Hey Will, how are you? I am so
excited This episode of I Hear Voices is just going
to be so amazing with our guests. You know, It's
funny we talk about that with all our guests, how
excited we are, and we genuinely are excited for all
of our guests because we are getting the best in
the business all the way around. But the guests we
have on today is not only an incredible voice over
(00:20):
actor in a number of animated projects, but also brings
his voice acting to live action in a way I've
almost never seen before. It is truly remarkable and I
can't wait to get into it with him. Who's coming today, Christie?
Mr Alan Tu Dick yeay, Alan's here. We have been
wanting to have you on for so long. Yeah, you're
(00:42):
like one of the dream guests. Yeah, well you don't
you know? I guess I'll launch right into this. Here's
why you're one of the dream guests for me, as
I'm huge into the voice over the animation world, But
you take what seems to be the prep for voice
over and apply it to on camera characters. So how
(01:05):
important is finding the voice of whatever character you're doing?
And I mean that literally, not the acting standpoint, but
the actual voice of your on camera character. Hmm. Yeah,
it's really I find it it's almost like a mask,
you know, if you're playing someone who has an English accent,
is you know whatever, It takes care of so much
(01:26):
of your character, of me, you know, so you know,
so much of it is done. The first job I
ever had on stage, so acting on stage and how
I got into voiceovers, was doing twentysomething characters in a
play about Gilda Radner that Allen's Whitebell wrote. And I
(01:47):
so I would walk on stage and I'd be like
this guy who's a cameraman at S and L and
you know, you know, get out of the way. And
then I was a French white there who has a
hair in his mouth and the excuse me, I kind
of hold on a minute, and there's like a hair
bit and then I run off stage and I changed
clothes and I came back. Gods, this hysterical woman who
(02:07):
is not upset because their boyfriend just left her and
she doesn't know what she's gonna do. And then I'd
run off stage and come back on is a guy
who uh, he's my favorite blue Blue who lost these
thumbs in the laith accident. That's how I lost this ghye.
And so I got to play twenty roles that were
distinguished mainly by costume but voice of different voices. And uh,
(02:34):
it's how I got my start in New York. That
was my first play off Broadway, and I got good
notices and it gave me. It gave casting directors the
ability to cast me. Then, you know, like they're like, oh,
he's got a he's popular right now, so we can
cast him. So I got another job, and then you know,
(02:56):
I was able to get small jobs and elm and
small and but I got my first voice over from
a castinger who saw me in that, and she brought
me in to do ice age and she just gave
me a stack of pictures of like these great photos
(03:17):
of different characters. She's like, there would be like a
I think, like a line or two at the bottom
of the character, and she just like, look at the character,
read the line. How you think that character might sound.
And I did it for the stack and then got
done and she's like, I heard back that I had
three I got three roles and they all were like
(03:39):
one line each pretty much. I was like I think
it was me and some a couple other people did
the Dodo birds prepare for the Ice Age and uh,
some version of that. And then there was one I
couldn't stand the voice, and I was I didn't like
that they picked it, and I was like, really you
want me to do that? It was like this big
it was big, heavy air. Uh, saber tooth. In the beginning,
(04:02):
there was a lot of saber tooth tigers. I'm hungry
and they're like, yeah that. I thought it was trash,
but it's in there. And then um, there were no one.
Oh it was it's called weird Dinosaurs, Like, hey, why
do you think they call like the Ice Age? And
I think that's like it was like a version of
some cartoon character I had heard growing up. Anyway, UM,
(04:25):
I'm sorry. I'm still stuck on the fact that the
first play you did you played twenty characters. Right, that's
still the thing. Right, let's go back. Well, let's start
at the beginning in terms of it, just like, yeah, where,
so did you did you grow up around the entertainment industry?
I mean, did you know that you wanted to do
this forever? How did you find this? I didn't grow
(04:47):
up around it. Um My mom put me into the
Plano Community Theater. I grew up in playing with that,
so she put me in the community Theater. And that
was where I did a fabulous fable factory. If you
know what kids tend to do this, it's it's morals
(05:10):
and fables. And um, I played the city Rabbit. It
was like, hey, I think they called him the jag
talking rabbits. What's going on? And he's like, I could
beat this guy. I be he talked like that, and
so it was a kind of a voice as well.
It was a voice. Um. And I remember inviting so
(05:30):
I was eleven, I remember inviting the kids from the
neighborhood came to see it because we did it at
the mall on the big stage. It was like a
converted I don't know, storage room or something. It wasn't
like in the you know, people with uros and stuff.
It was in the room that they made into a
(05:53):
little theater space. And the neighborhood, my neighborhood friends came
and I remember that they were impressed and they didn't
trash me about It was like, so you're so open
and ready to be you know, made fun of for what,
you know, if you put yourself out there and they
(06:14):
didn't and they were kind of impressed. So that was
how it started. I got into it in you know,
just acting in public school, and then I was going
to quit because I was really yeah, because I wasn't.
I didn't go into theater because I didn't like the theater.
You had to choose either theater or speech, and I
(06:35):
liked speech tournaments. Did you all ever do those things?
What is the speech tournament? No, it's a debate team speech.
It's just like, got extracurricular for you to do speech
is really amazing. They had they had improv. They had
group improv. So you would like pick four, four or
five people in your team and you go you pull
(06:58):
three topics and they would be like egg sprying in
a pan and you'd go okay, And they give you
three minutes with your five people to come up with
a scene and you come back in and you do it.
And then there was preliminary, semifinals, finals and you want
a trophy, and there was an impromptu where he was
just you and you got sixty seconds to come up
(07:20):
with my microwave blew up and you're like, all right, um,
and I would use characters. It's that wow, it's wild
I have, but I would always use a character I
got to go to. I went first with that friendship
in my microwave blew up the worst day of my life.
And you know some that's almost Italian. You have a
(07:43):
great memory al well. I was, yeah, well were when
you're young, those and those those moments were big, you know,
those were those were high. So you were like, so
do you feel like you were gaining confidence along the
way of taking these big risks with voice acting over
over these these kind of opportunities for yourself. I just
saw it as acting and just having fun. It was
(08:09):
it was fun. I liked I liked winning trophies, but
that was like because I was not sporty. I I
didn't I was, I don't care. I liked playing yard football.
I like tackling and stuff like that. I wasn't like
afraid to get hurt. I love that kind of thing,
But I did. I hated football players. They were sort
(08:29):
of ran the school and they were mean. And in Texas,
you don't say, let's say yeah that Texas at least
Texas isn't isn't big for football that's good in Austin.
Really yeah, yeah, that's where I am right now. So
I mean it seems almost like maybe you don't you
didn't even realize that you've been doing character voices your
(08:50):
whole life. Yeah, yeah, you know. I did a Yeah,
I remember I did a play with some older kids,
like back then they were adults, but they were only eighteen.
But when I was eleven, like after I had done
that one summer thing, I did this thing and there
was a guy who and uh, I was doing this
(09:13):
lift voice and the eighteen year old guys like, you're
doing it wrong. I was like, what are you talking about?
And this thing, this this thing, and he goes, no,
come back, bring your tongue back behind your teeth and
do it like this. So that way you can just
do this and you still have a list, but you
don't have to do that. I was like, oh wow, like,
(09:34):
no way. At the end of that summer, I had
a better list voice and anyway. Yeah, so I wasn't
in the mechanics of it all even at twelve. Wow. Huh.
Now were you were you an animation fan growing up?
Did you have like favorite cartoons that you would watch
religiously I love Warner Brothers. I loved one and I
(09:56):
still I still laugh at them. I'm uh, if you
have where are they HBO? I think they're on HBO.
Now I have Warner Brothers. Um, they go back so
far if if anybody wants to wants to get there
Bugs Bunny back on. There are characters that are mel blank,
(10:17):
no blank, mel blank doing he's doing the bugs Bunny voice.
But they haven't come up with Bugs Bunny yet, Like
it's a weasel or something, and like they go way back,
and you can watch all of them, and it's so
many years worth of cartoons. So I would you say
you've watched like all of that? Do you feel like
you're a walking encyclopedia of that Warner Brothers I have.
(10:40):
I have a certain section that I had a you
could buy DVDs of of Warner Brothers. Did you I got? Yeah,
I didn't know that. Yeah, do you have them? Look
at Will's look at behind Will because all of those
things are yeah, he's no, these aren't. These are my fans.
These are novels, my fantasy novels. Yeah, I'm a fantasy nerd.
(11:01):
But my but the the DVD stuff, yeah, you can
that was like the in the eighties. They would also
sell those as like the complete sets on TV, like
every week you get a new Bugs Bunny kind of sitting, Yeah,
new tex Avery or so. There's DVDs and then also
c ds. This was this. I bought a CD of
(11:21):
just audio that I would listen to. Oh that's interesting.
How old are you when he's seven? Ok? Alright. I
listened to it and laugh my ass off because it
was all of that old like Vaudeville. I loved Vaudeville.
I loved all that old Watch old Jack Benny with
(11:43):
Mell blank yeah on Jack Benny doing his God his
voice was incredible. Yeah. Now he was one of those
It's one of those times where and I know you've
you've undoubtedly worked with people like this all the time,
where you think, well, at least I do. I'll call myself.
I think I'm good at what I do, and then
I stand next to a man or a woman who
(12:04):
takes it to another level and I'm like, I don't
even know why I'm there, Like what I shouldn't be
in this room? Is It's that with when when you
get people like like some of the Corey Burton's and
the Rob Paulson's and all the kind of people you're
working with, Um, Nolan, Nolan nor that's the one for me.
Nolan is the same way. I mean, I've known Nolan
for years and years and years and years, and the
(12:25):
first time I worked with them, you just kind of
go and thanks everybody. I'm out um where they're just
you take it to another level. But that's the thing
I always thought was so interesting about you is it
was from an acting standpoint, like you took a voiceover
actor and went on camera and it was such a
(12:46):
strange kind of combination of the two crafts. And I
know it sounds ridiculous, but I can't think of another
actor that embodies that the way you do. Because it
doesn't matter what role you're in. It's seems almost like
the And again I don't know your process, but it
seems almost like the vote you picked the voice, like
here's the character, and the characters based on the voice,
(13:08):
and then the rest of it kind of molds around that,
which is what you do in vo Yeah, it kind
of it all kind of happens at once, but the
best video comes like I've made, I've had the benefit
of being taught how to do voice over by well,
like I didn't really start doing because I did that
(13:31):
way back when I did ice age and that would
have been like but I didn't get another job really
until Wreck It Ralph because I smoked cigarettes. I think
because I smoked. We were just talking. We just talked
about something about I was a heavy smoker too, and
(13:52):
it was since the time he was eleven. Yeah, and
I was doing kids, kids things, so it's like you've
got to be fourteen and it's like I've already been
smoking for ten years. It was that same kind of yeah,
that same kind of feeling. So but the record route
it's also I mean, did you do any um, any
(14:13):
kind of daytime animation stuff like like superhero things or
was it all kind of films? I got some I
got I got some superhero stuff, but I always felt
like I was it was like firefly, Um, they brought
me in to just to be somebody, but I would
(14:36):
I was like that I was the one person and
they're like why am I? Why am I here? All
these people were so much better at this. That's when
I met Nolan Uh Nolan North, and I was like, well,
this is so ridiculous like I do. I would do
like seven eight takes of my thing and then everybody
(14:58):
was just like one to they're done. Uh, and they
were nailing it, so I did. I was brought in
for that stuff, but honestly, my voice couldn't do a
whole lot because of smoking really affected my voice because
I was as smoked weeds, so I would I was
doubling up on my yeah. Actually, um, marijuana is worse
(15:22):
for your vocal coreally um yeah. I had open throat
surgery on two nodules and when I was doing my yeah,
I'm a singer, um from my past and so uh,
they told me that marijuana smoke is actually um double
the amount of effect for your voice. Then real, yeah,
(15:42):
in every other way it's better though in every other way,
so you know what I mean. They taught us at
school at Juliard. They taught us um, which was probably
is a huge It was a huge help for me
and accents and things to it. That taught me a
lot as far as the mechanics of your voice, because
(16:05):
it's it was primarily a voice school. I thought when
I was there, I was like, we take more voice
than we do acting interesting, but Kevin said that too. Yeah,
Kevin Conroy said the same thing. You do it. It
was a bit obscene, but it was so helpful ultimately.
But they're also teaching you weird stuff like I was
out when they're like, you're saying door, it's not that
(16:26):
it's door. I would think that that attention to detail,
even in your your sort of training, was it helpful.
Do you feel like over time do you feel like
(16:46):
you found some fundamentals in your body when you everything
I couldn't have done, not even said of what I've
done without going to that school. And I hated that
school when I was there. I left in my third year.
Are you left? I left? I left? I was I
was over it. Um, my class was crazy. My class
(17:07):
was crazy. And what happened like like crazy good or crazy?
Like you know, wonderful people, I'm sure individually, but when
you put us together, we were garbage. We were just
we were garbage people. We were the worst versions of
ourselves with one another. But like I killed a guy
after he left, Uh, I was in his third year.
(17:30):
Was you know in the um, you're not gonna top
killed the guy, but you know one of my friends
he died from heroin because there's a lot of drugs
was cracked and then and then gave way to heroin,
and there was like we're having a party at my
(17:51):
apartment one time, and half of the place was just
nodded out on jump like it was like right during
that time, pulp fiction came out and although if you
watched the movie the story, if you say, what is
the moral of this stories, don't do heroin here. This
is going the thing the plunger in your chest and
doesn't look like it's fun, but it was made to
(18:12):
look very beautiful, you know, with the glamorous cool. Yeah,
and everybody did it. I did not, Yeah, I just
did you say you killed the guy? So I didn't
he killed? They that the guy. This guy was in
(18:32):
class in my first year. They ended up kicking him
out because he was he barely come to class and
he was obviously too young. He was eighteen. He had
emotional but everybody's got emotional issues in acting school, but
his seemed to be of a different caliber. And so
they said leave and get your get it together and
(18:53):
you can come back. And so he left for a year,
joined the army, I think or something. Oh, okay, that's
what I was. My husband's a former marine, and we
hear some similar certain like you can be a good
marine in one aspect, I'm sure, and then have the
other part beat and that's the crazy and it works
(19:16):
for my acting. But yeah, I might kill you, and
he did. He ended up anyway, he got kicked out
when he came back, they gotta go, and he killed somebody.
So you were like, this is toxic Juilliard, as good
as you are and as much as there was some
other problems. Um, and so I actively worked to get
(19:40):
out of school to get any connection I could outside
of school, and that's where I found that play Bunny Bunny.
I lucked out into this summer program called New York
Stage and Film, which still goes on up in Poughkeepsie,
New York, and I went up for one read one
workshop read through with Dave stre there and which was
(20:01):
just so cool. And it was the first first play
I ever did on stage. I was ten. It was
with David Strethern and Mary McDonald. We did at Doll's
House in Connecticut. Yeah, we're from Connecticut, at the Hartford
at the Hartford Stage. Yeah, Mark Lamos, it was great,
It was great. Yeah, I had no idea how how
fortunate I was as as an actor at ten years
old you came to be working with them, but it
(20:21):
was but it was still great. Yeah, that's great, Yeah,
cool experience. So I did. But you like, stayed in
the in the dorms there at Poughkeepsie, and there were
a lot of people there that um everybody was just
kind of moving and they were all the people who
were popping up, and even the directors were directors who
were starting to get a hold in the New York
(20:43):
theater and some have had play but they haven't had
their big play yet, and and so there was a
lot of people that were important there. And then and
then they said, hey, we want you to do this
workshop where you play all these roles. And I did
Bunny Bunny, he was the play. And I did that
for two weeks. And then somebody fell out of a
(21:04):
play and I did that play. And so I just
stayed up there the whole summer. I had waited tables
like crazy during the year and had enough money that
I didn't have to work that summer, and it just
like it was just lucked out, really, like I can't
believe I thought ahead enough to. You know, I don't
even know why I saved money, but I did. It
wasn't my style because you said he liked the trophy. Yeah,
(21:31):
and so I made enough contacts that summer that um,
I got out of school that next year and then
and then that play. Um, yeah, I could go into
a room. I auditioned or I just had a meeting
at an agency, and I had met enough people that
I could, like, I dropped every name that I had.
(21:55):
Well if they say fake it till you, and I
truly did. I was like every director, every play right,
every person. And they Paradigm. They signed me for a year.
And that was in New York. Yeah, still in New York.
And then Bunny Bunny Um did workshops and we did it.
We went to Philly first and then we came to
(22:15):
New York and then I was hirable after that. But
I was anyway, good time. Is there is there a
a style of acting that you prefer? I mean, do
you do you like doing on camera comedy? Do you
like doing on camera drama? Do you like doing voice over? Yeah?
All of them, let them all for their own particular thing.
(22:42):
The thing about on camera that is that I guess
I had to pick one. It's on camera and comedy.
Probably comedy because that's where my brain goes. Yeah, um,
I used to I would have like ten years ago,
I would have said drama, drama. I don't know. It's
just my head. My head's wired to do comedy. It's
what i've It's when something makes me laugh, it sticks
(23:05):
in my head in a way that uh, I can
access it later. Um. And by doing I did plays
in the beginning, I did new plays, so I saw
how jokes can be retold, like it's you don't just
there's a joke. But when we did Bunny, Bunny be like, okay,
(23:25):
so uh Blue is uh he's the guy, he's got
no eye, he's this, that the other thing. Um. He
comes up to the character and he starts to harass him.
All right, we do it for an audience. It does
not get laughs. This doesn't work. That doesn't okay, So
we're switching it around. Then the playwright comes in, comes
up with a new script. Here you go, this is
the scene. Now, now he comes to ask you for something.
(23:47):
And now the same joke that worked where you delivered
the punch line, he delivers the punch line this time
and you want up him with a new punch line.
And I in doing that, all the different iterations that
we did it, I got I learned by doing it
in front of audiences how to how jokes are constructed,
(24:08):
and how how scenes work, and how humor has made.
And I did that with the Paul Rudnick played too,
H call called the most fabulous story ever told that
we did workshops of and for almost a year I
did this play and oh my god, was it was
very broad and it was very funny, and uh so
(24:30):
I learned. I learned comment that way so that those
so like if a joke sticks in my head, it's
not just the joke, it's the mechanics of the joker,
what major joke funny? So that in another situation you
can do the same thing completely differently. Yeah, it's like
we are you Are you a musician? Are you? Do
(24:51):
you have you have a musical background at all? I know? See,
I'm the same way a joke is, like so much
of planning a joke is tonal. Yeah, and it's like
how you're using your your instrument, your voice instrument, as
as how to land that. The mechanics of that that's
really interesting. But it's funny because I think about like
somebody like Nolan who's that same who's just naturally funny,
(25:14):
And you can use the mechanics of just having a
conversation with Nolan or somebody like Nolan where it's like, oh,
and then I'm just I just tweaked this one thing.
I can use it completely and maybe making a nice
clean joke as opposed to a Nolan North joke. But yeah,
but use the same kind of mechanics that that somebody
like that did. And you're just constantly learning from the
people around you, which is the thing that I love
(25:35):
to do. Yeah, And and so many jokes are man
in trouble, you know, you know, like just the I
don't know, so I guess I would say comedy and
on camera. And the reason on camera because the stakes
are higher because you're gonna be on camera and you
can't just redo it um on camera. You do have
(25:55):
the ability to redo it on stage, you do not. Yeah, sure,
I did uh spam a lot. And I was the
French taunter in one of the scenes that you know
from if you know the Monty Python Old Grail Uh,
and you walked on your knees for this whole thing,
(26:17):
a weeting the castle, the other side of the castle. Uh,
and a lot of it was like very physical your
head you did like a goofy head thing and all
this stuff. But I was had a very pronounced limp
by the end of the six months that character stuff,
(26:38):
and that came from Bunny Bunny because they were recasting
Hankersaria had to leave before unexpectedly and they needed somebody
who could play lion. Slot was a Night and the
French daunter, and then um Tim the enchanter who has
a Scottish accent, which I can't do anymore because I
(27:00):
barely do it. When I did it, I would only
do some kind of I would basically all the time.
He's time time time. I don't know. Um Eric, I
was like, it's not really a Scottish accent, isn't a joke.
(27:24):
That was one of the greatest, the greatest things that
ever happened in my entire career. I was doing. I
was on a sitcom call Boy Met World for a
lot of years, and we were next to Third Rock
from the Sun and I saw John Cleese and I
walked out and I said Mr Clice I I just
have to tell you that I think you're brilliant, and
you know, you're one of my biggest inspirations. And he
(27:45):
looked down at me because he's nine ft tall, and
he said, um, what what are you doing here? And
I said, oh, I'm I do a show. I guess
what what I said. It's called boy meat. He went, oh, yes,
unfortunately I've heard of it and turned and walked away.
And it was the greatest because I could tell he
was insulting me, but it was also tongue in cheek.
And I walked in back to the stage, going, that's
(28:08):
the greatest thing that ever happened to me. That's the
single greatest thing that will ever happen in my career
just happened right now. And it was just the best. Yes, Unfortunately,
I've heard of it. And then he turned and left.
It was just amazing, and I was, Oh God, I
loved it. I loved everything about it. Yeah, So if
(28:29):
there is there a I mean, going back to something
like a spam a lot or something like Monty Python.
You you talked about being so inspired by the kind
of the Vaudevillians and Jerry Lewis and things like what
is there was there a comedy team, like a troop
that you looked up to as well. I just liked
mel Brooks and like, not a team, but like when
I was young, the first comedy because it is a
(28:51):
very immature comedy. Uh there's you can grow into mel Brooks. Yes,
yeah you can. That's a good point. I guess the
joke about with him in the Last Supper and as
a Catholic kid, I got it. You know, Um, he's
the waiter. Mel Brooks is the waiter for the Last Supper. Okay,
so we all on one check all super I want
(29:15):
to recommend mold one. Could you please leave us alone? Jesus? Yeah? Yeah,
what Oh my god. I always found him to be
that guy that you loved as a kid, like when
you were a younger in the comedy world, and then
you think you outgrew him in your twenties, and then
(29:35):
you find him again in your thirties or forties and
you're like, this is genius. Well how did I how
did I lose this? For ten years? Yeah? Yeah, young
Frankenstein and I love Gean Wilder, and I loved all
of mel Brooks, all of his stuff, and then I
liked Monty Python and yeah, and then I found Oh,
(29:58):
I like the Smothers brother is a lot. My parents
had the album uh, an album of Theirs, and I
just I love that bit that they have with the
There's one of their bits where he throws UH to
Tommy and he's like, take it. No, just that what
(30:22):
I don't want to take it. You have to take it. No,
I don't want to take its just that's simple. They
were brilliant. I always my favorite one of those is
Tommy is is trying to fall asleep. He's in the
bed falling asleep and Mama cass Elliott is serenading him.
And it's because she's very softly serenading him and he's
starting to doze and then she hits the high notes
and he's like shooting up in bed. Oh yeah, I
(30:44):
got off there. They were just amazing, Yeah, absolutely amazing. Yeah.
But that's the thing that that's what I mean, it's
you seem to be gravitating towards like that. Like even
hankers aias somebody else who's like the living cartoon character
voicing into acting, and it's such a specialized little niche.
There's like three of you that do that. Lucky, it's
(31:08):
a lucky it's a lucky thing to find. Um. Yeah,
I hope I get to keep doing it. Um, well
that's one thing we asked for for So for a
dream role on camera voice a lot of people say
the joker, which is so yeah, which is funny what
you've done. But anything on camera voiceover, you get to
(31:29):
be cast as whatever you want to be. What's the role?
Oh on a camera too? Okay? Anything anything? Wow? Um?
You know what I would like to play? A guy?
Um on camera man in trouble character. Um, but he
(31:56):
he has a romantic interest, and I know that I
don't have to be the lead, probably a small you know,
like you want to get a young in there. You
want to get a young uh angular person right, al,
I disagree that's not nearly his interesting sex is well
(32:16):
all right, okay, okay. Then what's a dream? Then? Yes,
I even in my dream, I'm making myself the supporting role. Yeah.
I was gonna say, you're there, you're the second lead
in your dream. Um. I love that. It's your own
dream and your dream. Yeah, you're not even starring. I'm
(32:40):
in it. I wrote it, I'm correcting it and I
got a huge buds for some reason. It's amazing. There
you go this y yeah, um starting north also with actually, guys,
I do have a question. So in terms of manifesting
(33:01):
and sort of being the man and trouble characters, con
Man came out a few years ago. I remember because
I had started doing cons more frequently. It was even
before Will was doing them. Um and con Man started
and it was taking off, and I was super excited
about it for you guys, and secretly jealous. I was like,
how do I get on that show? It was for
(33:22):
the folks that were doing cons at the time, and honestly,
I mean, what is that like to be a part
of the con community for people. I'm just really curious
your take on it and where you're at. I miss
it because I have been going because of COVID. I'm
going next year. I just had this thing. I love it.
I love the fans, and I especially through comment I learned, well,
(33:42):
fans gave us three million dollars to make make this show,
and we made again, and and then we were able
through that to do a second season. So and and
I directed a lot and I wrote them and I
got to got the second season, I got to higher
people to rye and right with me. Yeah. I mean
(34:04):
that was like if you go to college and anything,
what you're gonna learn in school, Like I learned so
much through that thing, and and a lot of it.
I'm I'll just say much of it. I'm very proud
of some of it. I I really like the writing,
uh some some of the writing, not all of it.
But in editing, we didn't anyway, but I still you're
(34:30):
you're re editing your own show that from years ago,
already in your head down. It was very cool. But
during that one of the things that I did was
I said, any any offer to do a con, I'm
gonna take because I don't wanna you know, if if
there are people who want to say hi, and I'm
gonna do it. So I did tons of cons. Even
(34:51):
while we were shooting the thing, I would go away
and do a con. So I became Uh. I felt
very close to the Calm community, especially they were in it.
You know, they were part of it. They were they
were the fans, and we're playing fans in the show
and bringing their costumes. And then we would like if
there's like a role that has a line or something
(35:11):
I would just grabbed somebody. Oh that was that was
brilliant to be able to do it like hey, say
do you wanted to say like come over here, you
can do this like we were. It was so much
fun to be in charge for that type of reason,
to just be like, I need somebody here, you're gonna
do it, and that was pretty brilliant. And eating lunch
with everybody anyway, I got pretty close. And I just
(35:33):
did this thing Dree this weekend this past weekend. Yeah,
we were there. We were there, so I went out
on stage. It was very nice of them to ask
me to do this. I'm going to be in Wish,
but it's been but it's ten years since I've started,
(35:55):
since I've worked with him and it and they really
are responsible. Disney is responsible for me in a voice
over career because they king Candy just like how Bunny
Bunny did it opened the door for other people to
hire me. They're like, oh, Alan did this and it
went well, he can do this too, and and so
I got other other jobs and I've been and that
(36:19):
was ten years ago, and I've learned a lot in
ten years. But I and it's it's all because of them, uh,
but that I'm the guy. I'm not the ah, I'm
not gal Gado. I know a lot of people think
I I'm not gal Gado? Are you sure? People are like?
(36:44):
But like I feel like there's the stars of the thing.
And then like I did King Candy on a fluke.
I got the job because somebody fell out who had
a name to do the read through. And my agent
called me and said, hey, um, can you do an
(37:04):
Edwin voice? They want an Edwin voice? And I told
them you can. And I said, well, because I went
to the Museum of Television, I knew who Edwin was,
and he was I've seen some of his episodes and
he's Disney, you know, he talked like this. He was
the guy who who did um who was? I love
(37:26):
to laugh? And so I said, yeah, I think I can.
And we went to Pixar and the name guy who's
like a SNL guy. It was the entire cast except
for John c Riley hadn't been cast yet. He was
another actor who wasn't quite a name, but it was
about to be more of a name. And I know
(37:50):
I don't even know his name. He was was he angular? Angular?
He wasn't He was good for the role. But he's
he actually he actually said to me, I did like
the first hello, you know, we did them ross the
Wraith and I did like h and then he after
(38:12):
I was done, he said, are you really going to
do it like that on him because you're in the movie.
And so I did that. Yeah, So I did. I did.
I did record Ralph and then they But then it
was like Jennifer Lee worked on that because they worked
by group, So Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck both worked
(38:35):
on wreck Itt Ralph. In the making of it process,
it was like a two year process. And uh, they're like, hey,
we're doing this movie called Frozen. We like your work.
We've got a role. And it was like this little role.
So it was again, it wasn't the big names roles.
Was just like a supporting role that they ended up saying,
(38:56):
all right, that role didn't work halfway through. He was
this fellow who like cheese. He was he was like
he had wet lips and remember them wet lips and
say here talking about cheese, and he was he helped
the girls grow up and and uh, and they said
we can't have him because they don't need to. They
don't need anybody grow grow up with. They need to
(39:18):
just need each other and they don't need a parent.
So he's gone. He's still in it. You'll see him.
I see him and I'm like, there is but he
doesn't say anything. Um, They're like, we had this other guy,
Duke of Westleton. Do you want to do that? And
they they just bring you in, they hand you. They
just have pictures of him around and you just sort
(39:40):
of work on a voice while you're there and they're like, yeah,
do that do that? You do that? Yeah? Yeah, say yeah.
I mean it's a crazy process. I think it's nut. Well, Alan,
you said like wet lips, I mean, is that's part
of how you design these voices. If you have lis
that's a whole way of speak because you're you're aspiating
(40:02):
all over your lips and suddenly starts to affect how
you speak. I knew an actor who used to say
that he wouldn't he would choose his roles by the
way they held their mouth. And I have had some
roles that are the same. Are you Yeah, you think
about you know, if you just pull your changes, everything nice.
(40:35):
So anyway, I was I'm always a small a small role,
but they said after that when they said we'll bring
you back, and just kind of I think it was
John Lasseter, who you know, I always admired and I
don't make people sad or angry, but I always did,
and he was he so he started this idea that
(40:55):
I was, I feel like, it's lighten is gonnatract good
luck charm, which is just ridiculous. But I was like, okay,
sure you can believe that. And so then they would
always put me in a movie for ten years they
have ever since they've done it. They put me at
least in a thing that like a bird that just
goes right and yeah, that's you. And it was nice
(41:17):
of them to bring me on stage for D because
I'm just like the guy who does a thing. I'm
sort of like the mechanical, Yeah, the journeyman. And then
like this is Alan tutic Ore and they're like announced
it and uh, I came out on stage and there's
all the people a D twenty three, and I was
(41:37):
my Asian was with me. She was like, you gotta
get ready, gotta get over here, you gotta you're going
out there. And then she's like you if you look
at the script, and I was like I saw it. Yeah,
I got it, and I was so chilled out. And
it's all because it cons. It's all because of that.
That's walking in front of a stage of just a
(41:58):
bunch of people. They're ends, they're friendly people. Yeah, yes,
they want you to succeed. You know that's crazy that
you say that. Alan One. Firstly, because you had speech
background from when you were a kid, you did speech right.
But secondly, we just did a D twenty three panel
and I feel the same way. I'm actually I have
a Broadway background, but I was a child actors. I
(42:19):
have a lot of complex issues and stage right and yeah,
but these panels, especially leaning on my friend Will here,
we get to do our back and forth and there's
only so many questions someone's going to ask you, right,
and there's only so many things, and you know how
to say them, so you get to have fun with it.
And really it is about connecting with those fans because
(42:39):
they do love you so much. And I learned a
lot doing those cons with Nathan Phillyon early in the
early years with He's the one who brought me to
them after Firefly, and he's incredible. He's number one on
the cast every call sheet, although he was he did
(43:01):
a voice for Resident Alien and he played the octopus.
There's an octopus that I that as an alien, I
can talk to octopuses. We can talk um and we
can hear one another. And I said, can we get Nathan?
And Nathan said he'd love to do it. Um. But
(43:23):
I think he was like number eight on the call sheet.
I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I just it's not
a close contest that I didn't look thee and I
was I don't know where I was. Hey, everyone, it's
Scott Patterson from the I Am All In Podcast. Be
(43:45):
sure to tune into the I Am All In Podcast
and check out my one on one interview with the
one and only Jared Pedalci. We catch up on his
experience as a series regular on Gilmore Girls, what it
was like playing teenage heartthrobed Forrester, as well as his
successful career following, and of course, we couldn't let him
go without asking him the question that is on everyone's mind.
(44:08):
Is he Team Dean, Team Jess or Team Logan. Head
on over to the I Am All In Podcast to listen. Now, okay,
so last thing we got to touch on before before
we wrap this up because it's too important a world
not to touch on and Star Wars. What was it
(44:30):
like joining the Star Wars world. I had a blast
man um, I was okay, so I did kat s O.
I was on stilt, had motion captured the thing. But
but basically what that meant was I wore pajamas because
they had a special was the first time what we've
all come to know because we've seen it enough now
(44:51):
through the Planet of the Apes movies, those gray suits
with the black and white checks on them in like
a number and I think that was the first time
they had been used on that. But that was an
I l M thing, and they're like, no, we don't
need any balls with any tracker things at all. The
camera sinks to that kind of like a I don't
(45:12):
know how it sunk, it sunk sunk, and I would
just act normally, and I knew that my face was frozen.
Uh my eyes they would follow my eyeballs and at
one point he had eyebrows. I think he did have eyebrows.
(45:33):
I've got I've got a cool I l M test
of of K two s O. And it was it
was a scene from con Man of me sitting on
a toilet and I'm being hassled by the guy next
to me who hears me on a phone call. He's like,
are you are you that sci fi actor? I love
that show? And then the guy over here is going,
I don't, I don't know what show is that. I've
(45:54):
never even heard of it, and they're talking to each
other and I'm like, I don't want to. Um. They
put k T. S O over me and he's got eyebrowsed,
so that I still have a version of with eyebrows.
It was mainly a physical role, so it had to
be done with the body, but we went to It
was before they had the volume, you know that the
(46:15):
big volume you hear about where it's basically everything is
projected and so you can do you can travel all
over the world without leaving Long Beach or they've got
one in Vancouver now and in London. But back then,
just a few years ago, we had to go to
Jordan's and uh, we went all over the waves. It
(46:36):
was so cool. So and I was living in London
for six months and hanging out with really cool people. Uh.
Felicity Jones is a sweetheart and Diego Luna is a badass.
He's a badass. There's a lot of pictures, like they
showed us a lot of pictures on set, and there's
a lot of he and I sitting next to each
(46:57):
other and I'm just laughing my aunt. He's quick, and
he's clever and he's a genuine guy and so and
then the voice, Yeah, the voice was kind of he
was English and they decided what the type of accent
he would have, English accent he would have, and then uh, yeah,
(47:22):
I don't know, it's just kind of did it help
when you were living in um the UK too to
then synthesize up? Yes, I have to not listen to
any Australians though, Yeah, and Scottish watch out for that
(47:43):
Scottish because I'm not as I've as I've gotten older
and away from my training, I don't have as clear
of an ear on those things to where I can go.
So Christie is also saying stay away from the Scottish accent,
not the Scottish people in general, because really, yeah, I
(48:06):
was trying to be funny in a backfire. You can't
do a Scottish accent. I digress. We have And we
also want to mention what you've got going on now, right,
We've got season two, haven't Yeah, we're coming, We're down,
We're coming down the last three or four episodes of
this second season. Yeah, amazing. And then is there any
(48:29):
cool stuff coming out that you can tell us about? Uh? Yeah,
I have. Okay, so I'm in strange world. I do
a voice, but again, this is one of those voices
where they're like, we got to bring Allen in, which
is very nice, and I think I think I have
two lines, and I was like, at anything, like, could
you tell us about it? I'm like, I can't tell
(48:50):
you anything. I don't know. I don't know. I'm yeah,
I was flying the thing. I'm in a in a moment, like,
what's your voice? I'm like, hey, I think he kind
of maybe sounds like this. I don't know, he's rough
something roughie. Um oh, did you know I'm optimist Prime?
(49:13):
What are you? I did not you know. I was
Bumblebee for six years. So now now we've Danny Pooty,
So welcome to the world. You've been booty. You got pootied.
I don't I took that job, honestly, Honestly, I skimmed
the email. It was like Transformers offer. I was like,
(49:36):
all right, cool, I saw a prime and somehow missed
optimists or I read optimists in my brain. It's not
Optimist prime because I thought it was a different prime
because I did a role in one of the Transformers movies.
It's another accent. Uh where, Yeah there was a different prime. Yeah,
(50:00):
he's the fallen Yeah. I thought it was just some
random prime, like sphincter prime, and like this this is
gonna be a cast of hundreds of people and I'm
gonna Because it said all episodes, I was like, okay,
I'm probably have one line an episode and uh, it'll
(50:20):
be fun. I love Transformer as a kid and um.
Then two days before I started reading the sides to
come up with something, and everything highlighted was Optimist prime.
And I called Rights. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Are you? I don't understand how have we gotten this
(50:42):
close to this? And this is we haven't had tons
of discussions about why they've called me, Why would you
call me? What do you want me to do? And
we had long talks about it, and they talked me
in oh it's a fun world. Oh the transform His
world is a fun fun world to be in it
really is. I got to hear your optimist Prime? Can
(51:04):
we are we allowed? Yeah? I think I think there
wasn't trailer. Okay, he talks a little bit. They mainly
focused on the kids. Okay, so my character is Optimist Prime,
and he sounds a little like that, and and he
gets a little higher into my register a little bit more.
They want somebody who has got a little bit more
play within him, and it's you know what that The
(51:26):
thing about it was, and what I was saying to
them was like, I don't know, this is going to
play into my strength because like we'd be recording and
be like, alright, ottawats ric o'chet, you had your left
turn blinker on the last ten miles, and you know
(51:49):
that I've got you know, I'm a long haul trucker
with hemorrhoids. There's a lot of things that don't make it.
Many things out and humble is one of his. So
I'm going, so I'm that I'm that's coming out, which
is cool. Already we don't know how that worked, but
they decided it's because Nickelodeon. It looks really cool. They
(52:12):
animation looks really cool, and the fight scenes are badass.
That's awesome. Yeah, it's a wonderful world to be in
the world of the Transformer. Do you get to say
rev up and roll out or let's roll out? Yeah? Yeah,
that does your alan Does your voice change as that time?
(52:32):
Do you feel like your voices? Yeah? Does it get
more robust because you can still keep the voices that
you've had probably in your lifetime. I'm sure they don't
just go away, right, I don't think so, not yet
they will. But yeah, it's getting lower. It's getting I
can I can access more in the lower register, which
is good. And you don't smoke while like years good
(53:01):
see there say we're all, we're clean, we're getting we're
getting the cigarettes out. That's all. That's There's that, and
then there's a wish, and then there's oh, Peter Pan
and Wendy. I play somebody, Ah play somebody I don't
know Darling. Oh no, I play Jude Law beat me
to it. Um, it's I play Mr Darling. I just
(53:24):
stand the guy who says you need to grow up.
And then she goes away and she comes back after
a movie. I'm like, Wendy, you've grown up. But it
was fun to do well Thank you so much for
joining us today. You did not has been amazing star
and we went you know where we started this where
(53:47):
I was saying, I don't belong in this one. I'm
not a voice over actor. Now you've been You're very generous. Well,
it's true. I feel like being on this, being on
your on your podcast. Thank you. Uh. I feel a
little bit more, a little bit more of the world,
a little bit more. I'm just amazed that how I'm
(54:07):
watching you discover the fact that most of your life
is actually even that even Mr Darling, like, that's another role. Yeah,
there you go. What are you doing that? That's another
You're not just a voice of actor. You're the ultimate
voice over actor. People just happen to tell me while
you're doing it. Thank you Allan. We're gonna ask a
(54:35):
big We're gonna go ahead, let's will let's ask Alan
a big ask. What's our what's the big ask we have?
Do do you need money? What's what's happening? Mentorship? Oh? Yes,
well when we get there, we will. So so we are.
We know that, we know you're very busy, but we
are launching. We are launching a wonderful contest on I
(54:57):
hear Voices where it's called the super Some Contest to
become the next big voice actor. And so the winner
of the contest is going to be an amateur actor
who's going to win a year long contract with the
voiceover agency. So, uh, we were gonna be later in
the later in the contest we are for one episode,
each young voice over actor will get a mentor that
(55:18):
they will get to speak to for you know, an
hour and learn about the craft. So maybe as we
get farther along, if your schedule allows, sometime, we would
love to contact time in time we do resident an
alien up in Vancouver for but I think this year
is just gonna be six six months, six six months,
Well you could. You couldn't pick an uglier city to
(55:40):
be in for six months. Love it, My wife and
I love it so cool. Yeah, I like talking to
young about the perfect So thank you so much for joinings.
Do you have any social media that people can follow
you on this? On Twitter? I'm on Twitter too much, um,
And then I should do more with the Instagram. I'll
(56:01):
work on it and then you'll be and then you'll
go back to const to. I should probably know the
name of it, but I don't know. I'm going to
back to a con. Finally, I'm gonna go back to
a con. Good. Well, we do a bunch, so will
be the crazy people to go up and tap you
on their shoulder and excuse me and remember that you're
on our podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
(56:26):
Thank you, Yes, and I say shoot for being number
one on the call sheet in your own fantasy. I
think that's a good, good goal to have. I think
you learned a lot. You'll get Will's bill later. Thank
you so much. I'll appreciate you joining us. There's a
(56:46):
word we use on pod Meats World all the time,
which is unpacking, and uh, I think we just unpacked
quite a bit with Alan Tuttick. That was That was awesome.
That was the most successful I hear Voices episode because
we literally got him to open up so much to
us and he really cool. It was, I mean, he
was an open book. He was such a humble person
(57:07):
and he by rights could be a total jerk because
he's just so popular and so talented. But that's which,
that's what it takes, you know, to be like, I'm
so impressed by him, honestly, I really talent talent on
a whole another level. And I did I meant it
when I said it to him. He is a voiceover
actor that people just happened to film. Because I've said
this before. I've worked with some of the best actors
(57:29):
in the business, as have you, and the best actors
bar none overall that I've worked with the most talented
or voice over actors. They just are I don't know
what it is and theater trained, yes, absolutely, but something
about vdo actors. And he's got that combination of being
both where That's why I say he is a voice
over actor that people happen to film. Uh, He's phenomenal.
(57:49):
What a conversation that was. That was really really cool.
We did mention a little bit about the super awesome
contest to become the next big voiceover actor. We haven't
been harping on that too much because we as we say,
we're getting our ducks in a robe. Man, these ducks
are grand. Uh. So wait till you see all the
stuff we have coming for you. And it's gonna be soon,
gonna be very soon. We're gonna be coming out with
all the specifics. Uh. And as we say all the time, Christie,
(58:11):
I don't know if you want to take us out
today with our nice little outro. I thought you were
going to ask me to say what the contest has called,
and I was gonna do you want to shoot it
out there, Christie. The contest called the Super Amazing Contest
to become the Best Voice over Actor of Your Dreams
and number six. No, it was close. I like it.
(58:36):
So thank you all so much for joining us for
what I can only say would be the equivalent of
a very special episode of I Hear Voices that was
really really cool. And yeah, just thank you for everything,
and don't forget if you think you have what it
takes to step up to the microphone put your voices
where your mouth is. Thanks everybody. I Hear Voices is
hosted by Wilford l and Christy Carlson Romano. Executive produced
by Willford Ill, Brendan Rooney, Amy Sugarman and Vicky Ernst
(58:59):
Chang are Executive in charge of production is Danielle Romo.
Our producer is Lorraine Vera Weez and our editor slash
engineer is Brian Burton. And that was my announcer voice.
Some side effects of listening to I Hear Voices are
sore abs from hilarity, falling down the Coco Melon rabbit hole,
sneezing due to mass nostalgia, and hugs. Follow I Hear
Voices wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss
any of the amazing voices. Be sure to follow us
(59:21):
on Instagram and TikTok at I Hear Voices podcast. To
see the video stream, subscribe to my YouTube channel. You
can also check us out on my space, omegal Vine,
lime Wire. Hey I'm a napster. Okay, well, let's teach
you about the Internet, the who
Hey, Christy, Hey Will, how are you? I am so
excited This episode of I Hear Voices is just going
to be so amazing with our guests. You know, It's
funny we talk about that with all our guests, how
excited we are, and we genuinely are excited for all
of our guests because we are getting the best in
the business all the way around. But the guests we
have on today is not only an incredible voice over
(00:20):
actor in a number of animated projects, but also brings
his voice acting to live action in a way I've
almost never seen before. It is truly remarkable and I
can't wait to get into it with him. Who's coming today, Christie?
Mr Alan Tu Dick yeay, Alan's here. We have been
wanting to have you on for so long. Yeah, you're
(00:42):
like one of the dream guests. Yeah, well you don't
you know? I guess I'll launch right into this. Here's
why you're one of the dream guests for me, as
I'm huge into the voice over the animation world, But
you take what seems to be the prep for voice
over and apply it to on camera characters. So how
(01:05):
important is finding the voice of whatever character you're doing?
And I mean that literally, not the acting standpoint, but
the actual voice of your on camera character. Hmm. Yeah,
it's really I find it it's almost like a mask,
you know, if you're playing someone who has an English accent,
is you know whatever, It takes care of so much
(01:26):
of your character, of me, you know, so you know,
so much of it is done. The first job I
ever had on stage, so acting on stage and how
I got into voiceovers, was doing twentysomething characters in a
play about Gilda Radner that Allen's Whitebell wrote. And I
(01:47):
so I would walk on stage and I'd be like
this guy who's a cameraman at S and L and
you know, you know, get out of the way. And
then I was a French white there who has a
hair in his mouth and the excuse me, I kind
of hold on a minute, and there's like a hair
bit and then I run off stage and I changed
clothes and I came back. Gods, this hysterical woman who
(02:07):
is not upset because their boyfriend just left her and
she doesn't know what she's gonna do. And then I'd
run off stage and come back on is a guy
who uh, he's my favorite blue Blue who lost these
thumbs in the laith accident. That's how I lost this ghye.
And so I got to play twenty roles that were
distinguished mainly by costume but voice of different voices. And uh,
(02:34):
it's how I got my start in New York. That
was my first play off Broadway, and I got good
notices and it gave me. It gave casting directors the
ability to cast me. Then, you know, like they're like, oh,
he's got a he's popular right now, so we can
cast him. So I got another job, and then you know,
(02:56):
I was able to get small jobs and elm and
small and but I got my first voice over from
a castinger who saw me in that, and she brought
me in to do ice age and she just gave
me a stack of pictures of like these great photos
(03:17):
of different characters. She's like, there would be like a
I think, like a line or two at the bottom
of the character, and she just like, look at the character,
read the line. How you think that character might sound.
And I did it for the stack and then got
done and she's like, I heard back that I had
three I got three roles and they all were like
(03:39):
one line each pretty much. I was like I think
it was me and some a couple other people did
the Dodo birds prepare for the Ice Age and uh,
some version of that. And then there was one I
couldn't stand the voice, and I was I didn't like
that they picked it, and I was like, really you
want me to do that? It was like this big
it was big, heavy air. Uh, saber tooth. In the beginning,
(04:02):
there was a lot of saber tooth tigers. I'm hungry
and they're like, yeah that. I thought it was trash,
but it's in there. And then um, there were no one.
Oh it was it's called weird Dinosaurs, Like, hey, why
do you think they call like the Ice Age? And
I think that's like it was like a version of
some cartoon character I had heard growing up. Anyway, UM,
(04:25):
I'm sorry. I'm still stuck on the fact that the
first play you did you played twenty characters. Right, that's
still the thing. Right, let's go back. Well, let's start
at the beginning in terms of it, just like, yeah, where,
so did you did you grow up around the entertainment industry?
I mean, did you know that you wanted to do
this forever? How did you find this? I didn't grow
(04:47):
up around it. Um My mom put me into the
Plano Community Theater. I grew up in playing with that,
so she put me in the community Theater. And that
was where I did a fabulous fable factory. If you
know what kids tend to do this, it's it's morals
(05:10):
and fables. And um, I played the city Rabbit. It
was like, hey, I think they called him the jag
talking rabbits. What's going on? And he's like, I could
beat this guy. I be he talked like that, and
so it was a kind of a voice as well.
It was a voice. Um. And I remember inviting so
(05:30):
I was eleven, I remember inviting the kids from the
neighborhood came to see it because we did it at
the mall on the big stage. It was like a
converted I don't know, storage room or something. It wasn't
like in the you know, people with uros and stuff.
It was in the room that they made into a
(05:53):
little theater space. And the neighborhood, my neighborhood friends came
and I remember that they were impressed and they didn't
trash me about It was like, so you're so open
and ready to be you know, made fun of for what,
you know, if you put yourself out there and they
(06:14):
didn't and they were kind of impressed. So that was
how it started. I got into it in you know,
just acting in public school, and then I was going
to quit because I was really yeah, because I wasn't.
I didn't go into theater because I didn't like the theater.
You had to choose either theater or speech, and I
(06:35):
liked speech tournaments. Did you all ever do those things?
What is the speech tournament? No, it's a debate team speech.
It's just like, got extracurricular for you to do speech
is really amazing. They had they had improv. They had
group improv. So you would like pick four, four or
five people in your team and you go you pull
(06:58):
three topics and they would be like egg sprying in
a pan and you'd go okay, And they give you
three minutes with your five people to come up with
a scene and you come back in and you do it.
And then there was preliminary, semifinals, finals and you want
a trophy, and there was an impromptu where he was
just you and you got sixty seconds to come up
(07:20):
with my microwave blew up and you're like, all right, um,
and I would use characters. It's that wow, it's wild
I have, but I would always use a character I
got to go to. I went first with that friendship
in my microwave blew up the worst day of my life.
And you know some that's almost Italian. You have a
(07:43):
great memory al well. I was, yeah, well were when
you're young, those and those those moments were big, you know,
those were those were high. So you were like, so
do you feel like you were gaining confidence along the
way of taking these big risks with voice acting over
over these these kind of opportunities for yourself. I just
saw it as acting and just having fun. It was
(08:09):
it was fun. I liked I liked winning trophies, but
that was like because I was not sporty. I I
didn't I was, I don't care. I liked playing yard football.
I like tackling and stuff like that. I wasn't like
afraid to get hurt. I love that kind of thing,
But I did. I hated football players. They were sort
(08:29):
of ran the school and they were mean. And in Texas,
you don't say, let's say yeah that Texas at least
Texas isn't isn't big for football that's good in Austin.
Really yeah, yeah, that's where I am right now. So
I mean it seems almost like maybe you don't you
didn't even realize that you've been doing character voices your
(08:50):
whole life. Yeah, yeah, you know. I did a Yeah,
I remember I did a play with some older kids,
like back then they were adults, but they were only eighteen.
But when I was eleven, like after I had done
that one summer thing, I did this thing and there
was a guy who and uh, I was doing this
(09:13):
lift voice and the eighteen year old guys like, you're
doing it wrong. I was like, what are you talking about?
And this thing, this this thing, and he goes, no,
come back, bring your tongue back behind your teeth and
do it like this. So that way you can just
do this and you still have a list, but you
don't have to do that. I was like, oh wow, like,
(09:34):
no way. At the end of that summer, I had
a better list voice and anyway. Yeah, so I wasn't
in the mechanics of it all even at twelve. Wow. Huh.
Now were you were you an animation fan growing up?
Did you have like favorite cartoons that you would watch
religiously I love Warner Brothers. I loved one and I
(09:56):
still I still laugh at them. I'm uh, if you
have where are they HBO? I think they're on HBO.
Now I have Warner Brothers. Um, they go back so
far if if anybody wants to wants to get there
Bugs Bunny back on. There are characters that are mel blank,
(10:17):
no blank, mel blank doing he's doing the bugs Bunny voice.
But they haven't come up with Bugs Bunny yet, Like
it's a weasel or something, and like they go way back,
and you can watch all of them, and it's so
many years worth of cartoons. So I would you say
you've watched like all of that? Do you feel like
you're a walking encyclopedia of that Warner Brothers I have.
(10:40):
I have a certain section that I had a you
could buy DVDs of of Warner Brothers. Did you I got? Yeah,
I didn't know that. Yeah, do you have them? Look
at Will's look at behind Will because all of those
things are yeah, he's no, these aren't. These are my fans.
These are novels, my fantasy novels. Yeah, I'm a fantasy nerd.
(11:01):
But my but the the DVD stuff, yeah, you can
that was like the in the eighties. They would also
sell those as like the complete sets on TV, like
every week you get a new Bugs Bunny kind of sitting, Yeah,
new tex Avery or so. There's DVDs and then also
c ds. This was this. I bought a CD of
(11:21):
just audio that I would listen to. Oh that's interesting.
How old are you when he's seven? Ok? Alright. I
listened to it and laugh my ass off because it
was all of that old like Vaudeville. I loved Vaudeville.
I loved all that old Watch old Jack Benny with
(11:43):
Mell blank yeah on Jack Benny doing his God his
voice was incredible. Yeah. Now he was one of those
It's one of those times where and I know you've
you've undoubtedly worked with people like this all the time,
where you think, well, at least I do. I'll call myself.
I think I'm good at what I do, and then
I stand next to a man or a woman who
(12:04):
takes it to another level and I'm like, I don't
even know why I'm there, Like what I shouldn't be
in this room? Is It's that with when when you
get people like like some of the Corey Burton's and
the Rob Paulson's and all the kind of people you're
working with, Um, Nolan, Nolan nor that's the one for me.
Nolan is the same way. I mean, I've known Nolan
for years and years and years and years, and the
(12:25):
first time I worked with them, you just kind of
go and thanks everybody. I'm out um where they're just
you take it to another level. But that's the thing
I always thought was so interesting about you is it
was from an acting standpoint, like you took a voiceover
actor and went on camera and it was such a
(12:46):
strange kind of combination of the two crafts. And I
know it sounds ridiculous, but I can't think of another
actor that embodies that the way you do. Because it
doesn't matter what role you're in. It's seems almost like
the And again I don't know your process, but it
seems almost like the vote you picked the voice, like
here's the character, and the characters based on the voice,
(13:08):
and then the rest of it kind of molds around that,
which is what you do in vo Yeah, it kind
of it all kind of happens at once, but the
best video comes like I've made, I've had the benefit
of being taught how to do voice over by well,
like I didn't really start doing because I did that
(13:31):
way back when I did ice age and that would
have been like but I didn't get another job really
until Wreck It Ralph because I smoked cigarettes. I think
because I smoked. We were just talking. We just talked
about something about I was a heavy smoker too, and
(13:52):
it was since the time he was eleven. Yeah, and
I was doing kids, kids things, so it's like you've
got to be fourteen and it's like I've already been
smoking for ten years. It was that same kind of yeah,
that same kind of feeling. So but the record route
it's also I mean, did you do any um, any
(14:13):
kind of daytime animation stuff like like superhero things or
was it all kind of films? I got some I
got I got some superhero stuff, but I always felt
like I was it was like firefly, Um, they brought
me in to just to be somebody, but I would
(14:36):
I was like that I was the one person and
they're like why am I? Why am I here? All
these people were so much better at this. That's when
I met Nolan Uh Nolan North, and I was like, well,
this is so ridiculous like I do. I would do
like seven eight takes of my thing and then everybody
(14:58):
was just like one to they're done. Uh, and they
were nailing it, so I did. I was brought in
for that stuff, but honestly, my voice couldn't do a
whole lot because of smoking really affected my voice because
I was as smoked weeds, so I would I was
doubling up on my yeah. Actually, um, marijuana is worse
(15:22):
for your vocal coreally um yeah. I had open throat
surgery on two nodules and when I was doing my yeah,
I'm a singer, um from my past and so uh,
they told me that marijuana smoke is actually um double
the amount of effect for your voice. Then real, yeah,
(15:42):
in every other way it's better though in every other way,
so you know what I mean. They taught us at
school at Juliard. They taught us um, which was probably
is a huge It was a huge help for me
and accents and things to it. That taught me a
lot as far as the mechanics of your voice, because
(16:05):
it's it was primarily a voice school. I thought when
I was there, I was like, we take more voice
than we do acting interesting, but Kevin said that too. Yeah,
Kevin Conroy said the same thing. You do it. It
was a bit obscene, but it was so helpful ultimately.
But they're also teaching you weird stuff like I was
out when they're like, you're saying door, it's not that
(16:26):
it's door. I would think that that attention to detail,
even in your your sort of training, was it helpful.
Do you feel like over time do you feel like
(16:46):
you found some fundamentals in your body when you everything
I couldn't have done, not even said of what I've
done without going to that school. And I hated that
school when I was there. I left in my third year.
Are you left? I left? I left? I was I
was over it. Um, my class was crazy. My class
(17:07):
was crazy. And what happened like like crazy good or crazy?
Like you know, wonderful people, I'm sure individually, but when
you put us together, we were garbage. We were just
we were garbage people. We were the worst versions of
ourselves with one another. But like I killed a guy
after he left, Uh, I was in his third year.
(17:30):
Was you know in the um, you're not gonna top
killed the guy, but you know one of my friends
he died from heroin because there's a lot of drugs
was cracked and then and then gave way to heroin,
and there was like we're having a party at my
(17:51):
apartment one time, and half of the place was just
nodded out on jump like it was like right during
that time, pulp fiction came out and although if you
watched the movie the story, if you say, what is
the moral of this stories, don't do heroin here. This
is going the thing the plunger in your chest and
doesn't look like it's fun, but it was made to
(18:12):
look very beautiful, you know, with the glamorous cool. Yeah,
and everybody did it. I did not, Yeah, I just
did you say you killed the guy? So I didn't
he killed? They that the guy. This guy was in
(18:32):
class in my first year. They ended up kicking him
out because he was he barely come to class and
he was obviously too young. He was eighteen. He had
emotional but everybody's got emotional issues in acting school, but
his seemed to be of a different caliber. And so
they said leave and get your get it together and
(18:53):
you can come back. And so he left for a year,
joined the army, I think or something. Oh, okay, that's
what I was. My husband's a former marine, and we
hear some similar certain like you can be a good
marine in one aspect, I'm sure, and then have the
other part beat and that's the crazy and it works
(19:16):
for my acting. But yeah, I might kill you, and
he did. He ended up anyway, he got kicked out
when he came back, they gotta go, and he killed somebody.
So you were like, this is toxic Juilliard, as good
as you are and as much as there was some
other problems. Um, and so I actively worked to get
(19:40):
out of school to get any connection I could outside
of school, and that's where I found that play Bunny Bunny.
I lucked out into this summer program called New York
Stage and Film, which still goes on up in Poughkeepsie,
New York, and I went up for one read one
workshop read through with Dave stre there and which was
(20:01):
just so cool. And it was the first first play
I ever did on stage. I was ten. It was
with David Strethern and Mary McDonald. We did at Doll's
House in Connecticut. Yeah, we're from Connecticut, at the Hartford
at the Hartford Stage. Yeah, Mark Lamos, it was great,
It was great. Yeah, I had no idea how how
fortunate I was as as an actor at ten years
old you came to be working with them, but it
(20:21):
was but it was still great. Yeah, that's great, Yeah,
cool experience. So I did. But you like, stayed in
the in the dorms there at Poughkeepsie, and there were
a lot of people there that um everybody was just
kind of moving and they were all the people who
were popping up, and even the directors were directors who
were starting to get a hold in the New York
(20:43):
theater and some have had play but they haven't had
their big play yet, and and so there was a
lot of people that were important there. And then and
then they said, hey, we want you to do this
workshop where you play all these roles. And I did
Bunny Bunny, he was the play. And I did that
for two weeks. And then somebody fell out of a
(21:04):
play and I did that play. And so I just
stayed up there the whole summer. I had waited tables
like crazy during the year and had enough money that
I didn't have to work that summer, and it just
like it was just lucked out, really, like I can't
believe I thought ahead enough to. You know, I don't
even know why I saved money, but I did. It
wasn't my style because you said he liked the trophy. Yeah,
(21:31):
and so I made enough contacts that summer that um,
I got out of school that next year and then
and then that play. Um, yeah, I could go into
a room. I auditioned or I just had a meeting
at an agency, and I had met enough people that
I could, like, I dropped every name that I had.
(21:55):
Well if they say fake it till you, and I
truly did. I was like every director, every play right,
every person. And they Paradigm. They signed me for a year.
And that was in New York. Yeah, still in New York.
And then Bunny Bunny Um did workshops and we did it.
We went to Philly first and then we came to
(22:15):
New York and then I was hirable after that. But
I was anyway, good time. Is there is there a
a style of acting that you prefer? I mean, do
you do you like doing on camera comedy? Do you
like doing on camera drama? Do you like doing voice over? Yeah?
All of them, let them all for their own particular thing.
(22:42):
The thing about on camera that is that I guess
I had to pick one. It's on camera and comedy.
Probably comedy because that's where my brain goes. Yeah, um,
I used to I would have like ten years ago,
I would have said drama, drama. I don't know. It's
just my head. My head's wired to do comedy. It's
what i've It's when something makes me laugh, it sticks
(23:05):
in my head in a way that uh, I can
access it later. Um. And by doing I did plays
in the beginning, I did new plays, so I saw
how jokes can be retold, like it's you don't just
there's a joke. But when we did Bunny, Bunny be like, okay,
(23:25):
so uh Blue is uh he's the guy, he's got
no eye, he's this, that the other thing. Um. He
comes up to the character and he starts to harass him.
All right, we do it for an audience. It does
not get laughs. This doesn't work. That doesn't okay, So
we're switching it around. Then the playwright comes in, comes
up with a new script. Here you go, this is
the scene. Now, now he comes to ask you for something.
(23:47):
And now the same joke that worked where you delivered
the punch line, he delivers the punch line this time
and you want up him with a new punch line.
And I in doing that, all the different iterations that
we did it, I got I learned by doing it
in front of audiences how to how jokes are constructed,
(24:08):
and how how scenes work, and how humor has made.
And I did that with the Paul Rudnick played too,
H call called the most fabulous story ever told that
we did workshops of and for almost a year I
did this play and oh my god, was it was
very broad and it was very funny, and uh so
(24:30):
I learned. I learned comment that way so that those
so like if a joke sticks in my head, it's
not just the joke, it's the mechanics of the joker,
what major joke funny? So that in another situation you
can do the same thing completely differently. Yeah, it's like
we are you Are you a musician? Are you? Do
(24:51):
you have you have a musical background at all? I know? See,
I'm the same way a joke is, like so much
of planning a joke is tonal. Yeah, and it's like
how you're using your your instrument, your voice instrument, as
as how to land that. The mechanics of that that's
really interesting. But it's funny because I think about like
somebody like Nolan who's that same who's just naturally funny,
(25:14):
And you can use the mechanics of just having a
conversation with Nolan or somebody like Nolan where it's like, oh,
and then I'm just I just tweaked this one thing.
I can use it completely and maybe making a nice
clean joke as opposed to a Nolan North joke. But yeah,
but use the same kind of mechanics that that somebody
like that did. And you're just constantly learning from the
people around you, which is the thing that I love
(25:35):
to do. Yeah, And and so many jokes are man
in trouble, you know, you know, like just the I
don't know, so I guess I would say comedy and
on camera. And the reason on camera because the stakes
are higher because you're gonna be on camera and you
can't just redo it um on camera. You do have
(25:55):
the ability to redo it on stage, you do not. Yeah, sure,
I did uh spam a lot. And I was the
French taunter in one of the scenes that you know
from if you know the Monty Python Old Grail Uh,
and you walked on your knees for this whole thing,
(26:17):
a weeting the castle, the other side of the castle. Uh,
and a lot of it was like very physical your
head you did like a goofy head thing and all
this stuff. But I was had a very pronounced limp
by the end of the six months that character stuff,
(26:38):
and that came from Bunny Bunny because they were recasting
Hankersaria had to leave before unexpectedly and they needed somebody
who could play lion. Slot was a Night and the
French daunter, and then um Tim the enchanter who has
a Scottish accent, which I can't do anymore because I
(27:00):
barely do it. When I did it, I would only
do some kind of I would basically all the time.
He's time time time. I don't know. Um Eric, I
was like, it's not really a Scottish accent, isn't a joke.
(27:24):
That was one of the greatest, the greatest things that
ever happened in my entire career. I was doing. I
was on a sitcom call Boy Met World for a
lot of years, and we were next to Third Rock
from the Sun and I saw John Cleese and I
walked out and I said Mr Clice I I just
have to tell you that I think you're brilliant, and
you know, you're one of my biggest inspirations. And he
(27:45):
looked down at me because he's nine ft tall, and
he said, um, what what are you doing here? And
I said, oh, I'm I do a show. I guess
what what I said. It's called boy meat. He went, oh, yes,
unfortunately I've heard of it and turned and walked away.
And it was the greatest because I could tell he
was insulting me, but it was also tongue in cheek.
And I walked in back to the stage, going, that's
(28:08):
the greatest thing that ever happened to me. That's the
single greatest thing that will ever happen in my career
just happened right now. And it was just the best. Yes, Unfortunately,
I've heard of it. And then he turned and left.
It was just amazing, and I was, Oh God, I
loved it. I loved everything about it. Yeah, So if
(28:29):
there is there a I mean, going back to something
like a spam a lot or something like Monty Python.
You you talked about being so inspired by the kind
of the Vaudevillians and Jerry Lewis and things like what
is there was there a comedy team, like a troop
that you looked up to as well. I just liked
mel Brooks and like, not a team, but like when
I was young, the first comedy because it is a
(28:51):
very immature comedy. Uh there's you can grow into mel Brooks. Yes,
yeah you can. That's a good point. I guess the
joke about with him in the Last Supper and as
a Catholic kid, I got it. You know, Um, he's
the waiter. Mel Brooks is the waiter for the Last Supper. Okay,
so we all on one check all super I want
(29:15):
to recommend mold one. Could you please leave us alone? Jesus? Yeah? Yeah,
what Oh my god. I always found him to be
that guy that you loved as a kid, like when
you were a younger in the comedy world, and then
you think you outgrew him in your twenties, and then
(29:35):
you find him again in your thirties or forties and
you're like, this is genius. Well how did I how
did I lose this? For ten years? Yeah? Yeah, young
Frankenstein and I love Gean Wilder, and I loved all
of mel Brooks, all of his stuff, and then I
liked Monty Python and yeah, and then I found Oh,
(29:58):
I like the Smothers brother is a lot. My parents
had the album uh, an album of Theirs, and I
just I love that bit that they have with the
There's one of their bits where he throws UH to
Tommy and he's like, take it. No, just that what
(30:22):
I don't want to take it. You have to take it. No,
I don't want to take its just that's simple. They
were brilliant. I always my favorite one of those is
Tommy is is trying to fall asleep. He's in the
bed falling asleep and Mama cass Elliott is serenading him.
And it's because she's very softly serenading him and he's
starting to doze and then she hits the high notes
and he's like shooting up in bed. Oh yeah, I
(30:44):
got off there. They were just amazing, Yeah, absolutely amazing. Yeah.
But that's the thing that that's what I mean, it's
you seem to be gravitating towards like that. Like even
hankers aias somebody else who's like the living cartoon character
voicing into acting, and it's such a specialized little niche.
There's like three of you that do that. Lucky, it's
(31:08):
a lucky it's a lucky thing to find. Um. Yeah,
I hope I get to keep doing it. Um, well
that's one thing we asked for for So for a
dream role on camera voice a lot of people say
the joker, which is so yeah, which is funny what
you've done. But anything on camera voiceover, you get to
(31:29):
be cast as whatever you want to be. What's the role?
Oh on a camera too? Okay? Anything anything? Wow? Um?
You know what I would like to play? A guy?
Um on camera man in trouble character. Um, but he
(31:56):
he has a romantic interest, and I know that I
don't have to be the lead, probably a small you know,
like you want to get a young in there. You
want to get a young uh angular person right, al,
I disagree that's not nearly his interesting sex is well
(32:16):
all right, okay, okay. Then what's a dream? Then? Yes,
I even in my dream, I'm making myself the supporting role. Yeah.
I was gonna say, you're there, you're the second lead
in your dream. Um. I love that. It's your own
dream and your dream. Yeah, you're not even starring. I'm
(32:40):
in it. I wrote it, I'm correcting it and I
got a huge buds for some reason. It's amazing. There
you go this y yeah, um starting north also with actually, guys,
I do have a question. So in terms of manifesting
(33:01):
and sort of being the man and trouble characters, con
Man came out a few years ago. I remember because
I had started doing cons more frequently. It was even
before Will was doing them. Um and con Man started
and it was taking off, and I was super excited
about it for you guys, and secretly jealous. I was like,
how do I get on that show? It was for
(33:22):
the folks that were doing cons at the time, and honestly,
I mean, what is that like to be a part
of the con community for people. I'm just really curious
your take on it and where you're at. I miss
it because I have been going because of COVID. I'm
going next year. I just had this thing. I love it.
I love the fans, and I especially through comment I learned, well,
(33:42):
fans gave us three million dollars to make make this show,
and we made again, and and then we were able
through that to do a second season. So and and
I directed a lot and I wrote them and I
got to got the second season, I got to higher
people to rye and right with me. Yeah. I mean
(34:04):
that was like if you go to college and anything,
what you're gonna learn in school, Like I learned so
much through that thing, and and a lot of it.
I'm I'll just say much of it. I'm very proud
of some of it. I I really like the writing,
uh some some of the writing, not all of it.
But in editing, we didn't anyway, but I still you're
(34:30):
you're re editing your own show that from years ago,
already in your head down. It was very cool. But
during that one of the things that I did was
I said, any any offer to do a con, I'm
gonna take because I don't wanna you know, if if
there are people who want to say hi, and I'm
gonna do it. So I did tons of cons. Even
(34:51):
while we were shooting the thing, I would go away
and do a con. So I became Uh. I felt
very close to the Calm community, especially they were in it.
You know, they were part of it. They were they
were the fans, and we're playing fans in the show
and bringing their costumes. And then we would like if
there's like a role that has a line or something
(35:11):
I would just grabbed somebody. Oh that was that was
brilliant to be able to do it like hey, say
do you wanted to say like come over here, you
can do this like we were. It was so much
fun to be in charge for that type of reason,
to just be like, I need somebody here, you're gonna
do it, and that was pretty brilliant. And eating lunch
with everybody anyway, I got pretty close. And I just
(35:33):
did this thing Dree this weekend this past weekend. Yeah,
we were there. We were there, so I went out
on stage. It was very nice of them to ask
me to do this. I'm going to be in Wish,
but it's been but it's ten years since I've started,
(35:55):
since I've worked with him and it and they really
are responsible. Disney is responsible for me in a voice
over career because they king Candy just like how Bunny
Bunny did it opened the door for other people to
hire me. They're like, oh, Alan did this and it
went well, he can do this too, and and so
I got other other jobs and I've been and that
(36:19):
was ten years ago, and I've learned a lot in
ten years. But I and it's it's all because of them, uh,
but that I'm the guy. I'm not the ah, I'm
not gal Gado. I know a lot of people think
I I'm not gal Gado? Are you sure? People are like?
(36:44):
But like I feel like there's the stars of the thing.
And then like I did King Candy on a fluke.
I got the job because somebody fell out who had
a name to do the read through. And my agent
called me and said, hey, um, can you do an
(37:04):
Edwin voice? They want an Edwin voice? And I told
them you can. And I said, well, because I went
to the Museum of Television, I knew who Edwin was,
and he was I've seen some of his episodes and
he's Disney, you know, he talked like this. He was
the guy who who did um who was? I love
(37:26):
to laugh? And so I said, yeah, I think I can.
And we went to Pixar and the name guy who's
like a SNL guy. It was the entire cast except
for John c Riley hadn't been cast yet. He was
another actor who wasn't quite a name, but it was
about to be more of a name. And I know
(37:50):
I don't even know his name. He was was he angular? Angular?
He wasn't He was good for the role. But he's
he actually he actually said to me, I did like
the first hello, you know, we did them ross the
Wraith and I did like h and then he after
(38:12):
I was done, he said, are you really going to
do it like that on him because you're in the movie.
And so I did that. Yeah, So I did. I did.
I did record Ralph and then they But then it
was like Jennifer Lee worked on that because they worked
by group, So Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck both worked
(38:35):
on wreck Itt Ralph. In the making of it process,
it was like a two year process. And uh, they're like, hey,
we're doing this movie called Frozen. We like your work.
We've got a role. And it was like this little role.
So it was again, it wasn't the big names roles.
Was just like a supporting role that they ended up saying,
(38:56):
all right, that role didn't work halfway through. He was
this fellow who like cheese. He was he was like
he had wet lips and remember them wet lips and
say here talking about cheese, and he was he helped
the girls grow up and and uh, and they said
we can't have him because they don't need to. They
don't need anybody grow grow up with. They need to
(39:18):
just need each other and they don't need a parent.
So he's gone. He's still in it. You'll see him.
I see him and I'm like, there is but he
doesn't say anything. Um, They're like, we had this other guy,
Duke of Westleton. Do you want to do that? And
they they just bring you in, they hand you. They
just have pictures of him around and you just sort
(39:40):
of work on a voice while you're there and they're like, yeah,
do that do that? You do that? Yeah? Yeah, say yeah.
I mean it's a crazy process. I think it's nut. Well, Alan,
you said like wet lips, I mean, is that's part
of how you design these voices. If you have lis
that's a whole way of speak because you're you're aspiating
(40:02):
all over your lips and suddenly starts to affect how
you speak. I knew an actor who used to say
that he wouldn't he would choose his roles by the
way they held their mouth. And I have had some
roles that are the same. Are you Yeah, you think
about you know, if you just pull your changes, everything nice.
(40:35):
So anyway, I was I'm always a small a small role,
but they said after that when they said we'll bring
you back, and just kind of I think it was
John Lasseter, who you know, I always admired and I
don't make people sad or angry, but I always did,
and he was he so he started this idea that
(40:55):
I was, I feel like, it's lighten is gonnatract good
luck charm, which is just ridiculous. But I was like, okay,
sure you can believe that. And so then they would
always put me in a movie for ten years they
have ever since they've done it. They put me at
least in a thing that like a bird that just
goes right and yeah, that's you. And it was nice
(41:17):
of them to bring me on stage for D because
I'm just like the guy who does a thing. I'm
sort of like the mechanical, Yeah, the journeyman. And then
like this is Alan tutic Ore and they're like announced
it and uh, I came out on stage and there's
all the people a D twenty three, and I was
(41:37):
my Asian was with me. She was like, you gotta
get ready, gotta get over here, you gotta you're going
out there. And then she's like you if you look
at the script, and I was like I saw it. Yeah,
I got it, and I was so chilled out. And
it's all because it cons. It's all because of that.
That's walking in front of a stage of just a
(41:58):
bunch of people. They're ends, they're friendly people. Yeah, yes,
they want you to succeed. You know that's crazy that
you say that. Alan One. Firstly, because you had speech
background from when you were a kid, you did speech right.
But secondly, we just did a D twenty three panel
and I feel the same way. I'm actually I have
a Broadway background, but I was a child actors. I
(42:19):
have a lot of complex issues and stage right and yeah,
but these panels, especially leaning on my friend Will here,
we get to do our back and forth and there's
only so many questions someone's going to ask you, right,
and there's only so many things, and you know how
to say them, so you get to have fun with it.
And really it is about connecting with those fans because
(42:39):
they do love you so much. And I learned a
lot doing those cons with Nathan Phillyon early in the
early years with He's the one who brought me to
them after Firefly, and he's incredible. He's number one on
the cast every call sheet, although he was he did
(43:01):
a voice for Resident Alien and he played the octopus.
There's an octopus that I that as an alien, I
can talk to octopuses. We can talk um and we
can hear one another. And I said, can we get Nathan?
And Nathan said he'd love to do it. Um. But
(43:23):
I think he was like number eight on the call sheet.
I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I just it's not
a close contest that I didn't look thee and I
was I don't know where I was. Hey, everyone, it's
Scott Patterson from the I Am All In Podcast. Be
(43:45):
sure to tune into the I Am All In Podcast
and check out my one on one interview with the
one and only Jared Pedalci. We catch up on his
experience as a series regular on Gilmore Girls, what it
was like playing teenage heartthrobed Forrester, as well as his
successful career following, and of course, we couldn't let him
go without asking him the question that is on everyone's mind.
(44:08):
Is he Team Dean, Team Jess or Team Logan. Head
on over to the I Am All In Podcast to listen. Now, okay,
so last thing we got to touch on before before
we wrap this up because it's too important a world
not to touch on and Star Wars. What was it
(44:30):
like joining the Star Wars world. I had a blast
man um, I was okay, so I did kat s O.
I was on stilt, had motion captured the thing. But
but basically what that meant was I wore pajamas because
they had a special was the first time what we've
all come to know because we've seen it enough now
(44:51):
through the Planet of the Apes movies, those gray suits
with the black and white checks on them in like
a number and I think that was the first time
they had been used on that. But that was an
I l M thing, and they're like, no, we don't
need any balls with any tracker things at all. The
camera sinks to that kind of like a I don't
(45:12):
know how it sunk, it sunk sunk, and I would
just act normally, and I knew that my face was frozen.
Uh my eyes they would follow my eyeballs and at
one point he had eyebrows. I think he did have eyebrows.
(45:33):
I've got I've got a cool I l M test
of of K two s O. And it was it
was a scene from con Man of me sitting on
a toilet and I'm being hassled by the guy next
to me who hears me on a phone call. He's like,
are you are you that sci fi actor? I love
that show? And then the guy over here is going,
I don't, I don't know what show is that. I've
(45:54):
never even heard of it, and they're talking to each
other and I'm like, I don't want to. Um. They
put k T. S O over me and he's got eyebrowsed,
so that I still have a version of with eyebrows.
It was mainly a physical role, so it had to
be done with the body, but we went to It
was before they had the volume, you know that the
(46:15):
big volume you hear about where it's basically everything is
projected and so you can do you can travel all
over the world without leaving Long Beach or they've got
one in Vancouver now and in London. But back then,
just a few years ago, we had to go to
Jordan's and uh, we went all over the waves. It
(46:36):
was so cool. So and I was living in London
for six months and hanging out with really cool people. Uh.
Felicity Jones is a sweetheart and Diego Luna is a badass.
He's a badass. There's a lot of pictures, like they
showed us a lot of pictures on set, and there's
a lot of he and I sitting next to each
(46:57):
other and I'm just laughing my aunt. He's quick, and
he's clever and he's a genuine guy and so and
then the voice, Yeah, the voice was kind of he
was English and they decided what the type of accent
he would have, English accent he would have, and then uh, yeah,
(47:22):
I don't know, it's just kind of did it help
when you were living in um the UK too to
then synthesize up? Yes, I have to not listen to
any Australians though, Yeah, and Scottish watch out for that
(47:43):
Scottish because I'm not as I've as I've gotten older
and away from my training, I don't have as clear
of an ear on those things to where I can go.
So Christie is also saying stay away from the Scottish accent,
not the Scottish people in general, because really, yeah, I
(48:06):
was trying to be funny in a backfire. You can't
do a Scottish accent. I digress. We have And we
also want to mention what you've got going on now, right,
We've got season two, haven't Yeah, we're coming, We're down,
We're coming down the last three or four episodes of
this second season. Yeah, amazing. And then is there any
(48:29):
cool stuff coming out that you can tell us about? Uh? Yeah,
I have. Okay, so I'm in strange world. I do
a voice, but again, this is one of those voices
where they're like, we got to bring Allen in, which
is very nice, and I think I think I have
two lines, and I was like, at anything, like, could
you tell us about it? I'm like, I can't tell
(48:50):
you anything. I don't know. I don't know. I'm yeah,
I was flying the thing. I'm in a in a moment, like,
what's your voice? I'm like, hey, I think he kind
of maybe sounds like this. I don't know, he's rough
something roughie. Um oh, did you know I'm optimist Prime?
(49:13):
What are you? I did not you know. I was
Bumblebee for six years. So now now we've Danny Pooty,
So welcome to the world. You've been booty. You got pootied.
I don't I took that job, honestly, Honestly, I skimmed
the email. It was like Transformers offer. I was like,
(49:36):
all right, cool, I saw a prime and somehow missed
optimists or I read optimists in my brain. It's not
Optimist prime because I thought it was a different prime
because I did a role in one of the Transformers movies.
It's another accent. Uh where, Yeah there was a different prime. Yeah,
(50:00):
he's the fallen Yeah. I thought it was just some
random prime, like sphincter prime, and like this this is
gonna be a cast of hundreds of people and I'm
gonna Because it said all episodes, I was like, okay,
I'm probably have one line an episode and uh, it'll
(50:20):
be fun. I love Transformer as a kid and um.
Then two days before I started reading the sides to
come up with something, and everything highlighted was Optimist prime.
And I called Rights. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Are you? I don't understand how have we gotten this
(50:42):
close to this? And this is we haven't had tons
of discussions about why they've called me, Why would you
call me? What do you want me to do? And
we had long talks about it, and they talked me
in oh it's a fun world. Oh the transform His
world is a fun fun world to be in it
really is. I got to hear your optimist Prime? Can
(51:04):
we are we allowed? Yeah? I think I think there
wasn't trailer. Okay, he talks a little bit. They mainly
focused on the kids. Okay, so my character is Optimist Prime,
and he sounds a little like that, and and he
gets a little higher into my register a little bit more.
They want somebody who has got a little bit more
play within him, and it's you know what that The
(51:26):
thing about it was, and what I was saying to
them was like, I don't know, this is going to
play into my strength because like we'd be recording and
be like, alright, ottawats ric o'chet, you had your left
turn blinker on the last ten miles, and you know
(51:49):
that I've got you know, I'm a long haul trucker
with hemorrhoids. There's a lot of things that don't make it.
Many things out and humble is one of his. So
I'm going, so I'm that I'm that's coming out, which
is cool. Already we don't know how that worked, but
they decided it's because Nickelodeon. It looks really cool. They
(52:12):
animation looks really cool, and the fight scenes are badass.
That's awesome. Yeah, it's a wonderful world to be in
the world of the Transformer. Do you get to say
rev up and roll out or let's roll out? Yeah? Yeah,
that does your alan Does your voice change as that time?
(52:32):
Do you feel like your voices? Yeah? Does it get
more robust because you can still keep the voices that
you've had probably in your lifetime. I'm sure they don't
just go away, right, I don't think so, not yet
they will. But yeah, it's getting lower. It's getting I
can I can access more in the lower register, which
is good. And you don't smoke while like years good
(53:01):
see there say we're all, we're clean, we're getting we're
getting the cigarettes out. That's all. That's There's that, and
then there's a wish, and then there's oh, Peter Pan
and Wendy. I play somebody, Ah play somebody I don't
know Darling. Oh no, I play Jude Law beat me
to it. Um, it's I play Mr Darling. I just
(53:24):
stand the guy who says you need to grow up.
And then she goes away and she comes back after
a movie. I'm like, Wendy, you've grown up. But it
was fun to do well Thank you so much for
joining us today. You did not has been amazing star
and we went you know where we started this where
(53:47):
I was saying, I don't belong in this one. I'm
not a voice over actor. Now you've been You're very generous. Well,
it's true. I feel like being on this, being on
your on your podcast. Thank you. Uh. I feel a
little bit more, a little bit more of the world,
a little bit more. I'm just amazed that how I'm
(54:07):
watching you discover the fact that most of your life
is actually even that even Mr Darling, like, that's another role. Yeah,
there you go. What are you doing that? That's another
You're not just a voice of actor. You're the ultimate
voice over actor. People just happen to tell me while
you're doing it. Thank you Allan. We're gonna ask a
(54:35):
big We're gonna go ahead, let's will let's ask Alan
a big ask. What's our what's the big ask we have?
Do do you need money? What's what's happening? Mentorship? Oh? Yes,
well when we get there, we will. So so we are.
We know that, we know you're very busy, but we
are launching. We are launching a wonderful contest on I
(54:57):
hear Voices where it's called the super Some Contest to
become the next big voice actor. And so the winner
of the contest is going to be an amateur actor
who's going to win a year long contract with the
voiceover agency. So, uh, we were gonna be later in
the later in the contest we are for one episode,
each young voice over actor will get a mentor that
(55:18):
they will get to speak to for you know, an
hour and learn about the craft. So maybe as we
get farther along, if your schedule allows, sometime, we would
love to contact time in time we do resident an
alien up in Vancouver for but I think this year
is just gonna be six six months, six six months,
Well you could. You couldn't pick an uglier city to
(55:40):
be in for six months. Love it, My wife and
I love it so cool. Yeah, I like talking to
young about the perfect So thank you so much for joinings.
Do you have any social media that people can follow
you on this? On Twitter? I'm on Twitter too much, um,
And then I should do more with the Instagram. I'll
(56:01):
work on it and then you'll be and then you'll
go back to const to. I should probably know the
name of it, but I don't know. I'm going to
back to a con. Finally, I'm gonna go back to
a con. Good. Well, we do a bunch, so will
be the crazy people to go up and tap you
on their shoulder and excuse me and remember that you're
on our podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
(56:26):
Thank you, Yes, and I say shoot for being number
one on the call sheet in your own fantasy. I
think that's a good, good goal to have. I think
you learned a lot. You'll get Will's bill later. Thank
you so much. I'll appreciate you joining us. There's a
(56:46):
word we use on pod Meats World all the time,
which is unpacking, and uh, I think we just unpacked
quite a bit with Alan Tuttick. That was That was awesome.
That was the most successful I hear Voices episode because
we literally got him to open up so much to
us and he really cool. It was, I mean, he
was an open book. He was such a humble person
(57:07):
and he by rights could be a total jerk because
he's just so popular and so talented. But that's which,
that's what it takes, you know, to be like, I'm
so impressed by him, honestly, I really talent talent on
a whole another level. And I did I meant it
when I said it to him. He is a voiceover
actor that people just happened to film. Because I've said
this before. I've worked with some of the best actors
(57:29):
in the business, as have you, and the best actors
bar none overall that I've worked with the most talented
or voice over actors. They just are I don't know
what it is and theater trained, yes, absolutely, but something
about vdo actors. And he's got that combination of being
both where That's why I say he is a voice
over actor that people happen to film. Uh, He's phenomenal.
(57:49):
What a conversation that was. That was really really cool.
We did mention a little bit about the super awesome
contest to become the next big voiceover actor. We haven't
been harping on that too much because we as we say,
we're getting our ducks in a robe. Man, these ducks
are grand. Uh. So wait till you see all the
stuff we have coming for you. And it's gonna be soon,
gonna be very soon. We're gonna be coming out with
all the specifics. Uh. And as we say all the time, Christie,
(58:11):
I don't know if you want to take us out
today with our nice little outro. I thought you were
going to ask me to say what the contest has called,
and I was gonna do you want to shoot it
out there, Christie. The contest called the Super Amazing Contest
to become the Best Voice over Actor of Your Dreams
and number six. No, it was close. I like it.
(58:36):
So thank you all so much for joining us for
what I can only say would be the equivalent of
a very special episode of I Hear Voices that was
really really cool. And yeah, just thank you for everything,
and don't forget if you think you have what it
takes to step up to the microphone put your voices
where your mouth is. Thanks everybody. I Hear Voices is
hosted by Wilford l and Christy Carlson Romano. Executive produced
by Willford Ill, Brendan Rooney, Amy Sugarman and Vicky Ernst
(58:59):
Chang are Executive in charge of production is Danielle Romo.
Our producer is Lorraine Vera Weez and our editor slash
engineer is Brian Burton. And that was my announcer voice.
Some side effects of listening to I Hear Voices are
sore abs from hilarity, falling down the Coco Melon rabbit hole,
sneezing due to mass nostalgia, and hugs. Follow I Hear
Voices wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss
any of the amazing voices. Be sure to follow us
(59:21):
on Instagram and TikTok at I Hear Voices podcast. To
see the video stream, subscribe to my YouTube channel. You
can also check us out on my space, omegal Vine,
lime Wire. Hey I'm a napster. Okay, well, let's teach
you about the Internet, the who
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