Earlier this week, everyone was surprised (to say the least) about the umpteenth revival of Futurama courtesy of Hulu, and even more so when the news broke that John DiMaggio may not come back as Bender. The reaction to this, and the possibility that he’d be replaced by another actor when the show returned in 2023, did not go over well to say the least. Since then, support for the voice actor of Jake/Joker/Dr. Drakken/Marcus Fenix (to name just a few) has been flooding in on social media, and DiMaggio’s been more than happy to retweet it in the hopes that Hulu will get him back on the show.
Discussions about voice actors tend to heat up, particularly when a celebrity is announced for a role. With big name celebrities trying their hand at the craft to varying degrees of success, there’s a worry that voice actors will be replaced so more recognizable names can bring attention to a project. In some respects, it’s not an unfounded one; Hollywood is mainly about the biggest names bringing attention to a project, even if they’re not as good a fit for it as studio execs may want you to believe.
There are some celebrities who’ve managed to successfully transition to voice acting—Steven Yeun, Chadwick Boseman, Angela Bassett, and Ben Schwartz immediately come to mind. But by and large, it still feels like normal voice actors don’t really get the due that they very much deserve—well, unless you’ve been around forever like Dee Bradley Baker— even as animated projects have been getting bigger mainstream attention over the years. If you grew up in the 90s and watched a lot of cartoons, there are voice actors whose careers you probably grew up following, whether you realized it or not.
For this week’s Open Channel, we want to know some of your favorite voice actors. They can be veterans or fairly recent upstarts, they can be from games, anime, cartoons, don’t matter. If there’s a voice you know and recognize, we wanna hear about it down in the comments below.
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