Nancy Cartwright Chats with Jess Harnell

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Nancy Cartwright. [1]

Emmy-nominated Jess Harnell is one of the top 10 voice actors in the business. With an extensive background as a rock singer, Harnell has appeared on practically every cartoon on television from The Simpsons [2] to Fairly OddParents to Powerpuff Girls [3], in addition to starring roles as Captain Hero on Drawn Together [4] and Wakko on Steven Spielberg's Animaniacs. A few of Jess's many film credits include Finding Nemo [5], The Country Bears, Toy Story [6], Cars [7] and The Emperor's New Groove [8]. In addition, he played both a heroic Autobot and an evil Decepticon in Transformers [9]. He's also voiced thousands of promos and national commercials and performed in several of the top video games.

Nancy Cartwright: I want to know how you got started: tell me about your early years -- did you always want to do voice-overs?

Jess Harnell: That's a very interesting question and it's kind of a neat tale. I got started by being a rock and roll singer. You'd never guess that if you saw me, but those are my beginnings. I always was a mimic and I always loved to parrot voices, from the time when I was a little, little kid. I started by doing impressions of my family and that graduated into people I saw on TV and in movies. So, I was singing in bands and my dad, meanwhile, was a big composer for TV and film. One time he happened to mention to me that he was angry because "The Prince" (he thought Prince, the singer, was "The Prince") wanted a lot of money to use one of his songs on a TV show my dad was doing and he said he was going to have to get a sound-alike. I asked what a sound-alike was. He said, "That's when you get a guy who imitates the guy on the record and you just have to pay them a scale payment and you can use the song." I said, "Dad, I can imitate all these singers." And he said, "This isn't jumping around at the Roxy in your spandex, this is real show business." I asked him to let me try -- let me try to learn it!

NC: And you were in your 20s? Your teens?

JH: Hmm, how old was I? I was 21. Well, it wound up that I didn't do it for Prince, but my dad called me up and he said, "Have you ever heard of Glenn Fryes?" I said, "Do you mean Glenn Frey?" And he said, "Whatever! He's got a song called 'The Heat Song,' do you know 'The Heat Song?'" I was trying desperately to figure out what my father's "code" was and I said, "Do you mean 'The Heat is On?'" and he said, "Yes! Can you sing that exactly like Glenn Frey?" I said yes and he said, "Don't say that -- that's not professional -- you need to go listen to it, make sure you can and let me know and then maybe I'll hire you." That said, he said he'd call me back in a half hour and as I was saying that it wasn't enough time, he hung up on me.

NC: What did you do?

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Jess Harnell. [10]

JH: I ran to the record store, bought the record, took it home, wrote down the lyrics, even all the "woos!" and "yeahs," learned it, called him, and he told me to sing it. I put the record on in the background to sing along and he said, "No, I've heard the record, I want to hear you sing it -- sing it a cappella." Uh... OK. So I sang it to him. I finished and heard, "Hmmm… Hmmm... Alright, this might work. Be at Warner Bros. tomorrow at eight in the morning." Eight in the morning? He said, "That's right, you've got to be up early if you're going to be in show business!" So I went in, sang the thing. It went great and I began to market myself as a session singer. I knew even then how important marketing was in terms of establishing your career.

NC: How did you set about marketing yourself?

JH: I made this demo tape and I thought, what can I do to pack a punch and make my demo stand out above others? So I decided to do the song "We Are The World" and imitate everybody on the song.

NC: Oh my goodness!

JH: It was a good idea -- and even if it had sucked, it would have been interesting. Fortunately it didn't suck and I immediately began getting calls from people thinking, "This guy can do anything," which of course is never true, but the trick is not to show them the stuff you can't do.

NC: Well I know you can do Charlton Heston, because you did it on The Simpsons.

JH: (laughs) Yeah, yeah -- I do all kinds of crazy stuff. The litany is long of the stuff I can do, but, more importantly, I turned down a job on The Simpsons because they wanted me to do a horse; and I can -- but I'm not great at it. I would never say yes to something like that and then do a less-than-perfect job and walk out having them go, "I thought he was supposed to be so great." The reason people think you're invincible is that you never show them your kryptonite.

NC: Absolutely, yeah. So how did session musician become voice-over talent?

JH: Well, I made this demo and started getting a lot of work as a singer, so I'd be on the mic in the studio singing for, let's say, a beer commercial, and then the voice-over copy would be there on the script and I'd throw in, "Give yourself over to the cool taste of the Rockies," and someone said to me, "Have you ever thought about voice-over? Try the voice-over." So I started trickling into that. I also would do impressions, and one of the first jobs I got was doing looping for Pee Wee Herman because I did a good Pee Wee.

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Darkwing Duck was Harnell’s first job. Hired to play evil space alien Bleeb, he had to create an original character for the first time. © Disney. [11]

This was all in addition to my session singing, which kept me very busy. One day, I got a call from a guy at Disney who told me about this ride, Splash Mountain, and said he needed to get voice matches from Song of the South and asked if I could do any of those voices.

NC: Ah yes, Song of the South. That was your very first professional singing gig, wasn't it?

JH: Look at you! Doing your research amid the nine million other things you do! So I learned to do the voices and auditioned. I was the only non-pro there auditioning and I got a lot of the voices on this ride. It was my first real animated job and I was very excited about it. A year later, they called [again about doing Roger Rabbit for Disney World]. Suddenly I'm working with these big voice-over people, had no idea who they were. None of them had any idea who I was either -- I think they thought I was on the road crew for Def Leppard or something.

NC: And where did you go from there? What was your first animation session?

JH: Well, there's a story. Let me preface it by saying, everyone has their own particular talents, their gifts, and I think that trusting in your gift is a really important part of this for me. My first show was a show called Darkwing Duck [12]. I was hired to play an evil space alien named Bleeb. I got the script the night before and this was my first character where I wasn't imitating something else.

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Ginny McSwain. [13]

I stayed up all night coming up with voice ideas -- I came up with 60 voice ideas. I came into the session, met Ginny McSwain [14] (a very fast-paced, A-to-B, special kind of redhead), and I go over and introduce myself and say, "Listen, I came up with some ideas for how I'm going to play Bleeb and I have them recorded here," and she responded with, "Sure, sure, OK, go ahead and pull 'em up." I put up the tape and she heard, "This is Jess Harnell and here are some ideas for Bleeb -- number 1." I say two lines in the first voice and she goes, "Oh, that's great, great, yeah, use that one." It was this epiphany moment for me in my first session when I realized maybe I'm over-thinking this a little bit.

Now when I walk into auditions, I trust in myself that I can show who these characters are and you find their voice. It's so important that they have a good description of the characters -- I love to see a picture of the character, and it helps if they have a voice prototype, like "we're looking for a mobster voice" and then I can throw up a few and create that for you.

NC: You've answered so much in these stories, and I'm just wondering, who are your voice-over heroes?

JH: When I was growing up doing impressions, I really had no awareness of, like, the cartoon all-stars, since my background was rock singer. My first animated series was Animaniacs (where I met you). I walked into my first session on that show and sat next to Tress MacNeille, Rob Paulsen [15] and Frank Welker [16]. It was almost a blessing that I didn't know who these people were because I didn't know enough to be intimidated. As I found out more about them, and who did what, I was consistently blown away. I would look at Rob -- he's just awesome -- or I'd miss my line after being so impressed with Tress and she would just go, "Get with it baby!" And Frank, of course! As I developed a knowledge of these guys, my heroes were really the people I first got to work with on that show.

NC: So, do you think there is a protocol that voice actors should follow when they go to a studio? I mean, I've gone to sessions before and you have people reading or doing other things when they're in front of a microphone so sensitive you could hear a fish fart.

JH: Absolutely. First of all, rule number one for me in voice acting has always been: It's not about doing funny voices; it's about creating characters. It's almost funny to me sometimes, because people will say something like, "Well, you guys aren't real actors, you're voice actors." Voice acting to me is as challenging or more challenging than on-camera acting because when you're doing on-camera, you get the benefit of a costume and of a set and the other actors who are interacting with you. In voice-over, we're wearing jeans and t-shirts and stuff like that and we're still having to be four different characters at the same time and not only sound different, but be different people.

People also say, "So you need to be able to do a million voices, right?" Actually, you have to do one really good one. The rest are extra, as long as you can bring one thing to the party that is uniquely you. But if someone can hire a "10" in talent and a "4" in fun, or they can hire an "8" in talent and a "10" in fun, they're going to go with the latter because they'll look forward to having you. The only time that backfires is if the fun guy is having a bad day and walks into a room full of people expecting the party guy to show up with his A game. That's why I say, when you go into a session -- hey, the stock market might be getting creamed, but I have to leave that at the door and give these people my best.

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Since Harnell had no awareness of cartoon stars, he didn’t know the level of talent surrounding him on his first animated series, Animaniacs. Courtesy of Cartoon Network. © Warner Bros. [17]

NC: What's the most challenging job you think you've ever had?

JH: The most challenging situation for me in this career was the worst job I ever had. My agent called me one day and said to be in Hollywood the next morning for a movie voice match, [which turned out to be for] John Malkovich. Well, I don't do John Malkovich. He told me it was probably just a little thing, I would be fine, but I really wasn't comfortable with it. He kept pushing saying, "Trust me, man, you can nail it."

So I walk in to the session, 12 people in there sitting behind a desk, and the director stood up and said, "Here's the guy who's going to save our frickin' life." He tells me John is in Tunisia or something and the movie has a release date and we desperately need this and my agent told him I was the guy. This is for a voice match, and the absolute worst case scenario for a voice match is a quiet scene where the actor speaks a line, then you speak a line (as him) then the actor speaks a line, with no breaks. That was exactly what this was: playing poker in a quiet room, doing his own voice, no other noise to mask it.

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Rob Paulsen. [18]

Even if I had done a stellar impression, it would have been challenging. I'm feeling the sweat run down my back now and these people are looking at me and I didn't know if I should say I don't really do this. So I give it a shot, and I'm standing there with my back to them and I say the line… I think they ended up using it but I knew it definitely wasn't a home run and it was the only session, thankfully, that I've ever walked out of really angry. I called my agent and said don't ever put me in this position again -- never ever. I wasn't informed and I wasn't prepared.

NC: You've given us basically your philosophy in the course of this interview. Any remaining sage advice that you would give the young pups just starting out?

JH: Main thing: be a sponge, keep your ears open, keep developing, find what you can do well and exploit that; find what you can't do and don't include that. Don't put anything on your demo that isn't a home run, and if you don't think it is, no one else is going to. So if that means being super-critical and sitting and sifting through everything until you find a combination that you're really happy with, go with it. Have a smile on your face and a song in your heart and try to make it really easy to have you in the room. When you're there, devote yourself 100 percent and give it everything you have. Also, when you're auditioning, keep in mind that the people you're auditioning for have already heard 50 of the "best" auditioning for your copy, so whatever you can do to make it stand apart (don't go crazy with it necessarily); but, particularly in the beginning, if there's something you can do, add a joke or change it up a little to make yourself stand out.

NC: Well, on that note, it was great having you.

JH: It was even better being had!

Nancy Cartwright [19] is best known as the voice of spiky-headed Bart Simpson on The Simpsons [20]. She has voiced dozens of cartoon characters in a career that has spanned more than 20 years. Currently, she can be heard as the voice of Rufus the Naked Mole Rat on Disney's Kim Possible and Todd Daring in Disney's The Replacements. To learn more about Nancy's career, listen to her audio book My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy [19].