Interview: Bob Bergen

You hosted “Jep!”, how did this come about?

Jeb was a children’s version of Jeopardy, it had the same

producers. I kind of got into the world of hosting because I

was in New York on a talk show promoting a show I was

doing called “Space Jam” and I got a phone call from a talent

agent who represents TV hosts. He told me I was quite good

and asked if I had ever thought of hosting. I said “well no not

really but if you would like to represent me then ok”.

So the first thing she sent me out on was this game show

“Jep!”, I auditioned for it and I got a call back and eventually I

got a screen test for it.

For the screen test they had me host an episode of Jeopardy

on the set with three kids as the contestants. Before the

screen test I walked up to the three kids and I said “kids make

me look good, I’ll buy you each a car” [laughter]. Just by

chance one of the categories of the game was famous

cartoon characters. So for every clue that came up I did the

voice of the characters which came up. So at the end of the

screen test the producers came up to me and said “that was really good, have you ever thought about going into voice acting?”. Other people in other parts of the business don’t know about what part of the business you come from. Anyway I ended up getting the job and I got each of the kids a little matchbox car. [laughter].

When it says you voice “Additional Voices”, what does this mean?

I call myself a utility player in the world of animation. In an animation feature when they hire the likes of Tom Hanks say to play the lead; they need people like me who can do multiple voices to kind of do all the other characters. It might be the voice of a squirrel, might be a crying baby, it might be a goat, might be a horse, it might be an insect flying by. To credit each of these characters individually would take a lot of record keeping and it’s a very difficult process. So rather than trying to do this, they just put us as additional voices. It means you have to explain your résumé a bit more but it makes things a lot easier.

What advice would you give to someone trying to get into the world of voice acting?

Well you said the magic word, actor. Often people say “I’ve been told I’ve got a really great voice, what do I do?”. Well the voice is really only a portion of it, the question is are you a good actor? So my advice for anybody looking to get into voice acting is become the best actor you possibly can and then study voice acting, as a good voice acting class will take your acting skill and add to it. And everyone at one point in their career was at the same point as you so it can happen.

And you’re working on a new show?

We’re doing a new show called “Loony Toons: Laugh Riot” and I’m Porky Pig on that, and we’ve just started recording that so it won’t be seen anywhere for quite some time because the voices are recorded first in a cartoon. I did a film called Ponyo that just came out, I’m in Toy Story 3 that comes out next year, I’m in Tinker Bell 2 which comes out soon, I worked on UP for Pixar which just came out. I’ve got a one-man show out too which is basically the story of how I became Porky Pig.