As I’ve written about before, legendary voice actor Rob Paulsen is my all-time favorite in the field of animation. And that’s not to denigrate any of the other fantastic voice actors out there; it’s more that Mr. Paulsen’s voice was among the first I commonly recognized. From Yakko to Raphael to Pinky to Mighty Max, he did it all. And he talks all about it in his Alpha show, Talkin’ Toons. But now you can see Rob Paulsen as you’ve probably never seen him before… as an actual cartoon!
Talkin’ Toons is a weekly series on Alpha in which Paulsen sits down and talks about the art and craft of voicing animation with some of his most beloved colleagues. And not only that, you’ll get tips about the business and even stories about creating these famous voices.
Here, Rob teaches Mothership‘s Hector Navarro and Jessica Chobot how to do the Pinky voice.
One of the other hallmarks of Talkin’ Toons finds Rob reenacting famous movie or TV show scenes with fellow voice actor guests, each doing one of their most famous characters. Like the great and versatile Billy West doing a scene from Back to the Future, where Futurama‘s Fry is Marty and Professor Farnsworth is Doc Brown.
Rob also reunited with all of his cohorts from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Rob–who played Raphael–was joined by Cam Clarke (Leonardo), Barry Gordon (Donatello), and Townsend Coleman (Michelangelo) to perform a very…uh, memorable scene from Seinfeld.
Easily everyone’s favorite Batman, Kevin Conroy, stopped by and did a scene with Rob from the best live-action Batman film, The Dark Knight. Even Rob is in awe in this one.
Sometimes, the collaborations go a bit high-concept. Here, we see Critical Role‘s DM, Matthew Mercer, sending his McCree from Overwatch voice to Middle-earth to play Galadriel opposite Rob’s P.J. from Goof Troop playing Frodo. Make sense? It will.
It’s also a lot of fun to hear characters in movies that they have no right to be in. This happened when Tara Strong stopped by and did a scene from The Big Lebowski as Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls. It’s truly something to hear.
Haven’t you always wanted to hear a stoic, noble samurai read the lines of a Joe Pesci character? Sure you have! Well here’s Samurai Jack himself, Phil LaMarr, playing Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas. How is he funny? It’s pretty obvious, actually.
And when Nancy Cartwright stopped by, she let us know what it’d sound like if Bart Simpson had in fact been the Boy Who Lived.
As Rob said, Talkin’ Toons posts every Friday on Alpha and all previous episodes are streaming now!
What voice actor would you like to hear play a weird, unrelated character on Talkin’ Toons? Let us know in the comments below!
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!
