"I wish Andrea Romano was my grandmother. Is that weird?"
That's an actual comment on an interview with Andrea, and, quite frankly, not the first time I've heard something to that effect. And for the record, no, it isn't weird (although you should brush up on your understanding of the subjunctive mood.) She's just that delightful.
Andrea Romano, eight-time Emmy award winning voice director, is responsible for casting and directing the voices behind practically all animated projects that have been truly great from the past 20 years. Whenever you see her name attached to an project, you can implicitly trust that it's going to be amazingly acted and worth watching. Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: the Animated Series, Spongebob Squarepants, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Justice League, The Boondocks, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra... her list goes on and on, and the quality of each project maintains an astoundingly high level.
More than that, though, if you have had the pleasure to meet her, you know she is just an amazingly kind woman with an incredible directing talent in her own right. Her smile lights up the press room, and you could literally listen to her read the phone book for hours.
We sat down with the legendary voice director at New York Comic Con to talk about Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2, and the incredible talent she has worked with over her prolific career.
With all of the success of the Chris Nolan movies, was there a pressure to differentiate your sound with this similarly dark, but ultimately very different Batman?
Andrea Romano: I love the voice actors that I work with. It makes me very happy because they're really skilled at this work, for the most part. It's all about finding the right actor first of all, and then just letting them do what they do.
But I don't try to compare myself to the live action films; they're such a different animal. There's a lot of things we can do because it's animated that live action films just plain can't do.
The fight walla, that stuff is always a challenge, and these particular two films - part 1 and part 2 of this Dark Knight piece - are so fight heavy. So, that's just one of those voice things where you just try to make sure you don't rip the actors' throat out because after two or three hours of just [glottal grunts], it could be painful.
Michael Emerson [cast as the Joker in TDKR]: did you find him or did he find you?
AR: I found him at Comic-Con San Diego a couple years ago. I had admired his work on Lost so much, and I asked him, "would you be interested ever in doing an animated project if the right role came up?" And he said, "I think that would be great fun."
When this piece came up, I said, "Oh well, would you like to be the Joker?" And he jumped on it, and he had a great time. Although he did tell me that he thought it was the hardest work he's ever done. I think it was kind of out of his wheelhouse; it wasn't something he had much experience in.
And so we recorded him - I was in LA; here was here in New York shooting Person of Interest, I believe. It was the first time I've ever recorded by Skype so I could watch him because working with an actor when you can see them, as opposed to only hearing their voices, is very helpful. And then, for them to be able to see me, so that I can direct them physically - as they say, a picture would be worth a thousand words - that was very helpful too.
Peter Weller can invest heavily in a character. Was there anything about his technique that really stood out for you?
AR: The thing is Peter is a good actor, in and of himself. [What] I didn't know was that he was a major comic book fan, so he was really familiar with the source material. I think that's what appealed to him about doing it was he knew already how good the graphic novels were. Bob Goodman wrote a beautiful script, adapted from the graphic novels, and so all of those things combined made [Weller] say, "Yes, I want to be a part of this." And I think he was familiar with some of our previous projects, so that was all good too.
But I think as far as -- if I can't use Kevin Conroy (because I do love using Kevin Conroy whenever I can, and Mark Hamill as well) -- this was a really good bit of casting. I'm not just saying that; I don't just cast all by myself. There's a group of about 10 people that have input as to ideas of who we could cast. We create a list of the number one choice, two, three, four... And sometimes that's in no particular order [in terms of ability] - it's just that we think we can get a fast response if we go to [a particular person.] But Peter, I think, was top choice, and he said yes right away, and that was very, very good.
Hit the jump for the full interview with the amazing voice director, including tidbits on with whom she'd like to work and what makes Kevin Conroy so special!
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