Comedian, writer and voice actor extraordinaire Tom Kenny is best known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. But recently Kenny achieved a career highlight, joining the cast of “Winnie the Pooh” for Disney’s latest version of the classic story.
LCJ: You must be honored to be part of this new chapter in the “Winnie the Pooh” series
TK: Honored is the word, absolutely. This is my first time voicing Rabbit. There have been a few actors who have portrayed him since the cartoons began in the 60’s. I just see myself as the next guy in line before I hand the role over to someone else, but hopefully not for awhile. I’ve actually worked with Jim Cummings, whose been the voice of Pooh and Tigger for some time. He and I were literally connected at the hip in the series, “Catdog”, that was on Nickelodeon.
LCJ: So it must have been great to reunite with him.
TK: Yeah, it’s really great working with him. All the voice-over guys look up to him. He’s one of the grand old guys in the business. He’s legendary.
LCJ: How did you land the role of Rabbit?
TK: Pretty much like any other voiceover job I had to audition. They told me a little about the character, showed me a picture and told me what they were looking for. They wanted Rabbit to be a little different for this movie – not as aggressively unpleasant as he’s been in the past. But he’s still very persnickety, very fussy and doesn’t like his routine messed with. A bunch of actors in LA recorded auditions and I was lucky enough to be the one that got picked.
LCJ: Was it difficult learning to do Rabbit’s voice?
TK: Not really, because unlike Jim, who has to match Tigger and Pooh’s voice exactly to the originals, they told me they were reinventing Rabbit a little bit so attitude was more important than audio exactitude. Nobody was more surprised than me when I got the gig.
LCJ: So did you research the part anyway?
TK: Great question. I did. I knew they were going back to the original feel, recalibrating Pooh a bit, going back to the original shorts – the hand-drawn, 2D, trying to get the warm, fuzzy feeling of those two shorts: “Winnie the Pooh” and “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day”. So I watched those and only those.
LCJ: Had you always been a fan of Pooh, Rabbit and everybody else?
TK: I definitely was a fan. Those books were on my family book shelf when I was a kid and I used to read them to my younger brothers and sisters – do all the voices of all the characters. Little did I know that would come in handy later in life. And now that I have kids of my own those books are on my bookshelf. And there’s only four of them – two books of stories and two books of poems, some of which feature Pooh. So it’s a pretty series to collect. I encourage people to go out and read the books and see where it all started.
LCJ: Do you consider being in this movie one of the highlights of your career?
TK: Absolutely. It’s like, if you look at “Winnie the Pooh” as a sports team that’s really popular, has been winning games and everybody loved this team for years and years and then you get to be the rookie who gets called-up from the minor leagues to be on this team. It’s definitely a highlight and I couldn’t be more thrilled. And it’s a nice part, because Rabbit is around, but he’s not one of the major, major characters so I get to see Jim do all the heavy lifting, having Pooh and Tigger talking to themselves. Every once in a while Rabbit pipes-up and says something cranky, and then goes away for awhile.
LCJ: With everything else you have going on how were you able to squeeze this job in?
TK: I’m busy, for sure, but it all comes down to scheduling. Luckily I have an agent, who is able to move all the chess pieces around the board and makes everything fit in. And the great thing about working on animation is, unlike working on a sitcom, which would take up your whole week, if you work on an animated show you just go in for one day. So I know that “Tuesday’s is “Batman and “Adventure Time”; Wednesdays is “SpongeBob” and “Handy Manny”, and then on this day you go in and do video games and on this day you do side job like “side effects may include diarrhea” – some straight announcer stuff. Talk about career highlights – being the “side effects may include diarrhea” guy – I’m never going to achieve that high again.
LCJ: I’m a huge SpongeBob fan and I loved the movie. Is there a chance that SpongeBob could be returning to the big screen?
TK: You know what – I’m just a dumb actor so nobody tells me anything – but I have to say that there’s definitely rumblings. I hear discussions that it’s being explored.
LCJ: Really!
TK: Nothing definite to report, but I’m hearing it talked about in a way that I haven’t before.
LCJ: Great information. Well, this Friday has to be “Tom Kenny Day”. Not only does “Pooh” come out but “SpongeBob’s Frozen Face-Off” debuts.
TK: There’s this great convergence going on right now. I’m also in the current “Transformers” movie, and “Pooh” and the SpongeBob special come out on the same day. And I love it because most people aren’t away that its the same guy doing all this stuff, so when they connect the dots it’s kinda thrilling: “You’re that guy, and that guy and you also do that? That’s cool!”