{"id":14184,"date":"2025-02-21T23:50:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T23:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14184"},"modified":"2025-02-21T23:50:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T23:50:50","slug":"interview-original-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-voice-actors-discuss-series-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14184","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Voice Actors Discuss Series\u2019 Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"


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ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur virtually spoke with Cam Clarke<\/a>, Townsend Coleman<\/a>, Barry Gordon<\/a>, and Rob Paulsen<\/a> about the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series<\/a> that debuted in 1987. Over email, the four voice actors discussed their love for TMNT<\/a>, the recently released DVD collection of the series, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cCowabunga! Experience the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle saga in this totally tubular 23-disc set of the original animated series, featuring all 10 seasons in one complete collection! From their origins on the comic book page to the depths of Dimension X and beyond, the pizza-loving, shell-busting Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, with the guidance of their Sensei Master Splinter, have been delighting fans for decades with their turtle power. Whether it\u2019s facing fierce enemies Krang, Shredder, and Lord Dregg, saving humanity from near extinction, or battling against life-altering mutations, the half-shell heroes are always ready for heart-stopping, time-bending, straight outta the sewer action!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Classic Series Collection is now available to purchase on DVD.<\/p>\n

Brandon Schreur: <\/strong>Can each of you tell me a little bit about what it\u2019s like, looking back on the series, all these years later? TMNT was around before then, but I feel like this show is kind of a defining moment for the Turtles for a whole lot of people. Looking at the legacy this show has left on the world, did you know how huge of a cultural imprint it was going to have on the world when you were working on it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cam Clarke: <\/strong>No. Without a crystal ball, no one knows anything. You never know what\u2019s going to be a hit and what isn\u2019t. If anybody thinks they do, then they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about. It isn\u2019t until afterwards. There are some roles I\u2019ve done that have excited me because they were existing characters. Like taking over for Simba and playing Snoopy. Snoopy is a character from my childhood, so it\u2019s the same as a kid today with the Turtles. When you create a character all you can do is hope people like it!<\/p>\n

Townsend Coleman<\/strong>: Well, the first thing that pops into my mind is just how surreal this TMNT journey has been since 1987!! Of course, when I was first cast in the original cartoon series I had no conception what the franchise would explode into over the years\u2026 as a voice-actor, it was essentially just another gig for me, one I hoped would have legs and give us a few seasons of work. It wasn\u2019t until a few seasons in that we all began to realize how huge the show had become and how popular the toys and figures had become\u2026 it was a bit of a whirlwind.<\/p>\n

Barry Gordon: <\/strong>I had absolutely no idea.\u00a0 In fact, I hadn\u2019t heard of the comic book series until I auditioned for the show. We started with a five-episode pilot on a syndicated station and moved to CBS Saturday morning about a year later. I guess I knew it was having some success, but as to what it\u2019s become, there was no way any of us could foresee that.<\/p>\n

Rob Paulsen<\/strong>: You could have a script written by Jesus, and 25 million bucks of someone else\u2019s money, but if nobody watches it doesn\u2019t matter. I have been impossibly fortunate. There is something cool about being the original on anything that becomes big.\u00a0<\/p>\n


<\/strong>The whole series is now available to watch on this DVD collection, which is super exciting! I know other collections have been out of print for a while; I\u2019ll be honest, there are still some VHS copies of certain episodes at my grandma\u2019s house that I watch whenever I want to revisit the show up until now. With the show suddenly becoming a lot more accessible to people, what are you excited for them to see and experience? Are you hoping this will appeal to people who maybe aren\u2019t familiar with TMNT or the show as well as the long-time fans?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clarke: <\/strong>First of all, there is no one on the planet that is unaware of the turtle franchise. Well, I don\u2019t know, maybe in the Himalayas? But whether they\u2019re hearing it in English or when it\u2019s translated into French or German or whatever it is, it\u2019s pretty hard to not know that this is a thing.\u00a0We get people all the time that come to the show and they\u2019ve got their kids or their grandkids. It\u2019s almost like learning The Pledge of Allegiance- you have to watch the original! When I was growing up, my parents didn\u2019t care what I watched, nor did we watch cartoons as a family. Again, I can\u2019t wrap my head around the why, but this comes back to collecting. I think that\u2019s who it will appeal to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coleman<\/strong>: With so many different iterations of TMNT that have come out since our original series, the thing I\u2019m most excited about is the chance this set will give younger fans of later versions to experience the very beginning of the animated Ninja Turtle franchise. I understand they have their fave versions for a reason, but I\u2019ve been discovering at comic-con appearances that parents who grew up on our show are introducing their kids to our original version and kids are totally digging it!<\/p>\n

Gordon<\/strong>: I guess I\u2019m excited for a new generation of kids who may have been introduced to the Turtles by the recent film or the new animated series to see how it all started. The tone of our show is very different from the comic series or any of the movies. It will be interesting to see how it holds up almost forty years later. According to the fans we meet at comic cons, they still seem to enjoy our version after all this time.<\/p>\n

Paulsen: <\/strong>Obviously as a participant in this impossibly wonderful experiment, I want as many people as possible to see it and experience joy. We live in a time in which, immediately, you can have access to all the knowledge that has been gleaned from anyone, anywhere in the world\u2014which itself is difficult to comprehend. Any opportunity to spread this joy, love, excitement, creativity\u2014there will never be too much of it. Having thousands of people around the world who love Turtles, I don\u2019t think anyone of them are willing to say \u201cI don\u2019t want to watch any more of it.\u201d They\u2019re all excited about what comes next. I get asked that all the time. \u201cAre you ever going to do another Turtles?\u201d I don\u2019t know. I got 50% of them done now, if I live to be a hundred, I can knock them all out. Regardless, the interest is there. If I\u2019ve met thousands, there are tens of millions who feel that way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back at the show, which ran for a long time, do the four of you have any favorite moments involving the character you voiced? Is there a Leo\/Mikey\/Raph\/Donnie moment that jumps out to you when you think about some of your favorite times from working on the show or seeing the completed episode?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clarke: <\/strong>For me, I liked a couple of episodes where Leonardo gave up. He said, \u201cI\u2019m not gonna be the leader anymore.\u201d He said, \u201cYou guys can do whatever you want. I\u2019m going to sit in the lair and eat pizzas and watch TV.\u201d It was fun to get to change him up a little bit.\u00a0We\u2019ve had personal experiences, and because we\u2019re older and things are so much more poignant, for example, we did some holiday commercials a couple of years ago for Honda. The campaign was our little action figures, and we voiced them, and they\u2019re jumping around the car. The advertising folks decided campaign basically was \u201cGet that (childhood) Christmas morning feeling again.\u201d What is that? They say the best Christmas morning is when you got your Ninja Turtles. So, we walk into this session to record together, which was amazing, having been apart. You got these execs in there who were like wiping tears out of their eyes because it is their childhood sitting in front of them. So that is pretty humbling. And pretty amazing to get to be back in the studio together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coleman:<\/strong> Certainly one of the biggest thrills early on was discovering just how quickly the characters were becoming so wildly popular around the world! I remember going back to my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio in 1989 and visiting with family who had kids who were big fans of the show, and being blown away that the kids (and adults!) wanted to hear me do Mikey\u2019s voice\u2026 it was crazy to me! And there seemed to be no end to the toys and action figures this series produced\u2026 honestly, it was a bit mind-boggling.<\/p>\n

Gordon<\/strong>: That\u2019s a good question and a difficult one to answer. There isn\u2019t one moment or episode that jumps out because my memory isn\u2019t that good at 76 years old. What I can say is that while we all auditioned for all four Turtles, I really wanted to be hired for Donatello because in many ways I identified with him. We\u2019re both nerds, although Donnie is a more muscular one than yours truly. Also, they wanted me to just use my own voice without going for a \u201ccharacter.\u201d What was a surprise was getting to voice Bebop. Now that was a little more of a stretch!<\/p>\n

Paulsen<\/strong>: There\u2019s a young fellow who got a hold of me 35 years ago. He has cerebral palsy. He is now 40. He lived in the same hometown I\u2019m from, a little town called Grand Blanc, Michigan, just south of Flint. We were corresponding by mail. He had called me about a comic bookstore that he frequented back in Michigan, that wanted to maybe have me come and meet people. It was before we started doing conventions. I said sure, it\u2019ll be great. I went to meet him at his home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hearing him and his mother tell me what Ninja Turtles meant to this sweet boy. He enjoyed the life that he could create himself via the Turtles. He could be the hero, the bad guy, the good guy\u2026 The four of us got to know him. We were all pretty taken by him. Just last year, he graduated with his master\u2019s in Astrophysics. He\u2019s going back to school to get his PhD. He comes to visit us at conventions all over. He and his mother, to this day, say Ninja Turtles is the only reason he had the confidence to move on with his life. Who am I to argue with that?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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