INTERVIEW: Original cast of ‘Animaniacs’ is back for season two
Image: Animaniacs is back with a second season on Hulu. Image courtesy of Hulu / Provided by network with permission.
A couple years ago the animation gods granted a wonderful gift to fans of the 1990s cartoon series Animaniacs. Steven Spielberg and the team decided to get the gang back together and produce a whole new set of episodes. Amazingly they were able to employ the voice acting talents of the original cast, including Jess Harnell as Wakko, Tress MacNeille as Dot, Rob Paulsen as Yakko and Pinky, and Maurice LaMarche as The Brain.
Animaniacs is now back with another season of new episodes, each of them airing on Hulu. The streaming network has committed to bringing 13 more adventures to patiently awaiting audience members. Fans can expect plenty of pop-culture parodies and laughs for adults and children alike. This season, Wakko, Yakko, Dot, Pinky and The Brain head everywhere one can imagine, from outer space to an international beauty pageant.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox participated in a roundtable interview with voice acting extraordinaries Harnell, MacNeille, Paulsen and LaMarche. They offered their thoughts on this rebooted series and how they discovered the news that Spielberg wanted to bring Animaniacs back to life.
HARNELL: For me, the only concern was that we had left such a beautiful legacy the first time around that we wanted to make sure we didn’t embarrass ourselves or the people who used to love it, and the first signal was that they got the cast back together. We knew that was cool. Then we knew Steven was on board. We knew that he would not let it suck, so to speak, and then they assembled this dream team of Wellesley [Wild] and Gabe [Swarr] and the guys behind the show, who have done such an amazing job of maintaining and raising the bar from what it used to be to what it is now.
MACNEILLE: We didn’t know this new team. They were strangers to us. … I was a little scared. I mean they all had great reputations and stuff, and Steven Spielberg wouldn’t allow any slouches to be in charge. But we didn’t know these people, so we were a little hesitant. But as soon as we met them, we had a dinner beforehand and got to know Gabe and Wellesley a little bit, so the onus was off. It was all fine after that. We knew we would be in good hands.
PAULSEN: Gosh, I was fixing to quit my career. [laughs] There had been rumblings for a while that this might happen, and Mr. Spielberg might decide to pull the trigger and do this again. … When we found out that Mr. Spielberg wanted to do it, it was pretty surreal, like Christmas 24 hours a day. Well, I still haven’t come down because we’re still doing it. … Animaniacs changed my life. Tom Ruegger and his crew for the first batch literally changed my life, so to do it again with Steven again for an audience that was exponentially larger because of the fact that it did become a culturally iconic show, my goodness, it was mind-blowing to learn that it was actually going to happen.
LAMARCHE: I had been for a long time a bit on the cynical side that if it did come back they wouldn’t use us. They would do celebrity stunt casting as so many reboots have done, and I don’t think they’ve seen as much success. I don’t say that as a dig, but I think when you go to reboot something and you want to give grown kids now their childhoods back, you give it back to them the full package. And that’s what Steven did. He went into the pitches with our 8x10s and laid them out on the various coffee tables of the meeting rooms and said … ‘We won’t go forward without knowing these are our main actors. We can do anything else around them, but they’ve got to come back.’ Thank God we were all in good enough health to do it, and so that has been a tremendous thing to me.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Animaniacs recently premiered its second season of episodes on Hulu. Click here for more information.
