October 20, 2025 • 11 mins
The Armageddon Expo is taking place this weekend in Auckland.
Several actors such as Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis and John Boyega will be attending the convention, along with voice actor Alan Tudyk.
Alan Tudyk told Mike Hosking that his knack for voice acting came from a play, where he played 20 different characters.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Alan Tudick a big body work over the last thirty years,
Twenty eight Days, A Night's Tale, Firefly, dodge Ball, Death
of the Funeral. Lately he's the star of Resident Alien,
been part of the Star Wars universe voice work. He's
done pretty much every Disney animation film going anyway. Alan
Tudick's hitting here for the Armagaedin Expo, which is this
coming weekend, this long weekend, and is with us from
(00:22):
from Canada, from Vancouver, elentudic morning. What Ellen, I got
an insight into how this works. A guy's running this
arm again, right, He says, you're the man. When people
buying tickets at the moment, they say, I got to
meet Alan, Allen's the greatest. I can't wait to meet Alen.
What's the magic here? What do you got going?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You know, I've got answers. I've got answers to whatever
their questions are.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
You know, usually it's simple stuff. How do you do
it well? If they're young, if their kids, you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Know, I've done a lot of voices for animation, and
so I can do the voices for them.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And so for kids who like King Candy.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I can do King Candy for them, and they can
see that it's coming out of this weird person and
not the little man that they're used to in the
and in the movies, or the Duke of Washleton or
even the chicken.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey hey, I do him. And those are always the best.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
When they're the kids, you get to see it, the
light in their eyes as they recognize their friends from
the movies.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
How many of these do you do? I mean, is
this a global thing. There's a group of you guys
who sort of, you know, wonder the world. And I'm
a gidding yourself, silly.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yes, I do a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I do about probably ten a year, which is plenty
is enough, because they really it's like you're hosting a
party for a bunch of people you've never met.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
They come up and you say, hey, Hi, how are you.
I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I'm glad to meet you, and then you have a
quick conversation, and then and there's someone else right behind them.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Hey, Hi, nice to meet you. I'm so glad you
made it, and it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Just like after a party, there's a certain it takes
a little bit to sort of sift through all of
your experiences and figure out what just happened, So.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Ten is ten's a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm thinking you've got to have like a natural disposition
in the sense that it's great to have achieved the
sort of success and fame you have, and it's nice
to be able to, you know, meet some of the
people who have helped you get there. But I also
know there's a lot of people inside a place like Hollywood.
You know, I really don't like the public or anyone
normal and they probably wouldn't be all that good at
a show like this.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, it requires a certain interest in your audience. I
guess it's the best thing. Like it's the only formalized
way to meet your meet people who've seen your work,
and it's I would encourage those if they're you know,
if any one of those people are out there and
hearing this right now, you should do it because when
(03:01):
you're on stage, which is great, you can hear the
immediate feedback and you have an opportunity to look out
and see the people and it's a shared experience. But
with movies and television, it happens in everybody's own time.
So I've met people and they've told me about profound
experiences they've had with their family connections to characters or
(03:23):
projects that I was a part of, and I would
never have known it had I not done these cons
And it really it's not an easy business, and it
makes it all worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
See.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I don't know whether this is one of these chicken
or egg things, but I see, I look at you,
and I listened to you, and you seem to me
like a guy who does voices. You know what I'm saying,
You know, like I just count work out what this is.
You got one of those expressive faces, and if I
meet you, I'd go, I reckon, you can probably do
some cool voices, and as it turns out, you can't.
How did all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I did a play in New York where I played
twenty characters in the play, and since I had so
many to play, they all a lot of a lot
of times I would affect a voice for different people.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Well with the woman who's very upset and she came
on for one scene and.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Need it out because the boyfriend just left her and
her name was big Bone Judy, and then I have
to run and quickly changed my clothes. And I was
this guy from Chicago who worked at camera and he
had no.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Thumbs because of a lath accident. And also they sigh
and he pulled out an eye and then it would.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Just there was a French white hair. So early on
that was the first play I ever did in New York.
I was being asked to do these kinds of things
and everything just sort of led from there.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Science so gift when it comes to voices, a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Of both, a little bit of both, because I went
to drama school and they taught me how to how
sounds are made, you know, just phonetics, the basic science
of phonetics, where A the sound A is a combination
of ah and e, which does not make sense, but
if you break it down, you go eh a A.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
It ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So you start to pull sounds apart like that, and
then it makes accents easier and that's where you'll get
the basic.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Accent.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But then you have to fill it with whatever character
is in there. So that becomes about some some talents.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And are thy individual skills, you know, in terms of accent.
You just did that Chicago one. So is that a
skill which is separate from the chicken, which is separate
to an impersonation of somebody?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, impersonations.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I'm not great at you know, sometimes you'll guild you
can do one.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It just sort of happened upon you. You meet somebody
and you're like, oh, I can do that voice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I did a play I did Spam a lot with
and Mike Nichols was around, and he talked like this
at that time in his life, he had this voice
and it was very it was a very distinct. Boys
and I could go on the on the what they
call the god mic that went into all of the
dressing rooms and.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Say, oh, everyone, it's Mike. I'll be here tonight and
I'm gonna be watching and.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I could, I could tell them whatever, and they bought it.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It was fun. It was great.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So sometimes you can luck into an impression. But and
a chicken, Gosh, is that an impression?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I don't know. That's just I don't know a lot
of hope.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So the boys, wait, particularly, I'm fascinated him because some
animation creativity old of the evolution of this particular industry
and how that works. I mean, it is such a
major deal these days, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh, absolutely, it used to just be Disney. I mean,
well mostly Disney. You know, they were the they were
the big the big kid on the block. You have
Disney and Pixar, which are both Disney, but they are
different people. I always do Disney movies, Disney animation.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And I lucked out for me.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
My evolution in doing voiceovers was through Disney. I did
King Candy and they said, we loved that. Can you
come do this movie we have called Frozen and it
became The Duke of Wastleton. Then after that they did
a big Hero six and there was this sort of
the he seemed like the evil guy of Alistair Cray
and he was just he was a businessman. And then
(07:24):
after that it was I think Zutopia, and I was
a little weasel.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
So I've evolved.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
They just keep asking me to do things and I
have to come up with a new voice, a new character,
new voice. But as far as how animation has progressed
over the last fifteen fifteen years, really has been more studios,
more influence coming from around the globe. I don't know
(07:53):
if you saw Blue Eyed Samurai that was on Netflix
over here. It was fantastic and just different types of animation,
and and so there's I love it.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
There's just more and more and more and more.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It's it's cheaper for people to make on certain levels.
They don't have to pay actors as much, so and
there's I think, less risk. So people production companies are
willing to do a lot of animation, and so there's
a lot out there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
You sort of answered it. But do they hire you
with a character of voice, something specific in mind, or
do they go, look, you got a track record, so
you do with it what you will.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It can be either one.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
If they trust me, if they just have an inherent
trust in me, they'll call me and say we want
to hire you to do this role. And then I
come in and we play around and find find a voice. Uh,
or I have just gone in and yeah there was one.
(08:54):
I got a I got a weird request to be
Tesla's voice to do the Tesla robot.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And I didn't sign an nda, so I don't have to.
I can still say it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
But they were like, would Alan come in and so
that would have been an audition. So that would have
been the first step of me saying yes, I would
be interested in this, and then my guess is they
would have paid me to come work with them and
try to find a voice, and then my guess the
next step would be them saying no, we don't want
you and then ripping me off.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Anyway, that was how I saw it going.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
My guess is now they're just going to skip that
middle part, just rip me off as much as they
want because they can scrape my voice from I Robot
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Well, see hold on, hold on, hold on that. I mean,
that's question you got to ask in these interviews, isn't
the II question? And whether that bold as you warries you,
you sick and guess that what do you think?
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I'm I'm an artist, and I guess I don't. I
have a lot of faith in artists and that we
can do things that AI can't. People who know AI say,
oh no, no, they'll be able to do it. So
I'll see my my voice since I do so many
different voices when people don't, people don't say we want
(10:06):
an Allen two to style voice like they would with
Morgan Freeman. You know, Morgan Freeman will have that problem
because they can just copy it and it's not I've
heard some of these AI voices and you know we've
all heard them now they're everywhere. They don't sound right yet,
but I'm sure they can get close enough for a commercial.
(10:29):
You know, something that doesn't require emotion, if it's just listen,
you should drive a Honda almost whatever. Ay, this is
Morgan Friedman, which I cannot do. I can't do it.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
This is what's it? All right?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Listen, you have a good time in Vancouver there and
we'll look forward to seeing you in the country and
maybe coming ceased.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
When you hear all right, I look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Ellen out of Vancouver this morning and here for this weekends,
arm again in morning. Mike Ellen was really funny in
a night's title, and as the private gondoge Ball usually
done a lot of good work.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
News Talk SETB from six a m.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
Well.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Alan Tudick a big body work over the last thirty years,
Twenty eight Days, A Night's Tale, Firefly, dodge Ball, Death
of the Funeral. Lately he's the star of Resident Alien,
been part of the Star Wars universe voice work. He's
done pretty much every Disney animation film going anyway. Alan
Tudick's hitting here for the Armagaedin Expo, which is this
coming weekend, this long weekend, and is with us from
(00:22):
from Canada, from Vancouver, elentudic morning. What Ellen, I got
an insight into how this works. A guy's running this
arm again, right, He says, you're the man. When people
buying tickets at the moment, they say, I got to
meet Alan, Allen's the greatest. I can't wait to meet Alen.
What's the magic here? What do you got going?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You know, I've got answers. I've got answers to whatever
their questions are.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
You know, usually it's simple stuff. How do you do
it well? If they're young, if their kids, you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Know, I've done a lot of voices for animation, and
so I can do the voices for them.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And so for kids who like King Candy.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
I can do King Candy for them, and they can
see that it's coming out of this weird person and
not the little man that they're used to in the
and in the movies, or the Duke of Washleton or
even the chicken.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey hey, I do him. And those are always the best.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
When they're the kids, you get to see it, the
light in their eyes as they recognize their friends from
the movies.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
How many of these do you do? I mean, is
this a global thing. There's a group of you guys
who sort of, you know, wonder the world. And I'm
a gidding yourself, silly.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yes, I do a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I do about probably ten a year, which is plenty
is enough, because they really it's like you're hosting a
party for a bunch of people you've never met.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
They come up and you say, hey, Hi, how are you.
I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I'm glad to meet you, and then you have a
quick conversation, and then and there's someone else right behind them.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Hey, Hi, nice to meet you. I'm so glad you
made it, and it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Just like after a party, there's a certain it takes
a little bit to sort of sift through all of
your experiences and figure out what just happened, So.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Ten is ten's a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'm thinking you've got to have like a natural disposition
in the sense that it's great to have achieved the
sort of success and fame you have, and it's nice
to be able to, you know, meet some of the
people who have helped you get there. But I also
know there's a lot of people inside a place like Hollywood.
You know, I really don't like the public or anyone
normal and they probably wouldn't be all that good at
a show like this.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, it requires a certain interest in your audience. I
guess it's the best thing. Like it's the only formalized
way to meet your meet people who've seen your work,
and it's I would encourage those if they're you know,
if any one of those people are out there and
hearing this right now, you should do it because when
(03:01):
you're on stage, which is great, you can hear the
immediate feedback and you have an opportunity to look out
and see the people and it's a shared experience. But
with movies and television, it happens in everybody's own time.
So I've met people and they've told me about profound
experiences they've had with their family connections to characters or
(03:23):
projects that I was a part of, and I would
never have known it had I not done these cons
And it really it's not an easy business, and it
makes it all worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
See.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I don't know whether this is one of these chicken
or egg things, but I see, I look at you,
and I listened to you, and you seem to me
like a guy who does voices. You know what I'm saying,
You know, like I just count work out what this is.
You got one of those expressive faces, and if I
meet you, I'd go, I reckon, you can probably do
some cool voices, and as it turns out, you can't.
How did all that stuff?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I did a play in New York where I played
twenty characters in the play, and since I had so
many to play, they all a lot of a lot
of times I would affect a voice for different people.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Well with the woman who's very upset and she came
on for one scene and.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Need it out because the boyfriend just left her and
her name was big Bone Judy, and then I have
to run and quickly changed my clothes. And I was
this guy from Chicago who worked at camera and he
had no.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Thumbs because of a lath accident. And also they sigh
and he pulled out an eye and then it would.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Just there was a French white hair. So early on
that was the first play I ever did in New York.
I was being asked to do these kinds of things
and everything just sort of led from there.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Science so gift when it comes to voices, a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Of both, a little bit of both, because I went
to drama school and they taught me how to how
sounds are made, you know, just phonetics, the basic science
of phonetics, where A the sound A is a combination
of ah and e, which does not make sense, but
if you break it down, you go eh a A.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
It ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So you start to pull sounds apart like that, and
then it makes accents easier and that's where you'll get
the basic.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Accent.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But then you have to fill it with whatever character
is in there. So that becomes about some some talents.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And are thy individual skills, you know, in terms of accent.
You just did that Chicago one. So is that a
skill which is separate from the chicken, which is separate
to an impersonation of somebody?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, impersonations.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I'm not great at you know, sometimes you'll guild you
can do one.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It just sort of happened upon you. You meet somebody
and you're like, oh, I can do that voice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I did a play I did Spam a lot with
and Mike Nichols was around, and he talked like this
at that time in his life, he had this voice
and it was very it was a very distinct. Boys
and I could go on the on the what they
call the god mic that went into all of the
dressing rooms and.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Say, oh, everyone, it's Mike. I'll be here tonight and
I'm gonna be watching and.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I could, I could tell them whatever, and they bought it.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It was fun. It was great.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So sometimes you can luck into an impression. But and
a chicken, Gosh, is that an impression?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I don't know. That's just I don't know a lot
of hope.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So the boys, wait, particularly, I'm fascinated him because some
animation creativity old of the evolution of this particular industry
and how that works. I mean, it is such a
major deal these days, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh, absolutely, it used to just be Disney. I mean,
well mostly Disney. You know, they were the they were
the big the big kid on the block. You have
Disney and Pixar, which are both Disney, but they are
different people. I always do Disney movies, Disney animation.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And I lucked out for me.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
My evolution in doing voiceovers was through Disney. I did
King Candy and they said, we loved that. Can you
come do this movie we have called Frozen and it
became The Duke of Wastleton. Then after that they did
a big Hero six and there was this sort of
the he seemed like the evil guy of Alistair Cray
and he was just he was a businessman. And then
(07:24):
after that it was I think Zutopia, and I was
a little weasel.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
So I've evolved.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
They just keep asking me to do things and I
have to come up with a new voice, a new character,
new voice. But as far as how animation has progressed
over the last fifteen fifteen years, really has been more studios,
more influence coming from around the globe. I don't know
(07:53):
if you saw Blue Eyed Samurai that was on Netflix
over here. It was fantastic and just different types of animation,
and and so there's I love it.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
There's just more and more and more and more.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It's it's cheaper for people to make on certain levels.
They don't have to pay actors as much, so and
there's I think, less risk. So people production companies are
willing to do a lot of animation, and so there's
a lot out there.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
You sort of answered it. But do they hire you
with a character of voice, something specific in mind, or
do they go, look, you got a track record, so
you do with it what you will.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It can be either one.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
If they trust me, if they just have an inherent
trust in me, they'll call me and say we want
to hire you to do this role. And then I
come in and we play around and find find a voice. Uh,
or I have just gone in and yeah there was one.
(08:54):
I got a I got a weird request to be
Tesla's voice to do the Tesla robot.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And I didn't sign an nda, so I don't have to.
I can still say it.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
But they were like, would Alan come in and so
that would have been an audition. So that would have
been the first step of me saying yes, I would
be interested in this, and then my guess is they
would have paid me to come work with them and
try to find a voice, and then my guess the
next step would be them saying no, we don't want
you and then ripping me off.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Anyway, that was how I saw it going.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
My guess is now they're just going to skip that
middle part, just rip me off as much as they
want because they can scrape my voice from I Robot
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Well, see hold on, hold on, hold on that. I mean,
that's question you got to ask in these interviews, isn't
the II question? And whether that bold as you warries you,
you sick and guess that what do you think?
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I'm I'm an artist, and I guess I don't. I
have a lot of faith in artists and that we
can do things that AI can't. People who know AI say,
oh no, no, they'll be able to do it. So
I'll see my my voice since I do so many
different voices when people don't, people don't say we want
(10:06):
an Allen two to style voice like they would with
Morgan Freeman. You know, Morgan Freeman will have that problem
because they can just copy it and it's not I've
heard some of these AI voices and you know we've
all heard them now they're everywhere. They don't sound right yet,
but I'm sure they can get close enough for a commercial.
(10:29):
You know, something that doesn't require emotion, if it's just listen,
you should drive a Honda almost whatever. Ay, this is
Morgan Friedman, which I cannot do. I can't do it.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
This is what's it? All right?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Listen, you have a good time in Vancouver there and
we'll look forward to seeing you in the country and
maybe coming ceased.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
When you hear all right, I look forward to it.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Ellen out of Vancouver this morning and here for this weekends,
arm again in morning. Mike Ellen was really funny in
a night's title, and as the private gondoge Ball usually
done a lot of good work.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
News Talk SETB from six a m.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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