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Picture the first recording session for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The actors and the producers have no idea that the 1987 animated series will be one of the biggest cultural moments of the decade.

They also have no idea which voice actor will be voicing which turtle.

That’s right, the voice director cast actors for the show but didn’t bother to figure out who each actor would be playing.  “When we got these parts, they said that [Rob Paulsen] was going to be Raphael, and [Barry Gordon] was Donatello, but they hadn’t decided at our first recording session whether [Cam Clarke] was going to be Michaelangelo or Leonardo, and same for me,” Michaelangelo actor Townsend Coleman says during a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spotlight panel at C2E2 2022.

 “They literally flipped a coin,” Leonardo actor Cam Clarke says.

“[Stuart Rosen], the voice director, says, ‘Towny, why don’t you do Michaelangelo on the first pass. Cam, you do Leonardo, and then we’ll do another pass and we’ll switch.’ When we got through the first pass and got into the second, I said to Stu, ‘Do you want us to switch.’ And he said for whatever reason, ‘No, just leave it the way it is for no. We’ll address that later.’ And so, Cam just never got a chance,” Coleman says.

“After casting, I was just so upset that I wasn’t Michaelangelo,” Clarke says.

For more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, check out the complete panel video below:

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