- We were in a bar and someone comes up and goes
so you're together in real life.
- Yeah. The guy was like you're Spongebob,
and I go, yeah, that's Patrick.
And they're like, Oh my God!
[Hawaiian themed music]
- Hi, I'm Bill Fagerbakke.
- And I'm Tom Kenny,
[Hawaiian themed music]
- This is the Wired
- Autocomplete Interview.
- Here we go,
What is
Tom Kenny
doing
now?
- Man, just working from home every day on various stuff.
Everything from SpongeBob to Rick and Morty to everything
in between.
- What is Tom Kenny?
- What is a Tom Kenny?
A Tom Kenny is a 58 year old geek --
- What is his favorite SpongeBob episode?
- Oh, favorite SpongeBob episode.
That is way out there on the internet.
That is Bad Geeks, of course.
- I believe it. I've heard him say it.
What is Tom Kenny?
Good adhesive.
What is his phone number?
Hey, grab your pens and paper, everyone.
- My phone number is a closely guarded secret
because I hate talking on the phone.
If you wanna sail a paper airplane through my window
I'll read your message.
- What does Tom Kenny look like?
- He has a face made for voice-over,
we know that.
Tom Kenny basically looks like
every other schlubby, Caucasian man you've ever seen.
And that's why voice-over is awesome.
I'd be playing like confused dads on TV right now.
You call that a bathing suit?
- [laughs] Nice read.
What does Tom Kenny sound like?
- Well, it depends on the day.
Let let's see.
Tom Kenny sounds like a lot of things.
He sounds like sponges, [maw] snails [laughs]
He sometimes sounds like French guys saying two hours later.
And sometimes,
he sounds like the Mayor on the Powerpuff Girls.
Sometimes, he sounds like the narrator
on the Powerpuff Girls.
Basically Tom Kenny has multiple personality disorder
and he's managed to make a living from that.
Nice work, if he can get it.
- What is Tom Kenny's favorite voice that he does?
- You know, I loved SpongeBob been, berry
very good to me.
I love SpongeBob, and some of the ones that you don't
get to do as much, like on a show called Foster's Home
for imaginary friends, it was a Cartoon Network show,
Oh, there is a big purple monster named, Eduardo,
and I got to be him.
The only problem was doing that for four hours
was like gargling, Drano.
We call this one, how Bill Fagerbakke?
So questions one.
How do you pronounce Bill Fagerbakke?
- You can't mispronounce it.
I accept finger bacon, fake and bake.
They're all good.
- [laughs] I'm sure you heard them all
by the time second grade rolled around you,
kinda cycle through.
How old is Bill Fagerbakke?
Can I rephrase that?
How young is Bill Fagerbakke?
- I am 63 years old.
I was born on the day
the Russians sent up the Sputnik
and my parents called me Sputnik for about six weeks.
They came to their senses and gave me an actual name.
- How tall is Bill Fagerbakke?
- I am 6' 6 1/2".
One of the first movies I worked on
was A Secret of my Success
and I was so excited to meet Fred Gwynne who played
Herman Munster...
- And Car 54, Where are you?
- Yes. - Double genius.
- I went up and introduced myself to him
the only thing he said to me was,
"You're too tall for this business",
and he walked away. [laughs]
How, it's nice to meet you-- [blowing]
- How did Phil Boger Cocky, get cast in Spongebob?
- Pretty standard audition.
Well, no, I can't say that because it was Steven Hillenburg
and nothing he did was standard.
So actually, the first thing he said is,
I want you to listen to this.
And he played me a tape of Tom.
It was called Sponge Boy at the time, he said
this is what Sponge Boy sounds like.
And so he said, I want you to read for his friend, Patrick.
What a fantastic way to audition for something
and, and yeah, I got lucky there.
- How do you, Uh-oh meet Bill Fagerbakke?
- If your making me food,
we'll meet.
Or if you're dropping off a delivery at my house.
- As you can see from Bill's background
he actually lives in a tent.
- [laughs] That's right.
- We're accessible at Comic-Con's,
when those start up again,
Bill and I will do the occasional Comic-Con,
and fans come out to say hi to us.
But, the bad news is you might have to meet me too.
[laughs]
- So that's got a good news, bad news.
Last question, on this page, Bill.
How Bill Fagerbakke does the Patrick voice?
- [laughs] Well, I does it the way I do
most voices, I'd take a deep breath
and then sound comes out.
I guess everything's down in my torso, I guess.
- There's a lot of room in there.
- It's still here, as opposed to Squidward, he's
up here. [chuckles]
We all wonder who Tom Kenny?
But let's take a little further.
- Tom Kenny wonders, who Tom Kenny?
- Who does Tom Kenny? Ha -ha
- This is like the match game.
- Who does Tom Kenny voice in Rick and Morty?
- I've been everybody
from, look, I'm Sqanchy here, dude.
Squanchy,
to Mr. Jellybean,
to, you know, alien prison guard number four,
you never know who you're going to get
when you walk in the door he just goes,
you're this, this, this and this.
- Who does Tom Kenny
voice in Futurama?
- Futurama, wow, that was a long time ago.
Again, that was one of those shows
where they had their main cast
and they would just bring you in,
and you were somebody that they ran into.
I know I was Abner Doubledeal,
the commissioner of robot boxing.
The episodes that most people know me or remember best
for Futurama with me, is where I was Yancy Fry,
which is the brother of Billy West's main character, Fry.
That was really fun.
People say me and Billy sound kind of alike anyway
and our natch are just regular speaking voices.
It's fun to be be Billy's brother
and you know, Matt Greoning, come on.
- Who was Tom Kenny in Pokemon.
- This comes up every so often.
I don't think I've ever done Pokemon.
There's stuff that I don't remember,
like I did it and my kids are goin,
Hey, that's your voice?
And I go, I never did that show.
And then they'll point to the credits and they'll go,
yeah, dad, that was you.
And I go, Oh, I guess it was.
I think with Pokemon,
there was a guy named Tom Kenny, who
- No. - Bought the series
and somehow got re dubbed it, you know
and got the rights to it
or something and made a bazillion dollars on Pokemon.
I wish I was smart enough to have gotten a hold of Pokemon.
Nope. Not, not that smart.
So I don't think I have any Pokemon history.
If there is? The internet will slap me around
and go like, don't you remember?
- Well, I wonder if there's another Bill Fagerbakke
out there that's going to do something.
Okay. Who is Tom Kenny
married to?
- My wife is named Jill Talley.
She's an actress.
I met my wife on a show called The Edge,
then we did a show called Mr. Show with Bob and David.
And she also plays a various characters
on SpongeBob in the SpongeBob-averse.
She is Karen, Plankton's computer wife
and that's that's who I'm married to.
She was crazy enough to marry me.
- They are a fantastic couple.
I can attest to that.
The folks on the internet
say, who is Tom Kenny?
Why would they ask if they didn't know?
- Who is Tom Kenny?
- I have to answer that question myself.
I will say that Tom Kenny is the Mel Blanc of our day.
And we are very,
- Oh, Bill, come on. - Very lucky to have him.
Who does Tom Kenny voice in Spongebob?
- Oh wow.
Let's see, well,
Oh, you know that pink sea star?
- He's hilarious. - That Spongebob
hangs around with
I don't do him.
And now it is time to move on to our, ding-ding!
What Bill Fagerbakke round.
What happened to Bill Fa --[laughs]
What the hell happened to you, Bill?
- Well, I stepped into a big bucket of awesome
good fortune stumbling into voice-overs
in the 90s and oh my God,
what a fortuitous route that was.
- What is Bill Fagerbakke like?
- I'm a sports fan.
I'm a music fan.
Oh, and I have, I have two daughters that are amazing
and they're in their 20s now.
- Bill's daughters are incredible people
and super talented in their own right.
Which is
surprising, cause as children, they were horrible.
No, I'm kidding, they were great kids too.
What does, what does Bill Fagerbakke sing?
- I'm a baritone.
I actually,
none of this performing stuff would have happened to me
if it hadn't been for high school choir.
I had a fantastic choir director in high school.
I had the great, good fortune to actually reconnect
with that old choir director just a few years ago.
And we had a nice long talk
and I was able to express my gratitude.
- Was he like,
why are you wasting your talent on that silly cartoon?
[laughs]
What voice Bill Fagerbakke do besides Patrick?
- Oh, nothing.
This is all I'm good for.
What you see, is what you get.
- That is not true.
And you started out on the cult animated series Gargoyles,
Disney's Gargoyles.
- Right. - And it's still,
when you go to Comic-Cons
and stuff has a devoted cult following.
And you did Clifford, the big red dog.
You did the, didn't you?
Did you do something Clifford?
No, you did Beethoven.
- Yeah, I did Beethoven, yeah.
So I knew it.
I knew it involved a large canine.
What is Bill Fagerbakke's
favorite SpongeBob episode?
I think I know this one.
- Ah-huh. Yes, he does not.
Mine is The Pilot,
that's where SpongeBob gets his, his job at the Krusty Krab
cause it opened my mind to what Steven Hillenburg created.
You know, when Dorothy wakes up
after the house lands in Oz,
that was me watching The Pilot,
that I never really recorded.
I didn't get it when I was recording it.
But watching that pilot, it was, wow.
- Are you saying that your life up
until then had been kind of sepia-toned in brown?
- Yeah. Dusty and windblown.
[laughs]
You know what?
It turns out that when people turn on their computers
they often say, when did Tom Kenny
start voice acting?
- I kind of began my career in standup
where I did a lot of characters and things like that.
And then sketch comedy with The Edge, and Mr. Show.
And you know, it all kinda led
towards just that pure theater of the mind
where in cartoons, if you can sound like the character
you can be the character.
And that's what it's really freeing to not have,
not have any of this.
- When
is Tom Kenny's
birthday?
- My birthday, July 13th, 1962.
- When did Tom Kenny start voicing SpongeBob?
- Let's see, we did the pilot in 1997
and went to series in 1999.
And now it's a 2021,
so SpongeBob has been a part of my life for
at least what? Two-thirds?
Yeah. Maybe.
I don't know, I'm not good with fractions.
I didn't know anybody becomes an actor
because they're great at math.
- When did Tom Kenny
stop voicing SpongeBob?
- Well, today I'm announcing my retirement.
Thanks Bill for...
No. I'm never gonna stop voicing SpongeBob.
I hope.
I never want to retire.
I love what I do.
And SpongeBob brings so much positivity
and fun, and great people like Bill,
and everybody else on the show, creativeness, creativity.
I'm still recording Spongebob, maybe,
hopefully they're not just being nice to me
and then dumping my recordings and bringing in another guy.
This one is called, is Bill Fagerbakke.
The first one, is Bill Fagerbakke nice?
- Oh, well, I try to be.
I think it's important to be nice to our fellow humans.
So I do my best.
- It's nice to be important
but it's more important to be nice.
Yeah, I can say Bill Fagerbakke
is very nice.
One of the nicest people ever.
He never phones it in.
He always brings his A-game
and that's no lie.
Is Bill Fagerbakke in coach?
I would think you could afford first class by now.
- First class, baby.
- Is Bill Fagerbakke in coach?
- That was me, I was living in New York and got that job
nine years later, yeah.
I was a full-time resident in California.
- And there's still people.
In fact, we ran into somebody with somebody who was
interviewing us or something the other day
that had just put it together
that you, - That's right.
- Were on coach. - Right. Yeah.
- Remember?
And they were like, wait, what?
And you're like, well, who doesn't know that?
But, this guy didn't, and it made him very happy.
It was nice to watch.
Is Bill Fagerbakke and Tom Kenny friends?
- Oh, I think so.
As far as I'm concerned, we're friends.
- Fren-emies, would you say were fren-emies?
Is Bill Fagerbakke on cameo?
So cameo of course being the service where people pay you
to do greetings and shout outs
for birthdays and bar mitzvahs and things.
- Who knows maybe someday.
But no, I am not.
- It's crazy, like during the pandemic, like we're just
recording all the time and there's multiple SpongeBob series
and projects plus all the other non-SpongeBob stuff.
So it's like, I feel like,
I'm up in my cave
and you build your in your cave, enough.
- I do enough greetings just through people I know
and friends of friends and stuff.
- Is Bill Fagerbakke on Instagram?
- No, I am not on social media.
I am just out of the loop.
My social media is the texting I do
with the people I know and my friends, and family.
- I'm not on social media either.
I've never, I've never tweeted.
And people find that mind blowing, Bill.
People just expect that of actors now you're supposed to be
a one-man PR Department
and I just that I'm too busy screaming.
- Hey, all you Googlers, we appreciate the Googling.
- Thank you, internet.
Stay Wired.
- [laughs] Oh, that was smart.
- He's smart.
[upbeat music]