Ryan Drummond (Sonic the Hedgehog, Bring It On)

This week on Toon’d In!, Jim Cummings welcomes the electric and ever-animated Ryan Drummond! Beloved by fans around the world as the original voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in the iconic Sonic Adventure series, Ryan brings a whirlwind of energy, talent, and behind-the-scenes stories from his dynamic career in voiceover, theater, and beyond.

In this lively and nostalgic episode, Ryan opens up about stepping into the role of Sega’s blue blur at a pivotal moment in gaming history, what it was like bringing attitude and heart to one of pop culture’s most recognizable characters, and how his love of performing has taken him from sound booths to Broadway stages.

Jim and Ryan geek out over the evolution of Sonic, the challenges of voicing fast-paced characters, and the unique bond that forms between a voice actor and a global fanbase. With laughter, insight, and a few unexpected impressions, Ryan reminds us why voice actors are the unsung heroes behind our favorite characters—and why Sonic will always be more than just a game.

💨 Ever wondered what it takes to give voice to a hedgehog who runs faster than sound? Grab your chili dogs and get Toon’d In!

🎟️ Meet Jim and Ryan in person!

Catch Jim Cummings at these upcoming conventions:

• Smoky Mountain Anime Fest (Gatlinburg, TN) – October 17–19
• Armageddon Expo (New Zealand) - October 24-27
• Supanova Comic Con Adelaide (Australia) - October 31 - November 2
• Supanova Comic Con Brisbane (Australia) - November 7-9
• Nostalgia Con (New Orleans, LA) – November 21–23
• Nostalgia Con (Salt Lake City, UT) – March 13–14, 2026

Meet Ryan Drummond at these upcoming events:

• Toon Fusion (Tulsa, OK) - October 4-5
• New York Comic Con (New York, NY) - October 9-12
• Anime 619 (San Diego, CA) - November 22-23

Stay Toon'd for more appearances—because these legends are just getting started!

🎧 Listen on Spotify: bit.ly/4fHWwxa
🍎 Listen on Apple: bit.ly/3AmUYZi
💖 Support on Patreon: patreon.com/jimcummingspodcast
🎉 Order a Cameo from Jim: cameo.com/toondinjimcummings


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/toon-d-in-with-jim-cummings--5863067/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're a fan of everything we do here at
tuned In with Jim Cummings, you could support the show
on Patreon for bonus exclusive podcasts, as well as early
in ad free access to the show itself, prize drawings,
and more. You'll feel the difference, so go ahead and
join the tuned In family today at patreon dot com

(00:21):
slash Jim Cummings Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Do it now? How you doing out there?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
It's me Tiggert, I am Doc Wayne Duck. It's me
Bunkers Deep Bobcat.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
All right, y'all, is.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
It rate your favorite firefly you desire? Hondo, Old knock Guy.
My name is Jim Cummings and welcome to tuned In.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Tuned In with
Jim Cummings. I'm producer Chris hey Hey, joined as always
by the legend himself, mister Jim Cummings. How are you
doing today, sir.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh man, it's another day in Paradise again.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yes it is, and today we have a very special
guest for you. Do indeed, none other than Ryan Drummond,
the original video game voice of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Get that Hedgehog, it's you it's Cummings. Oh my gosh, yeah, Ryan,
I mean fancy meeting you here.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
How have you been in the last five minutes?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh? Superb, Thank you for asking.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I'm so sorry about that, Ryan, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
No, well, we'll tell everybody wait to talk to you
guys longer.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
We had a false start, folks. This is actually the
sixth minute of the of the podcast and.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
All to an intro for you guys watching.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, yeah, here we go. Well, meanwhile, back at the ranch.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
I'm getting to you. I haven't recorded already because we
record on the cameras here. That's why. Oh I see,
yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So we're back in back in the saddle again.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Yeah, but we should probably talk about the clown and
the mime again. Fortunately if you don't.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, crime Spree part or the oh the other Okay,
that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, it give us a little mime. So so a mime.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hey hmm, that's right. Yeah it was. I got this
amazing opportunity to take some min classes from some world
class mimes. And because they all came to my town
of Anna Arbor, Michigan, where else, And so I've I've
gotten to train with the world's finest so you were paid.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
You were paid to go take this class and on
the condition that you came back and taught the miming.
So what was the what was the experience like when
you came back and did actually teach that class.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Actually I remember it being like really fun. I mean,
it was basically me and all my theater friends and
we had been doing theater together for two years at
that point. I think it was my senior year. I
went to a three year high school, so it was
just tenth, eleven, twelfth grade. Okay, actually when I was
when I was a senior, then they added the ninth
grade and became a four year high school, but up

(02:53):
until then it was just three and so it was
just me hanging out with my friends teaching him what
I learned. How to walk in the wind and yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, all the the body control and the
breath control and uh yeah, how to funnel all of
your emotions into the physicality and not rely on the
voice at all. It was really quite high.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
Yeah. Yeah. One of the most impressive things that mimes
do that I've seen is like play with like a
balloon and it's like weighted, you know, it's like weighted
and then all of a sudden it's floating and they're
making it seem like it's carrying them up to the sky.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, yes, I've seen.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
Pulling against It's just so fascinating to me, like that,
that dexterity and that muscle control and that focus to
make it appear like it really is.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, they're so good at it. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Marcel Marceau had a thing. Have you ever seen it
called David and Goliath?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Uh huh, Yes, have you seen that one? I don't
think I have, but I definitely heard of it.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, it's insane. Well, it's just him on a stage
of course, right, and there's a big I don't know,
picture of a big barrel, maybe something like a giant
mailing tube in the middle, but I mean like fifteen
feet around, so you had to walk around it. And
he would come out and there would be pipe music
playing to do, and he would come out like a

(04:17):
little piper and he'd be down here and he'd be
doing this, and then then he'd turned. Then he'd pipe
his way as David.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
He was David right.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Then he would pipe his way to the back and
then he would come out and he would do. I
don't know how the hell, but he was a foot
and half taller, right, and he frankensteined his way around
a little bit. Then he'd go back over. Then I
would come a little bit David again, and it was
it was as close to magic as you can imagine.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, yeah, there was no but he it was just him.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Coolest thing I ever saw him do was that he
started by laying on the stage and forty five minutes
later he was standing straight up and you never saw
him move.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
He had such muscle control and he was he was
an older guy at that point. This would have been
eighty nine, eighty eight somewhere around there, and boy, he
had three muscles in the human body and he had
controlled of every single one of them.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
And he and you didn't see him move, but he
was somehow or another standing.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
He never saw him move. He was just so everything
every move was a millimeter or half a millimeter and
it would take him forever, but he could just go
from prone to standing straight up and you never saw
anything happen.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
That is fascinating. I'd love to see that perform.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, wow, can you do that for us?

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Now?

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Sure? Hang on. Oh wait a minute, I would break
everything that I have.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Well, then let's pass. Maybe next time.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, on the scene, maybe next time.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Oh So after that class and you learn these skills,
you teach them to your peers. Did you ever perform? Yes?

Speaker 3 (05:55):
In fact, I ended up teaching other classes in the
school district. They kind of got wind of what I
had been doing, and I remember going to various middle
schools and elementary schools and teaching those kids how to
doing little mind classes for them as well.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Wow, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
That's pretty darn cool. Yeah, yeah, huh.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
And then you had a pretty interesting transition from your
acting career. It's a voice acting correct.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
It was actually my agent's fault, and I blame her
fully for it or credit. She was the one who
actually said to me, you know, do you ever think
about doing voiceover? And I said no, I haven't, didn't
really know anything about it, and she was like, you
should try it, and I was like, okay, whatever you say, boss,
So she sent me out on the way. I remember

(06:47):
it is that you know, you know how many auditions
it takes your regular rank and file actor to audition
for everything until you actually book a job. I think
the ratio is still like fifty to one or something
like that, right, And she sent me out from my
first five auditions and I booked all five. Wow, that's
not like I mean, it was just a lucky stake really,
but it just kind of pointed out to her and

(07:08):
to me that hey, this is something you should do.
This is your time to kind of jump in and
be a part of this world. And I was just like,
I like this, this is fun, you.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Know, yeah, no kidding, that's amazing. Can you remember them?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Are the characters or the projects?

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think they were not. They were not like characters.
They were like I think there was a radio commercial
or two, and there was like an audiobook. Maybe they
were kind of more more kind of pedestrian things. And
it wasn't until I was three years in. Should I

(07:45):
tell this story again? We might have mentioned it earlier,
but I'm not sure if we got it. Please please Okay.
So I happen to be working at this company called
light Span Partnership. It's in San Diego. In fact, I
have to look it up and see if it's still there.
But and this is how it goes sometimes for those
who are not in the biz. It's it's not who
you know, but who knows you. And I was working
for this company, light Span Partnership, and they did educational

(08:06):
software for kids, and my job was to be sheld
in the turtle and I was there to teach kids
how to multiply. And so I was being a turtle.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Oh math, sorry, go ahead, yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Math, yeah, exactly. The skill of math. Mystery stuff came later, right, okay.
And so the guy who ran that studio knew a
casting director who knew someone at Sega, and the stars
aligned the great conjunction. I'll of the Dark Crystal and uh,
And I got invited to come to the audition, the

(08:38):
invite only audition for for Sonic the Hedgehog, because this
is when Sega was going to bring out their own platform,
the Dreamcast system back in ninety eight came out nine nine,
Easy to Remember, and and so they they were they
were excited to kind of bring all these Sonic characters
back to life and and kind of put jumper cables

(09:00):
on the whole thing and start their own platform. So
it was kind of an exciting time. But honestly, when
they called and they said, do you want to be
signed the Hedgehog. I was just like, sure, and I
thought to myself, Okay, one game. At the time, it
took about a week to do a game, so I
was just like, okay, I got a week of work. Yay, Yeah,
there you go. I had absolutely no idea it was

(09:21):
going to be a life changing thing. Yeah, and that
we'd be sitting here literally twenty seven years later, talking
to YouTube about it.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, no kidding, Yeah that you Yeah, nobody's got the
right to imagine that or hope it or even think
right for a second. You're just you know, you just
put one foot in front of the other and keep going.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
And exactly right, right, Yeah, to be a realist and
just go, Okay, I know I can count on a week.
That's what I can count.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
On, right right.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, Well that's like you said before. I think, what
was it?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
You get job security until this one runs out year,
then you're homeless again.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Back to square one.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's right, square Yeah, it's the only it's the only
profession that you have to prove yourself.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
All the time, all the time, all time and time again.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, until you retire, and then you have to prove
yourself all the time all over again, because you have
to Yeah, and even news damn.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
It, even those legends. I was just I was listening
to the podcast you did with eg Daily. Oh yeah,
and I was. I was semi surprised. I guess, not
really surprised, but I was surprised nonetheless when she was
saying when they when they rebooted, was it Rugrats or
powerpuff Girls?

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Probably powerpuff Girls?

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Powerpuff Girls? Yeah, and that they made her audition again
mm hmmm. And I mean it made sense because it
had been many years and they wanted to make sure
she could still do the voice and and so forth.
But so practically it made sense. But I was just like,
you're gonna make Egy Daily real audition for the role
that she created?

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah? Yeah, that was yeah. Well what are you goin
to do?

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I mean, you can't fight City Hall on that.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
One exactly, you know, Yeah, you got to play by
their rules because they own the game.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
Why does why does Sega switch the voice of Sonic
so much? It seems like they.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
That's a good question. Let's uh, let's get into that
a little bit. Well, I mean, you're not advised. I
don't know, So yeah, I don't know, is the short answer.
I do know what happened with us with the cast
that I was working with. We had been working for

(11:38):
Sega for six years, and about in year four and
a half to five, a company in New York called
four Kids Entertainment bought a sonic cartoon from Japan, brought
it to America called it Sonic X. And the way
I was told was that they contacted Sega and said, hey,

(11:59):
we brought we bought the cartoon. We're going to put
it on TV. Are you interested in having your official
voices be on it? And Sega declined and said, no,
that you do your little cartoon, that's fine, And so
they hired New York actors which included Jason Griffith, Lisa Ortiz,
all those greats. And then it became so popular that

(12:19):
after about a year of Sonic X tearing up the
airwaves and being very popular with the kids, that's when
Sega started to take notice and they were just like, well,
look at them, go over there. Wow, we can help popular.
Look how great they're doing. And wouldn't that be We
should probably have those people voice the video games for

(12:40):
consistency's sake, so that anybody who's turned onto the video games,
you know, the cartoon is a product to sell the
video game, and we get that, and so they thought
we should have those be the same. And so one
day they just let us all go and hired the
Sonic X cast to do the games from then from
then on they decided to change again.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yesh. Yeah, well that's not confusing at all.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
No, not at all, not at all.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Dang was that tough? What was that like coming to
that realization?

Speaker 3 (13:12):
It was tough because, you know, six years in you
get very attached to the characters, and you also get
attached to the people that you work with, and you
see the fruits of your labors, you know, sometimes you do.
In fact, Jim, you were mentioning on one of the
other podcasts that somebody had asked like, do you ever
not remember you've recorded something because it had been so

(13:33):
long ago before the product or the movie or the
thing comes out. And you've said, all the time, it happens,
because you record a thing and then it could be
a year, it could be more. Sometimes it can sit
on the shelf for a few years and then come
out and then somebody goes, is this you and you go,
I kind of remember recording that. Yeah, I guess that
is me. Yeah, but we were pretty much in real

(13:54):
time with the with the games, and so it was
kind of difficult at first because it was I suppose
it was the unceremonious nature of it that made it difficult.
I think if if there would have been a little
more of a of a happy send off rather than
a you can go now kind of feel, that made

(14:15):
it a little more difficult. But as it turns out,
the the cast of Sonic acts, all the people that
I mentioned, they've all become really good friends throughout the years.
And Jason Griffith, the guy who took over as the
voice of Sonic, he's, you know, one of the world's
finest human beings and and it's it's cool that that

(14:39):
that basically everybody in the little Sonic group, there's six
or seven of us now that officially have Voice Sonic,
and everybody gets along really nicely so that there's no
rivalry or bitter feelings or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
It's like when the three Spider Man got together, and
it's the same thing. Yeah, it is actually so yeah,
pretty well, that's not a bad gig, not a bad
club to be a member of.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Not a bad club at all. And I was honored
to be the first video game voice. So and honestly,
this is this is true too, basically before me because
they had they had Sega Sonic games before me, but
he didn't talk because that was the Genesis system. But
they did have a cartoon that Julil White was the
voice of Sonic for that other one. I was everybody

(15:33):
else a circle. Yeah, and but I did not know
that that cartoon existed until well after I had been hired.
Oh really, this is you know, this is kind of
pre internet, pre smartphone pre oh yeah, yeah, yeah, So
I was in the show that there was a cartoon
out there until I was already two three years into

(15:54):
the game. And so I get asked a lot, you know,
did you take any inspiration from the Japanese voice actors
who had done things in Japan or from Jaliel White
who had done the cartoon, And I said I didn't.
I hadn't heard any of them. I didn't know. I
didn't have that those resources.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well that's pretty good then.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, so I guess it kind of helped not having
any preconceived idea of what Sonic should sound like. Yeah,
it was kind of a and I'm sure, you've been
on auditions like this where I kind of assumed that
they would give me direction about what they were looking for,
and I didn't get anything at all. There was a

(16:31):
there was a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog on the
wall inside the booth. I came in. There was a
list of lines. I remember clear as day. The first
line said pick up all the gold rings and get
a free life. Weird line, okay, vaguely sonic like. And
I put the cans on and I was sitting there
in the booth and the engineer came on and he said, okay,
you see that picture of Sonic on the wall. And

(16:53):
I said, yep, looking at it right now. He says, great,
if you could imagine a voice coming out of that hedgehog,
what would it sound like? Line one?

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Ready, go okay? And I did it good.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
I hadn't prepared. I kind of thought I would be
coached on what they wanted, right, And I didn't have
any voices in my head. I eat the Japanese artists
or the cartoon have anything to draw from. So I
looked at the picture and that's the voice that came out.
That's the same voice I've been doing since day one.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Luckily they picked that one and they said, yeah, we
like that good.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh wow, okay, we got to give us some What
was that first line?

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Should I have a sip? I should have some?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
So that way you got to make as big a
deal out of it as you can.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
All right, here we go take up the gold rings
and get a free light.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
And that's what the engineer came over and he was like, yeah, yeah,
I like that. Do the rest of the page just
like that, And so I just read the rest of
the twenty lines or whatever it was. He was like, great,
I liked it. Thanks for coming in. I said thanks.
I left. Two weeks later I get the call.

Speaker 4 (17:57):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, it was just that weird.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
It was just it was just that easy.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, you know, that's amazing. Good for you.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
Man. That's crazy how fast things can change high, especially
in the film industry.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
It really is.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
It's wild for positive and negative. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, and
it can be very stressful. I was working as a
PA for a few years on a couple film TV sets,
and I was working on this show The Green Arrow
on the CW, and I remember I was, you know,
I would go up to Vancouver to work for like

(18:36):
the season that it filmed, and then I would come
back down to La when it was you know, Hiatus
and I had been working on that show for two years.
And then it was like I'm talking to all my friends,
you know, other people that work on the show and everything.
There were like, hey, are we getting like hired again
for this next season? Like we haven't. None of us

(18:57):
have heard anything, and like they start shooting next and
then so I was like, oh, no, okay, I guess
we're not coming back. We haven't heard anything, so we're
looking for other work. You know, the day before, the
day before they started filming, I get the location manager
give me a call, and I remember it too. I
remember the exact day because it was July third. It

(19:19):
was the next day was the fourth of July.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
And he was like, hey, do you want to come
back and work on Arrow again this year? And I
was like yeah, for sure, like absolutely, and he was
like okay, yeah, I started shooting tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Like thanks for the warning.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
I'm literally in La right now. I'm like okay. And
then he was like, yeah, do you think you could
make it in like a couple of days. I was
like no, I'm going to make it tomorrow. I got
in my car. I drove seventeen hours seven. I made
it from LA to Vancouver in seventeen hours, which is
usually a twenty one to twenty two hour drive. That's
a I went straight to set, straight to set. I

(19:56):
didn't even sleep. I went straight to set and worked
like a twelve hour day. That yeah, yeah, so it's
just weird.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
How like I'm tired just to you have to.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
I know all these stories of like, you know, they're
not calling the original voice actors and they switch things
up on a whim, and oh we decided to go
with this a list celebrity and like it trickles through.
It's not just you know, the talent that get put
through it, it's the cruise as well. And yeah, it's
a wild, wild industry to be in. If you're a.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Fan of everything we do here at tuned In with
Jim Cummings, you could support the show on Patreon for
bonus exclusive podcasts as well as early in ad free
access to the show itself, prize drawings, and more. You'll
feel the difference, so go ahead and join the tuned
In family today at Patreon dot com. Slash Jim Cummings podcast.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Do it now whenever I get to talk to occasionally
get to talk to like groups of college students or
high school students and just talk about the biz and
answer questions and so forth. And the story that I
always tell that's kind of the converse of what you
were just saying how quickly it can turn was there's
an actor by the name of Maurice go Dain and

(21:09):
I worked with them in two thousand and seven. We
did the world premiere of the Aaron Sorkin play the
Farnsworth Convention at the La Jolla Playhouse. And fantastic actor.
Great guy. Nothing he can't do. One of those annoying actors,
I say lovingly and had. He had a great story
where he was working on the sitcom and I'm blanking

(21:30):
on the name, but it was the Fred Savage. After
he did The Wonder Years, he grew up, he did
another sitcom, Oh that one whatever? That one is ye
one And he was one of the leads on that show.
And he had been doing that show for two three years,
and he was a writer, so he had really moved

(21:52):
into his trailer on the set and he had all
these scripts that he'd been working on and of course
personal pictures and all the things that you bring in
to your your on set at home. And one night
he came in to shoot on a Friday night and
the second ad brought everyone together and said, okay, everybody,
guess what we're canceled. The studio audience is already here,

(22:13):
So we're going to shoot this one tonight for the
studio audience that has already arrived. But we're never gonna
air this one. It's been a great two years. Make
sure you clean out your your trailer by I think
ten am tomorrow or something like that, because they need
them for other things and thanks and so they're just like, okay, right,

(22:34):
hit with a sledgehammer. But they filmed the episode that night.
The next morning, Maurice goes very early eight am because
he's got so much stuff in his trailer. He's got
to know, really work. He needs some time to get
everything out. He walks on a set at eight am,
goes to where his trailer is and it's like an
empty lot and he finds a security guard and says,
all these trailers that were here, where did they go?

(22:56):
And he said, oh, they came and took those way
early and he was like, well, I had all my
stuff in it. Where's all my stuff? And he was like, well,
you can check that dumpster over there.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
So he walks over to the dumpster, he looks in,
he sees one of his shoes. So he gets in
the dumpster and he starts finding scripts, pictures of his wife, clothes,
all of his stuff.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
And he said to himself, which he repeated in the
story when he told it to us, he was like,
twenty four hours ago, I was a TV star and
now I'm trying to find my shoes in a dumpster.
And that's kind that's kind of the reality of it.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Sometimes things happen really good, really fast, and sometimes they're
not good at all really fast.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Wow, boy, howdie what and give up show business?

Speaker 4 (23:45):
Boy?

Speaker 2 (23:46):
That's a sobering little little story there.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Ut it right down to earth really quickly, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, I'm here to crush everyone's dreams.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
Yeah, right, Well, was I was working on a movie.
They had a stunt woman die and we didn't even
wrap for the day. Deadpool too, Deadpool two?

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Whoa Deadpool two?

Speaker 4 (24:08):
Deadpool two? I think I heard. I don't know her name,
but she was a stunt woman for Zazzy Beats. Yeah,
rode a motorcycle, lost control because the camera equipment. She
had never rode in a motorcycle with camera equipment on
it before, right, So she lost control of the bike,
hit a curb, and smashed her neck into a into
a window. They literally didn't even tell anybody on set

(24:31):
what was happening. The ambulance came, and then the ambulance
pulled off and we kept shooting crazy, and then you know,
when it was in the news the next day and
everything like that, then they shut down. You know, oh, okay,
we're gonna not film for day now. Yeah, And they
didn't shoot for one day and then business as usual.
But it was wild to me that they didn't even
stop that day, just like, all right, oh god, bless boy,

(24:54):
we're on a schedule, folks.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, time is money.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Show business, huh, show business?

Speaker 4 (25:02):
Yeah, speaking of show business, your first kind of introduction
to fame. I heard you telling a story about you
did a Padres commercial and we're kind of getting noticed
locally in San Diego and you did not like it,
did you No?

Speaker 3 (25:13):
And that's kind of like, that's kind of why I
enjoy voiceover because even even doing, you know, an iconic
character like Sonic for twenty seven years, I can go
anywhere and not be recognized. But I did one little
Padres commercial while I was living in southern California. It
was one of those commercials that they play, you know,
it's a local thing, so they play it every hour
on every channel because it costs five cents every time,

(25:35):
you know. And and boy, that whole summer was very uncomfortable.
Everywhere I went, people were pointing and they were saying things.
And the whole thing was that the Padres were on
Channel four, and so the whole commercial was about the
number four and out there's four bases, four infielders, even
the word itself baseball two four litter words and it's

(25:55):
four four four.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Oh and so I had people, oh yeah, from up
putting me on the street point.

Speaker 4 (26:04):
Yeah oh man.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
So yeah, it was really uncomfortable, and I kind of
my friends thought it was cool, and I was like,
it made have been cool for like a week, and
then it's not cool after that, and then it just
gets you know. So I've never never yearned for that
kind of fame. I can't even imagine how you know,

(26:27):
like go to the grocery. You can't.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, but you wouldn't turn down a progressive commercial with flow, No.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Certainly, not especially especially something with flow.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, yeah, no kidding or.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Kevin Kevin what's his name, Kevin Miles? Now Jake from
State Farm? Who would want to be in one of those?

Speaker 4 (26:51):
But I always feel bad for the original Jake from
State Farm. You know, he's got to be out there
like this motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
He was so great too. He was so dead pan.
He's like Khakis, you know, and that first spot yeah,
and uh yeah, And now all the kids are like,
you're not Jake from State Farm. That's him, and he's like,
I swear I was. Go check your YouTube's I was.
I was Jake.

Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well, you've done a few notable things here.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
I mean, you did a Baywatch, right, I did do
an episode of Baywatch. That's I mean, come on, yeah,
that was and that was really big at the time.
They were one of the biggest shows in the world
at the time. That was pretty I think they Yeah,
that was really fun.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
That was.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
That was the cast that included Pamela Anderson, another angel
on this Earth, you know, of course, David Hasselhoff and
everything that was the David Chokachi era, so I got
to meet all of them, super super nice people. It
was it was Baywatch at SeaWorld, and so it was
like I was supposed to be the show performer in

(27:58):
the ski show, and then the Baywatch lifeguards came to
watch a show and something goes terribly wrong during the
performance and they have to jump in from the stands
and save the the skiers and was all very traumatic
and fun. That was my auspicious turn as DJ Johnny

(28:19):
Jam coming at You Live from SeaWorld. And the fun
part was is that I had this bright green suit,
like a leprechaun suit that they had put me in,
and and I remember very specifically that the first time
I ran into Hasselhoff, he looked at me up and
down and he was like, I like that suit. I
was like, yep, I bet you do. That's great because

(28:42):
you don't as back up though. I remember when we
would he would have like he'd be doing some CPR
scene where it was all very very serious and he
would be cracking people up right up to action. He'd
be like telling some joke and they would be ready
rolling speed action and he would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
he would just snap right into his serious lifeguard action.

(29:06):
That's right, that's right, cool, cool guy. I had grown
up a Motley Crue fan, and Pamela Anderson was dating
Tommy Lee at the time, and he came to the set,
so I didn't get to meet him, but I got
to see Tommy Lee. So that was very exciting too.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Yeah, that was And that was your first television acting role.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Correct, That was my first television that got me my
sag card.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Do you think that's why they shut you in a
green suit?

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Probably?

Speaker 4 (29:31):
Probably look at this green kid, mister Greene, mister green
coming coming on. I don't know, I'm giving you a
hard time. I love it. Bring it on, Bring it on?

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Wait a minute, that rings a bell?

Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yeah, bring it on? Bring it on?

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Hey?

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Hey, is.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
This a Is this a big time showbiz trick?

Speaker 3 (29:56):
That's what it is to just quote the next thing
that I want to talk about.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, well okay, well good, it's not gone with the
wind yet. So what about bringing on? What have you
got to tell us about that? As and you were
a theater boy.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yes, for those who enjoyed the very first Bring It
On movie, I think there's seventeen of them now, but
the very first one girl breaks her leg and they
have to have auditions to replace her on the cheer squad.
And I was the theater kid who wandered into the
wrong audition, thought he was auditioning for Pippen, but he
was really auditioning for the cheerleading squad.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Did you get the job?

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Did you get either one of the jobs? No?

Speaker 4 (30:39):
Okay, good?

Speaker 3 (30:40):
No, just terrible.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's good.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
And it was funny because originally that movie was called
cheer Fever, and that was the I don't even think
it was the working title. I think it was the
real title, but I think they changed it. And then
the song that I was supposed to sing in the
script was actually Corner of the Sky from Pippin, But
then they could not get the rights to sing Corner
of the Sky in the movie, so they had to

(31:04):
change it to a public domain song and ended up
singing give my regards to Broadway. And but they kept
the line, isn't this the audition for Pippin? That was
That was the original line in the Fever script.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
Fever. That was a good That was a good title change.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah, yeah, it was wasn't it. And funny I just
got a message from one of the other auditionees, one
of the other actresses, my friend Natasha, who is also
in that same scene, and she's like, Hey, I'm doing
this like twenty five year anniversary of Bring It On event,
and do you want to come up to Boise and
and be a part of this event. You know, we're

(31:39):
going to have a twenty fifth year screening of the
original Bring It On.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
They had you at Boise.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
Yeah, that's Boise is going to be hopping.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Boy, how does.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Boise keep coming up?

Speaker 4 (31:53):
Is this? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (31:57):
This is quick?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
We have to quick bois subjectsage change.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
That sune was great. That was scene was great because
it gave it gave them material for the scary movie parody.
You remember that exactly when they did that. I mean,
how memorable is that scene with the with the girl
with tourette's. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Quite a crossover.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah. So during this time, you know, you're you're getting
TV roles, you're starting out your career. Are you doing
stage work still? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (32:33):
In fact, I did stage work right up to the pandemic.
Oh wow, that's basically all I did. I had been
doing a couple of the Sonic the Hedgehog conventions, and
but I never had time to do any of the
other ones because I was always in, always in a show,
and that's nice. And so then when the pandemic happened,
as we know, all the theaters closed, and when they

(32:56):
came back, I had signed with a new appearance its manager,
and and tried to do some more things like the
nostalgicns and like you know, the Galaxy cons and so forth,
and and I and I really enjoyed it. I really
enjoyed the conventions are kind of a I've been doing

(33:16):
them now for like two and a half years, I guess, yeah,
full time, I guess. And uh, I never really thought
there was a market for people wanting to meet Sonic
the Hedgehog outside of a Sonic the Hedgehog convention.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
I was really surprised going to like my first Nostalgicon
was in San Antonio and just all day people coming
up and really identifying with the character and how telling
me how important the games are to them and how
they got them through a tough time where they Sonic
taught them to be brave. Sonic taught them to face
their problems. Sonic taught them to come at their problems

(33:53):
with with humor. The the uh stories that I hear
and to go to are just they they make this
whole convention thing. It's it's it's so satisfying to meet
to meet all these people. It's kind of like the
fruit of the seed you plant it all those years ago.

(34:15):
It's like, video games are such a solitary kind of situation.
You don't often get to see the fruits of what
you did. And so now all these years later, getting
out there meeting the people that played the games, grew
up playing the games, they get to uh to get
tell you face to face how much it really meant
to them. It's just so so satisfying and so so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, oh I agree. Well, you know, video games are
for me, they're the hardest thing to do because you're
flying solo. And I mean, I remember the first couple
that I did, you know, the impact sounds, you know,
and it was so ridiculous, you know, And and that's

(34:58):
why I at some point years ago, I said, Okay,
I'm not going to play anybody who's going to be
falling off the third moon of Jupiter on fire after
being bathed in acid, right, and I scream for like
half a light year. Yeah, and you know, and because no,

(35:19):
you can't do that because you kill yourself. You know,
you feel like you actually really did do it. So
you know they can be they could be tough, very taxing.
I did this one my interactive pooh. Yeah, it was
called that and uh and I had to say every
name in the world. Yeah, every name, I mean every

(35:43):
I don't know if I'm put this the right way,
but every king name in the world. And it took months,
and I would I would just sit there and so
I know, I know the boredom and the the agony
of which we allude to.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Yeah, and boy many hours a day did you have
to just list names as pool?

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Well, I couldn't do it for more than like two
and a half. Yeah, because you can't because you're fudge.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
And there's some woman there that, bless her heart, she said, okay,
so I need for you to do three in a
row and I went, uh huh no and she and
she said huh And I said no, but I'll do
one and if you want another one you can ask
because I'm not I mean, it would have been. I

(36:34):
actually don't know how many it would have been, but
it would have been triple.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
You know, we've been three million instead of one million.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, I mean so yeah, anyway, I don't know they
got off on that tag. But purgatory video games. Yeah,
video games. It's tough. It's tough, and you're flying solo too.
There's nobody to interact with or do you do you
ever have an opportunity to when you're doing a video
game to interact with others?

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Rarely?

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Rarely?

Speaker 3 (37:04):
In fact, the example that I often bring up is
that Jennifer Juilliard who played Amy Rose, which is Sonics
for lack of a better term, romantic interest in the games.
We did a couple of games together. I've never met
her in real life. I've never met her. Wow, And
they're like, but you're Sonic and Amy, that's you're a couple.
But yeah, I've never met her.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
But you're in love.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
But she's pregnant, ye, out of.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
That when happened, don't Yeah? Yeah, so yeah, it's uh,
it's a solitary kind of kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, Yeah, that's true. Yeah, which is a bit of
a shame.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
You're never You're never gonna do any You're never gonna
do it live.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
On stage, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
And you never thought you'd end up of course, you
know when you when you first started off, this probably
wasn't even there, was it?

Speaker 2 (37:57):
This whole medium?

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Oh no, because I mean same here. It's like, wait,
what you know a game? Huh?

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah? Yeah, you can put a voice in a game. Yeah, okay,
when did that happen?

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Like chess? No?

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Not like chess? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yes, and now your chess piece has to fall off
of the third moon of Jupiter. Yes, the stream for
twelve seconds.

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Oh my god, I'm just just looking at your kind
of amazing. It's in musical theater productions and stage productions.
I mean gods Spell, the producer's hair, Spiray, the wedding
singer singing in the rain, Mary Poppins, Groundhog Day, I
mean just goes on and on.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Do you have do you have a favorite life shine passion?

Speaker 4 (38:44):
Do you have a favorite one? Do you have a
favorite character that you've played? I know that's a cheesy
cliche question.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
No, I mean I think that's legit. I I actually
if I had to pick one, I mean it's kind
of like Sophie's choice, But if I had to pick one,
I'd say it's probably Smudge from the show Forever Plaid.
I think Forever Plaid is as close to a perfect
theater production as you can get, hour and a half,
no intermission, beautiful music, great characters, you care about the guys,

(39:14):
and it's just a it's just a really really sweet show.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
And uh, I think I saw that.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
To this date, I played Smudge nine hundred and sixty
nine times, nine and sixty nine times, yeah, And I
kind of think my boat is kind of passed. But
I'm kind of hoping somehow, somewhere I'll have one more
production Forever Plaid that can have at least thirty one
productions or thirty one performances, so I can get up
to that magic thousand.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Part of the reason why I call it my favorite
role is because even at performance nine hundred and sixty nine,
I was still not sick of it really, like, yeah,
I enjoyed doing it every single show. And you know,
sometimes you do a show for three or four weeks
on a really small run and you're sick of it
by two Yeah, But twelve years I'm off and on

(40:05):
of doing forever Platt, I never got sick of it.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Wow, Wow, I'm just who wouldn't want to sing beautiful
four part harmony for an hour and a half every
day and all the songs that you love from the
fifties and sixties, I mean, three Coins in the Fountain
and Rags to Riches and all these great, great tunes
and in this beautiful, lush, four part harmony. It was
just such a treat to go into work every single day.

Speaker 4 (40:28):
Wow. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
If you're a fan of everything we do here at
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(40:51):
slash Jim Cummings Podcast.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Do it now. That must be a pretty small circle
of people who have played a character for a thousand performances.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah, that's I wonder how many people are in that club.
It's probably not that.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
Big, Probably not many, Probably not many at all.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, they may you're a national tour folk.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, oh man, what and give up show base.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
No, no kidding, where do you predominantly? So you're traveling
when you perform, you're traveling.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Or you're at a theater, mostly regional theaters.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
Yeah yeah, But I'm saying, like, are you like when
you do perform, do you go on a traveling or
you just perform at one theater?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Mostly one theater?

Speaker 4 (41:35):
Yeah, okay, yeah, ok.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
I never did like a full equity national tour. That
was never on my radar, but uh, I'm I'm doing.
I did, like kind of up to the pandemic. I
did a one man show. You guys probably remember the
book from I guess it was the early nineties called
Men Or from Mars, Women Are from Venus by doctor
John Gray. Yes, he along with some other creative type folks,

(42:01):
wrote that into a one man comedy show.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
And I was hired by a company in Saint Louis
to kind of be the West coast. They had like
me on the West coast, and they had a guy
in New York named Amadeo who did it on the
East coast. And then they they they booked us all
over the nation. It seemed like most of my shows
it was. It was basically like anything west of Kansas
City is Ryan's territory and anything east of Kansas City

(42:26):
as Amadeo's territory. But it never happened that way. I
was always going to the East coast. In fact, the
first three weeks that I got to perform the show
was in Detroit, Michigan, which is where I spent most
of my adolescent years. So that was kind of fun
to go back to Michigan for my first few weeks
of that. But I toured that for four years something

(42:47):
like that.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
So that was a lot of travel, and it kind
of prepared me for the for the convention life, as
you both well know. There's lots of that too. Yeah,
every four.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
No kidding, wow, pretty much. Yeah, that's that's amazing. Never
saw that one coming.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yeah, it can be a lot.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, the gypsy life.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Right, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
But that that God, that that has to be.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
I mean, I envy you, and then I think, now
that's getting too close to work.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Yeah, you know, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, but that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
And if you could here's one of those things where
you kind of had to drag yourself to the start line.
But as soon as they fired off, the pistol and
you're running then like it's all great, yeah, and at
the end of it you feel especially I had never
done a one man show before, and I kind of
I questioned whether you could have a real, meaningful, good

(43:50):
theatrical experience without more than one actor to kind of
to listen to and to bounce ideas off of and
have your waiting for Godot kind of moments. But the
cool thing about the Men Or from Mars Women Are
from Venas show is that it broke the fourth wall
all over the place. So you had very limited on

(44:10):
audience participation per se, but you got to talk to
the audience the whole show, and so it really became
I mean, it was a one person up on stage,
but it really became we're all in this together kind
of show. And it was really it was really satisfying.
I remember like those special shows, like we did a

(44:31):
Valentine's Day show in Los Angeles that was like fifteen
hundred people showed up because it was Valentine's Day. What's
a better date night than Men Or from Mars And
it was one of those shows that you just could
not do anything wrong, Like no matter what I said,
they were rolling in the aisles. It was just really

(44:51):
really great. Well, I think about thirty new bits were
born that night because I just started trying different things
and improving new things and everything worked.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
I was like, wow, that was great. Boy.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
You could freeze that moment in time, right, Yes, boy.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
If I could bottle that, I'd drink it every morning.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah. Oh man.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
One thing that stood out to me in your in
your uh in your credits was that you voiced Shamou
for SeaWorld. Hmm, I'm so curious what Shamou sounded like.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Oh, he was just cognob like this, and oh come on,
opi oder, we're gonna go swimming now, We're we're basic
kind of Santa clausa kind of voice.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Good old shame.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, that was really fun. That was really fun.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Good old Shamoo.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
The most famous while on the plane, good old Shamou.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Sea World, right, the Sea World, San Diego. Yeah, Sea
World in emotion down by the ocean or something whatever
that was.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
He's still down there a world, right Shamoo. Or did
they shut him off?

Speaker 3 (45:56):
No, he's still there.

Speaker 4 (45:58):
Yeah, because they said they're just not going to introduce
any more whales, right, They're just going to have the ones.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
I think that's the compromise that was made.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
In fact, what's kind of funny just with the longevity
of it. I did a voiceover for a monitor for
a video that's playing currently in the Wild Arctic area
of SeaWorld, San Diego, and I recorded that in nineteen

(46:27):
ninety seven, and it's been playing twenty four hours a day.
I'm told they don't turn off the videos at night,
and so it's been it's playing right now as we're talking,
and it's been playing since night. How many years is
that twenty eight years, something like that, twenty nine years.
And I was there in San Diego a year ago,
went to SeaWorld, went through the Wild Arctic and found

(46:49):
myself and I'm like, yeah, there, I am still talking
about the polar bears or whatever I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
Is there residuals for a thing like that or is
a bid?

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Wouldn't that be great, like just a nickel every time
you play would be a really fine education for my kids,
But unfortunately no. But it's still fun to have like
a constant voiceover that just plays and plays and plays
twenty four hours a day. Three hundred and sixty five
days a year for twenty eight years.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
Yeah, that's like a really fun unique thing where it's
like my voice is playing right here, like in the
world now going off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah, it's like somebody right now as we're sitting here,
there are people listening to me.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Sometimes the sea world's still open. Yep, yep, should be good.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Yep. It's weird to think about there's so many people
on the planet. I just had this not revelation the
other day, but I was just thinking about the other day.
You know, I play video games online, and it's weird
that like any video game that you play, like there's
people playing it NonStop, like there's never you never log
in and there's nobody to play with, you know. It's

(47:56):
like any video game that has an online mode, like
there's people playing right now, Like there's people playing right now.
Oh yeah, And it's just weird to think about, like
this game is constantly being played whatever game like insert
whatever game you know.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah, exactly, And it's I'm a total Fortnite addict. I
have been for years. Oh he got me into Fortnite.
I played Fortnite every day, and sure enough, there's you know,
hundreds and hundreds of servers just filled with one hundred
people each right playing these games at any moments of
any day.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
You were a Fortnite or weren't you?

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Oh yeah, big Fortnite. Yeah I was on Fortnite. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, I was on. I got I got
switched over to Marvel Rivals. Now though, since that came out,
I kind of fair play dumped. I kind of dumped Fortnite.
But I was, I mean since its release. I mean
I was. Yeah, I was on that game.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Isn't that weird that Chris, you and I could have
we probably played together, yeah each other? Now did I
kill you or did you kill me? It happened, It
must have happened at least once.

Speaker 4 (48:51):
I don't know. Did you get killed by John Wick
with a gold pickaxe.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
All the time?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Is that you?

Speaker 4 (48:57):
Oh nice?

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Doesn't everyone.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
I talk to you after this? What skin do you use?
Clown your clown? Yeah, that's funny, clown.

Speaker 4 (49:11):
Yeah. It's crazy that the number of skins and collaborations
that game has. It's like a it's like a melting
pot of culture. Like it's crazy. I mean, you can
Goku John Wick, Darth Vader and Deadpool.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Standing next to Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Oh, so
many collaborations.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
I don't know, apparently, I'm I have no idea what
you guys talking about, but I kind of do. So
you can take up a persona.

Speaker 4 (49:43):
It's like they have skins in the game, so like
you buy, like you pay for like a character that
comes out, and then you play as that character in
the game. Okay, yeah, it doesn't change like any of
the moves or anything. It's just purely cosmetic. But people
people love all the characters.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Oh god, I.

Speaker 4 (49:58):
Mean they have done thousands, you know what.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
That's funny.

Speaker 4 (50:01):
I'm bummed that they kind of got away from their
live concerts. I really thought that was like some of
the most revolutionary stuff ever. I thought that was like revolutionary.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
It's like, yeah, they would have these lies that you
could attend this concert virtually.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yeah, it was like a virtual concert in the game.
And they would have like you know, Travis Scott performing
Aeronic Grande or you know, and they would have like
these massive, massive models in game. So it seemed like
these people were like, you know, titans, and like I thought,
just the implications even when I first saw that first concert,
the Travis Scott one I think was the first one. Man.

(50:38):
I was like, if you can do this with virtual reality,
that would be way cooler than any concert arena I
could go to. I would way rather see my favorite
artists like towering twenty feet up in the sky, like
performing on buildings and stuff. Yeah. I just thought that
was so cool.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
The closest we have to and now is the Sphere
in Vegas. I mean that's pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
I haven't have you been there? Have you been there?

Speaker 2 (51:03):
I have?

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Yeah, I've been there to not see an act, but
I went to go see the movie that they play there.
It's called Postcards from the Earth or something like that.
Oh yeah, it's a bunch of nature shots. Yeah, like
a elephant like runs towards you and tramples over your
head and stuff. It's yeah, pretty amazing.

Speaker 4 (51:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah I've been there.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
Yeah I want to see a show there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Yeah, it's neat, it's worth going.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, good stuff, good stuff, fun, but technology. Pretty soon
they won't need us at all.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yeah, pretty soon, pretty soon.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
Well Yeah, that's the what's the that's the age of
ultron right, It's just going to be a bunch of
AI bots that are superior.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Although I'm wondering, I don't know if if if this
is your experience or not, but I feel like there's
there's enough of maybe backlashes too of a dramatic of
a word, but it seems like there's enough people that
are kind of anti the AI voices. Yeah, people are more.
People are demanding if you use AI, I'm not I'm

(52:02):
not going to deal with you. I'm not going to
watch your product. I'm not going to watch your content.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
I feel like that's happening more and more, and and
it happened pretty quick. Like at first I was kind
of like, oh, here it goes, here it goes. They
won't need us at all anymore. That's right, they can
do everything for free.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
The original reaction, yeah, yeah, but understandable.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
More than a little content of people saying not gonna
not gonna consume any sort of content that uses AI
unless it's publicly declared, like say this is an AI
thing and then you can watch it.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
There's even like an option on social media now to
like you click a little button and it's like this
is AI content, like puts like a little disclaimers on
Instagram or YouTube. I just saw it one of the
last time I was posting on there. I was like, oh,
this is interesting.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
That's a step in the right direction, I think.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. As long
as everybody is clear about what it is. It's just
when I feel like people are trying to get fooled
or I've had voiceover colleagues that have said, you know,
watch out, guys. I went in for this audition. It
was for some audio book and they didn't have a title,
and it was really sketchy, and my spider sense was tingling,

(53:17):
but I did it anyway. And now my voice has
been poured into this AI program and now they're using
it and I fighting them on it, you know, trying to.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Well, I hope that's that's not very prevalent. I've never
heard that one.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Yeah, I mean it's I Luckily, I don't think it
happens very much. Yeah, but I'm sure there was more
than a few producers out there who were just like,
if I could just get a human being in here
for a second, I couldn't mind their voice, and I
could use it as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah, I did this thing and it was way gosh,
nineteen ninety nine or something like that. It was, and
I talked about it before, but it was called My
Interactive Pooh, which already is an interest title, and it
was Winnie the Pooh telling stories and you could insert
like a happy story about going through the hunter acrewood.

(54:09):
Now we're going over here. Now we're flying a kite.
Now we're over here, and we're floating little boats down
the stream, you know, doing different things like that. And
one of the things was that he would you could
insert your child's name, Well, Joey, you can blah blah blah.

(54:29):
And they wanted me to do each name three times.
But like I said before, and it was like six
hundred and seventy thousand.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Names and oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Yeah. And then then at the end she said, well,
now we're going to do phone yms. And I go,
what's a phone ym? And she goes, well, it's like
muh and and and and and.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
I go what the hell is that?

Speaker 1 (54:55):
And they go, well, this way we could save money
by getting you to make every sound, every dipthong out there,
and we won't, you know, and we'll just put the
word together like if somebody comes up.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
We'll just frankenstein it.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yeah, We'll just frankenstein it. Yeah. Yeah, And I said, okay,
well that's not gonna sound very good. No, no, it
works that we've done it before. And I go, okay, good,
So you're telling me that you're ripping me off. Yeah,
my buddy Rick Dempsey sitting over there in the corner, going,
you know, you know, you're telling the guy that we're
this and she literally said this way, you know, we

(55:29):
don't have to pay it, come back and do all
these names again.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
And sure, I go, yeah, God, that must be awful.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
I apologize, by the way for not doing this for free.
Get out of here. I'm gonna kill you, you know.
But you know that's how.

Speaker 4 (55:43):
Blatant it was. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah, So so to tell you, yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, well thanks for thank you.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
I don't have to pay you anymore. Isn't this great?

Speaker 4 (55:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Wow, that does sound good.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah yeah. My mind was reeling.

Speaker 4 (56:01):
But for some reason, that reminds me of that line
of Forest Gump Please talking about how Lieutenant Dan invested
in an apple for him, and he's like, God, call
from Lieutenant Dan. He said, we ain't gonna worry about
money no more. I said, well, good, one last thing.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, one last thing to worry about.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Yeah, one last thing.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
It's it's always good to have one last thing to
worry about, exactly, especially if it's that Oh, God almighty.
So what's keeping you worried these days? Anything?

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Oh, I'm proud to say nothing.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Good, good, good, good, good answer, I've I've.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
I grew up a very worrying kind of kid. I
got it from my mom. M rest in peace, mom,
and uh and I It was kind of funny because
I grew up in a house where my mom worried
about everything and my dad worried about nothing.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Oh so you you even out.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
But I got the DNA from my mom. So I
worried about everything. But then as I grew older, I
kind of saw how my dad did things and realized
very few things in life actually mean something. You assign
meaning to everything, and you assign what it means and
how important it is, and how painful it is or
how joyous it is. You assign it to that. But

(57:24):
those things aren't inherently those things. I mean, there are
some universal evils, sure, yeah, but and universal good things,
I suppose. But but I try not to h I
try not to I can acknowledge, I can acknowledge a
terrible thing happening in the world that might keep me

(57:45):
up at night without letting it keep me up at night.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
M Oh, that's a good that's a good approach.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
Yeah, like that.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
I think it makes me a happier person.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
Well, good for you.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Well keep the good work.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Thanks, nice work.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
If you can get it. If you're a fan of
everything we do here at tuned In with Jim Cummings,
you could support the show on Patreon for bonus exclusive podcasts,
as well as early in ad free access to the
show itself, prize drawings, and more. You'll feel the difference,
so go ahead and join the tuned In family today

(58:21):
at Patreon dot com slash Jim Cummings Podcast.

Speaker 4 (58:26):
Do It Now. Do you have any projects coming up
that people should know about, any stuff to tout?

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Well, there's quite a few things actually, but obviously still
doing the convention thing. We're booked now mostly into next year,
so the rest of this year is pretty much spoken for.
So keep an eye on you on the social media.
I do Twitter and Instagram. I just joined Instagram just

(58:54):
like four or five months ago or something like that,
so I'm kind of new to the whole Instagram thing,
but I've been on Twitter for a while and I
always post where.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
I'm going to be.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
My next three convention appearances are always on those two platforms,
so you can find me there. But I'm also working
on a on a a YouTube series called Sonic and
Tails Are that has already had ten episodes. We did
the first ten episodes during the pandemic and it was

(59:24):
such a huge hit that they're working on the the
second round of ten episodes that I understand people are
already recording for it.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
The title Sonic and Tails Sonic and Tails are the
letter are okay, Yeah, And I believe it's it stands
for recorded or something like that.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
But it's it's kind of like a radio drama on
on YouTube. Cool and it's and that's really fun to
h to kind of delve in. It's kind of got
like the Blessing of Sega. We use all the professional
voices that Sega uses on these episodes and they're really
a lot of fun. I think they're like maybe three

(01:00:07):
or four minutes apiece. They're just nice, little kind of
bite sized sonic adventures. And always always auditioning, always doing
a few things that the NDA won't let me talk about,
and and also I'm I'm also a really thankful to

(01:00:28):
be working for the Halloween industry, which is something I've
been doing for the last seven years. I work for
a couple of companies that that manufacture mostly life size
Halloween animatronics are talking decorations, and I do a lot
of Halloween things, a few Christmas things, mostly as Santa
Claus interesting, but my kind of year round voiceover thing

(01:00:53):
that I get to do is that I get to
to voice a lot of these, uh these Halloween animatronics,
and my friends get a kick of that out of that.
They always call me every August and say, okay, Spear,
Halloween's opening. Which one are you?

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
Which ones are you? You know? Wow?

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
And so those are those are really fun because Halloween
is like my second favorite holiday in the whole year,
behind my birthday. So I've always been a Halloween guy
ever since I was really little, and so the fact
that I get to be in a Halloween decoration or
two hundred of them, and get to be in people's
front yards and and help people decorate for the holiday

(01:01:28):
h just an absolute thrill. I've been doing that for
years now and it still doesn't get old. I still
love it, right, It's really fun.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
I remember we had one of those growing up in
my house, and it was it was a werewolf, and
it was probably like it was big. It was like
four feet tall, and when you walked past it, it
had a motion sensure sensor and his eyes would light
up red and he would start dancing and he would
start singing, I'm your bug a man, I'm your bug
a man. And I remember so many times, like sometimes

(01:02:00):
if you left the switch on, like in the back
of it, so the motion sensor, the cats would like
activate it at night, so all of a sudden it
be the middle of that night and then you hear this, Oh,
I'm your book you red eyes glowing in the dark,
singing Boogeyman.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Casey in the Sunshine Band.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
Yeah, that's it, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
I had a talking I had a number of talking
toys for Sonic the Hedgehog over the years, but the
first one that I did was this figurine and it
had this gold disc that he would sit on and
you could press the button and he would say three
different phrases. And then of course it was my first
Sonic talking toy, and so of course my mom and
dad were like, we want one of those, and so
I got one for them, sent it to them. Yeah,

(01:02:45):
and it sat in their library. They had a little
library off the living room, and it sat there on
the top shelf for years and years and years and years.
And then, as the story would have it, my father
passed away like six or seven years ago, my mom
about three years ago, so this must have been probably
five or six years ago. Of course, in the middle
of the night, the batteries in that talking toy started

(01:03:07):
to atrophy, and right somewhere around three am, this voice
starts to emanate from the library, going, oh you lisers happening.

Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
And uh great.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
So my mom comes out with the baseball bat, you know,
ready to clock something. And then she realized, oh, it's
just Sonic talking, you know. She said that toy scared
me to death. I thought someone was in my library
and it was just again, it's just you.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
You.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
It was only me. Oh I could have sang I'm
your bogey man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
But god bless.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Oh that's funny. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Oh man, Well this has been good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Man, Yeah, it's good. So much for doing with you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
Yeah, yeah, it was really appreciated. It was really nice.
Meeting you in Denver too, was such a spur of
the moment thing that was cool. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
See that's another that's kind of how it goes, isn't
it just a chance meeting? Yeah, I came over to
get something signed by the great Jim Cummings and and
uh and Chris what's his name? Do you ever think
about doing a podcast with us? Call me now?

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Yeah, thank you, so I'm glad it actually happened.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yeah, thanks for answering the phone.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
Yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Yeah. I love that phrase that you say about it's
it's not who you know, it's who knows you. I'm
really taking that because that's so true, and it's like
it's so true. It's such a it's such a more
accurate description of you know, it's not what you know,
it's who you know. And it's like who cares who
you know? You know, it's like people need to know you. Yeah.
I think that's a huge message, if anything, for this podcast,

(01:04:47):
you know, like for anybody looking for inspiration to be creative,
to get into this industry. I think, you know, like
you always say, like do something so well that they
pay you for it. Yeah. Right, And that's because people
will people will talk, you know, and people will remember.
I mean I remember, shoot, you know, I've been out
of college for a decade, and I remember, you know,

(01:05:07):
the best actors that were in my class. You know. Sure,
if if ever I saw an opportunity or had chance,
I'd give them one of them a call and say, hey,
I think you'd be really good.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
For this, you know absolutely. I mean we all have
those actors that we've seen in various different mediums, and
they're they reach such an amazing point inside you. You
never forget them.

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
You never forget them. Yeah, you never forget them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
I love that phrase, do something so well that they
have to pay you for it? And I also just love,
you know, being kind. My my one of my great
professors from when I went to college at Eastern Michigan
University used to say, be nice to everybody because the
custodian will be the CEO by next week. Yeah that's true,
and and boy that's true. I'm I've seen people who

(01:05:55):
have absolutely shot themselves in a foot at the audition
because they tank the audio. It didn't go very well,
and then they go to the bathroom and they start
bitching about the people behind the desk, and one of
them's in the stall listening.

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Yeah, it's like get to your car before you start.
You know, everybody can be angry. You can warn it
for twenty four hours if you want, but not till
you get to your car. Yeah, so be kind to everybody.
You never know who's going to be what when.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Yeah, well, without mentioning any names, years and years and
years ago, twenty five years ago at least, somebody who
works at Disney Still came out to my house on.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Fourth of July and I said, buddy, what are you
doing here?

Speaker 4 (01:06:40):
What are you?

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
He goes, well, I want to make sure you had
the script? And I go, oh it was a dark
Wing script, dark Wing duck. And I said, oh, well thanks, thanks,
you really you really come? You know what you got
to come in?

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Come on, let me get your bruskie, let me get
you some chicken.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
And he goes, no, no, no, I can't. I got
to get back. I go, no, come on, no, all right, well,
then tell him that I made you, and so, you know,
dragging him out the backyard. I had a bunch of
people over and uh. And and and he's a big
honcho now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Yeah at at at Disney.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
I won't tell you who he is, but uh, but
you know it was the old you know, be kind
to people you know who are down here because they're
not going to stay there, especially in this this crazy
business there, you know. And now this guy hires me,
you know that guy example, you know that guy hires me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
So yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
Be nice out there people, So be nice. Yeah, the
message a game and always be nice. Don't be fake,
don't be fah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah that's right, don't be fake.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
I'd rather you be Charlie Adler, don't be fake.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Yeah, Charlie's not fake.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Yeah, Charlie's for real.

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
Oh god, well that was great. Thank you again so
much for doing this. Ryan. Of course, that was a
great conversation and we hope that you guys at home
enjoyed that because we sure did. And if you learned it,
then be sure to like and subscribe because on YouTube
you can literally watch a video and it's never recommended
to you again, not even the channel, So be sure
to like and subscribe. Does us a favor? Shows what

(01:08:12):
you guys like and does you a favor? It gives
you more content like this, and if you do like
more content like this, good news. On Patreon you can
find bonus content, extended interviews, bonus interviews, giveaways, contents, all
that good stuff over on Patreon. We love all your
Patreon subscribers. Thank you so much. You can get merchandise
at Jim Cummings closet on Shopify. A whole bunch of

(01:08:34):
good stuff there and link in the description for any
upcoming conventions and also, Ryan, we'll link the We'll link
to Sonic Art well Sonic. Thanks. Sorry, say the title again.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
Yeah, I'll send that to you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Yeah, yeah, that'll be awesome. We'll put that in the
description right below this video. And you got all that
said and done. I'm producer Chris, Jim Cummings, Ryan Drummond.
Thank you so much for joining us today. We really
appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Thanks every buddy, you appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Oh there he is there, he is saved the best
for last time and now he's gone. Thanks pal, God
bless everybody. Be kind to each other.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
That's right,