The team at Looper.com have posted an exclusive interview with Star Wars: The Clone Wars voice actor Dee Bradley Baker.
Voice actor Dee Bradley Baker dishes on Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Exclusive interview
Even if you don’t recognize Dee Bradley Baker’s name, you’ve probably heard his voice. He played the towering idol Olmec on the ’90s Nickelodeon game show Legends of the Hidden Temple. He brought the breakout star of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb, Perry the Platypus, to life. He’s the man behind the various critters on Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra, he played Daffy Duck in Space Jam, and his voice is all over hits like SpongeBob SquarePants, Adventure Time, video games like Overwatch and Portal 2, and plenty of other hits.
But even with over 600 credits to his name, Baker’s work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars stands out. On the series, which is set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Baker voices every member of the Republic’s clone army. It’s a remarkable showcase for the veteran actor, who must give different characters, most of whom sound almost exactly the same, unique identities and personalities. Often, he’s playing multiple parts in a single scene. Sometimes, he’s the only actor in an entire episode.
As The Clone Wars returns to Disney+ after an eight-year hiatus for its seventh and final season, Baker took a few minutes to talk to Looper about his career, his time as part of the Star Wars universe, the Bad Batch arc that kicked off the recent Clone Wars revival, and much, much more.
The road that led Dee Bradley Baker to The Clone Wars
How did you get started in voice acting?
It’s something I stumbled into by the time I was about 30 years old. Never was really a goal, it just gradually clarified as I did things that seemed like fun to me. After college, this was the best way to have fun and earn a good living and give me the lifestyle and artistic variety, more than anything else that I tried, so I just ended up moving into it. And by the time I was late 20s, really early 30s, that’s when I probably would’ve said, “Well, I guess I’m a voice actor.”
But if you caught me in my mid-20s or early 20s or earlier, I would never say that I am an actor or I’m going to be an actor. I had no idea what I was going to be. I liked a lot of different things. I had a lot of experience. Since second grade, I’d done a lot of plays and musicals, and I had a really great drama teacher in high school, who had us doing really advanced, interesting stuff as well as musicals and straight-ahead stuff as well. I really liked doing it, I just didn’t think I was all that good.
I also had a habit of creating sketches and audio plays and stand-up comedy and live performances with my friends. I did that from high school through college and then just kept doing that, but that was a hobby to me, that was never anything in my mind more than a hobby.
I made audio tapes when I was a kid. I was messing around with my voice. I tried ventriloquism for a while. I did a lot of improv and some stand-up and I liked popular culture and monsters and video games and movies and reading and science fiction and music. I mean, I just liked a whole eclectic mess of things that I just splashed around in for always. I mean, that’s all I did. I’m a dabbler. I just dabbled in stuff I liked.
Follow this link to read the full interview.
