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Leonardo’s TMNT voice actor says being the serious Turtle was “hard”
Leonardo actor Cam Clarke was jealous that the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle actors got to do more with their characters
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It’s not easy leading a team. It’s even harder when your teammates are all goofballs, forcing you to be the straight man. This is what it felt like for voice actor Cam Clarke on the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. While his costars got to have fun and play the goofy brothers, Clarke was frustrated that his character was always such a wet blanket.
“What was hard for me was I got these three goofballs doing kabuki crazy town clown show, and every week I’m saying, ‘[serious tone] We’ve got to think of something fast!’ Talk about narcoleptic actor,” Leonardo actor Cam Clarke says during a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spotlight panel at C2E2 2022.
“I went, well, let me lampoon superhero, which I got to do with [Townsend Coleman] in The Tick with Die Fledermaus. I’m trying to make [Leonardo] a silly leader, because these guys are having so much fun, and I was bored. The director calls me out in the hallway and goes, ‘What are you doing? Don’t do what you’re doing. Don’t. You’re the leader.’”
“Once I was able to allow that, I went, there’s the clowns, and there’s someone they bounce off of. And I had to get my ego out of the way because I wanted to be funny. I was able to then really enjoy that he had to think of something fast.”
For more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, check out the complete panel video below:
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