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There's a good chance you know Rob Paulsen's voice when you hear it. Be it Raphael in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series or Donatello in the 2012 version, the iconic Warner Bros. mascot Yakko Warner from Animaniacs or the hit character Pinky from the super successful spin-off series Pinky and the Brain, Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, or one of any of his nearly 1,300 roles, Paulsen has been honing his voice-acting craft for 40 years and continues to go strong today with no plans to slow down any time soon. His iconic characters from Animaniacs are due for another go-round this fall with Steven Spielberg's reboot of the series on Hulu, but Paulsen has plenty of other reasons to celebrate.

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Paulsen as part of our ongoing Saturday Mourning Cartoons interviews. We talked about the upcoming new series and what it was like to reunite with the returning cast and crew, along with newcomers to the title, plus the musical roadshow Animaniacs in Concert. We also chatted about his battle with throat cancer and his position as the 2020 spokesperson for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance's Oral Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Program. All of those stories and more are also available to read at your leisure in Paulsen's recently published memoir, "Voice Lessons: How a Couple of Ninja Turtles, Pinky, and an Animaniac Saved My Life." Be sure to check out those links for more on the advocacy program and Paulsen's publication, and follow along with Paulsen himself on Twitter, Instagram, and at his podcast, Talkin' Toons.

You can get a sampling of all that Paulsen has to offer in our hour-long chat either by listening above or checking out some of the excerpts below:

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Image via Rob Paulsen

First of all, sir, how are you holding up during the quarantine?

Rob Paulsen: Well, I'm breathing, and I'm not in jail, but today's not over yet, so far, so good. I'm fine, Dave. My wife and I have an embarrassment of riches. That is to say, we not only, of course, have our health, which is paramount in everybody's mind, and certainly if there was ever a question as to what was important in our lives, we ... The world has changed, literally, almost overnight so we are very grateful for being healthy. I have a couple of really bitching masks that people have made for me. I have a fantastic Yakko Warner mask, that's great fun to watch [people react to]. [...]

I'm doing online autograph signings and they're by my calculations pretty damn successful, from both sides of the equation. It's not how I make my living, it may well be that's how my living is going depending upon what happens at the studios here in LA. But the fan base loves it, it's just wonderful and I'm a fan, too. So I get to interact with all these people who want an autographed picture of Pinky or Raphael or Donatello or Carl Wheezer or The Mask or The Tick or you name it. [...]

If the trade off is that we get to do this online while we figure out how to get back up, then I'm all in... It's not about a few bucks, it's about the joy that it brings to people and so many folks rely upon especially when they don't have a way to make money. They're like, "Look, I got to find a way to get through this." Yeah it's nuts. So whether it's watching The Office or Pinky and the Brain, or Ricky Gervais man, I'm understanding how important this is and thank you again for giving me the platform.

Absolutely, thank you for your time. Has your day to day changed much at all or is it still business as usual?

Rob Paulsen: [In] terms of my being able to do my job no, the studios have been very flexible in wanting to record from home and willing to loan you equipment and all of that because they have a production schedule to keep up. I'm grateful that they're continuing to use me. Now it's affected the logistical aspects of my professional life because I don't [go to] Nickelodeon or Warner Brothers or Disney or whichever of the bazillion studios that they use to record stuff in Burbank in Hollywood and I miss that.

Because, I'm around people whom all your listeners would know. I'm around Billy West, I'm around Kevin Conroy, I'm around Mark Hamill, I'm around Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille and Nancy Cartwright and Tara Strong. Remarkably talented people like Frank Welker or Peter Cullen, people I've worked for 35 and some cases 40 years. You know people who've been to all my kid's birthday parties and vice versa. It just so happens that they're the most gifted actors in the world and they're the nicest people that I'd want to meet and I get to work with people I would choose to have at my home. I mean I'm a lucky guy and so I miss that. [...]

But let me tell you something man, there are very few franchises in our world that have done so much to bring so much joy, but also bring so much cash to people as Ninja Turtles. That's incredible when something ticks every box. Then, [after] Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, the King of Hollywood 25 years later says, hey Rob, Tress, Maurice, Jess, you want to do this again? Are you kidding me? Steven Spielberg wants to do this again and those are shows that have not really sold a lot of merchandise compared to Ninja Turtles.

But they're shows that are for the sake of the art. They're incredibly entertaining, funny, thoughtful, smart, the music is mind-blowing and it transcends generations and Steven Spielberg wants to do it again at what, 72, 73 years old? So it's not just about movie stars and selling action figures, it's about the content and whether it's Schindler's List or Pinky and the Brain, both of them are featured in Steven Spielberg's biography. So what does that tell you about how Steven feels about his respective art forms? It's "good stuff is good stuff" and to be part of it is beyond thrilling.

That's got to be a pretty easy yes when Steven Spielberg calls you up and says,"Would you like to do ____?" Whether it's a reboot or not, it's a pretty easy yes.

Rob Paulsen: Oh Dave ... you are absolutely right. [He's] a delightful man. [...] I've worked with him a lot on Tiny Toons, Amazing Stories, ET, on Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and now we're doing it again, okay. So pardon me, when you're able to spend even a little time around the best of the best in whatever realms, sports, government, business, entertainment and religion whatever it is, you find that the people at the top who continue to deliver time, after time, after time authentically deliver, are generally humble kind, decent people who understand their good fortune and they want to share it.

Often, they want to share it by giving someone like me a shot or someone like a young director or cinematographer or a political upstart a shot because they see ... part of their genius is seeing that genius in other people. They do things like, they don't micro manage. Part of Mr. Spielberg's genius, I submit, and again I don't hang with him every day, is knowing who to hire and turning them loose and allowing them to find their genius.

Then, when you hear that decade after decade and Oscar after Oscar ... you know that's not an accident, it's not. He is a lovely man, so much so that here we are all these years later and when it became a thing that Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and Apple were all kind of vying for Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, Mr. Spielberg said, "Oh yeah, whoever's going to pony up the dough, just so you know, we're not hiring Liam Neeson to be Yakko, it's going to Rob Paulsen, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche and Jess Harnell as Yakko, Wakko and Dot, and Pinky and the Brain, we'll figure out the rest of it." [...]

It's not just about celebrity [or] stunt casting, it's about, "Oh no, these actors still do it, more over they want to do it and they can do it. So why would we hire anybody else?" That says a lot about Mr. Spielberg. I am profoundly lucky to have hitched my star on his wagon on more than one occasion and will be forever grateful to him and Tom Ruegger and Jean MacCurdy for casting me in that show 25 years ago. Because if Ninja Turtles changed my career trajectory, Animaniacs changed my life. It's paying dividends literally to this moment.

Where you are in production [on Animaniacs? Is everything] on track still for the release later this year?

Rob Paulsen: Let me at least put a little bit of a caveat on what you said with respect to I and my co-workers on Animaniacs co-actors. Certainly, we have a unique circumstance and I think Mr. Spielberg and Warner Bros. and Amblin and Hulu, it is going to be on Hulu this fall, I know that because obviously the Tress MacNeille who's Dot, Jess Harnell Wakko, Maurice LeMarche is the Brain and yours truly who's Yakko and Pinky are 25 years older. But the cool thing about this gig is nobody cares what we look like. I can still do this all damn day, I'll start you know la, la, la I could do it all day. Same thing with Yakko and so can Tress and Mau and Jess.

But, we still have a window because we could probably do this at this level for another 10 or 12 years, even physically. I had a bout with throat cancer a few years ago and I'm fine, but that does kind of shed a bit of an interesting light on me to kind of go well if we're going to do this, we probably should do it. Because look Eric Bauza is now the voice of Bugs Bunny but Mel Blanc's been dead for 25 years.

So that's precisely my point about the characters. When you have characters that are iconic, we have a wonderful window of opportunity to do it with the original cast. My suspicion is there will be episodes of Ninja Turtles on the 15th iteration when I'm dead and gone for 25 years because that's a powerful franchise. Probably SpongeBob, too, maybe Animaniacs, maybe Pinky and the Brain. But right now, we have a unique opportunity. So it doesn't always have to be done with the original cast. Because it can't be, you know it's impossible. [...]

But in terms of where we are on a production schedule, we've recorded a whole bunch of episodes they are in post-production, I don't know the extent to which the post-production has had the kibosh put on it because of how many people need to work together, especially because of the music. I know that we're still using a full orchestra again because we can, with Steven Spielberg involved you get that sort of thing. So when you got that many musicians that have to play together in a studio I don't know where that is and I don't know the extent to which that has pushed the timing back.

So I can't speak to the logistics of when episodes will be ready to be viewed, I suspect that is a bit of and issue. I know that in terms of the recording the characters were recording stuff from home and doing post-production and dialogue replacement, tweaking things you know that we got to come back and clean them up a little bit. I can do that from home because we have the technology. But the stuff that requires people to be in close proximity to one another I really don't know, I can't speak to that. [...]

But I can also say that don't bet against Mr. Spielberg. We know because you're in fandom and you know what this is like, there are going to plenty of fans who can't wait and there are going to be plenty of fans who say, "Oh my God, they don't have the original so and so, it's going to suck." All right, whatever, then don't watch it. But I'll put all my chips on Mr. Spielberg any day. That's easy for me to say now, but even if he hadn't hired me, I would have said, "Well, I'm really bummed." but I got to tell you, if you don't want to watch it, don't watch it, but I'm going to watch it. Because it's Mr. Spielberg and it's a great show. If it doesn't work, then it won't be on for another season so there you go.

Fair enough. Since you've mentioned music, I have to ask, can we expect more songs from you? You've already given us kind of a little tease of a previous favorite, any more singing from you in the future?

Rob Paulsen: Absolutely. Tons of it. I can't wait to see it. It was really particularly interesting challenge for me because I had literally just been diagnosed with my throat cancer when Sam Register the head of Warner Brothers Animation floated the idea of Animaniacs reboot with Steven at the helm, I said, are you blanking kidding me? Are you kidding me? What's that axiom, that old saying? "We make plans and God laughs." [...]

So I was very philosophical about it and went on about the business of saving my life with wonderful doctors and I did. I got to tell you man, when I did the first episode that had a song for Yakko and it was very complex. People can say what they want about animated music but you look at Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn and the late Richard Stone in the music business, Randy Rogel and others who wrote for Animaniacs, a lot of it, I got to sing, it's pretty goddamn complex music.

No different in the new version, I got done singing the first thing that was all over the musical map and it was smart and funny and complicated and mind blowing and I sat there and took a breath and said to the people inside the glass, "Please indulge me, if you will, at this moment because I sung something that I didn't know I could do, six months ago." As far as I can tell, nobody has had a problem with the way I sound. They said, "No, we're ready to move on," I said, "Well, that's a really big deal for me." Because I had you know seven weeks of daily radiation and chemotherapy and I didn't know if I'd be able to speak let alone sing much less in character. That was a big deal for me.

Well, I definitely want to talk more about your experience singing in Animaniacs ..., but I want to pivot [into] your battle with cancer and the positive results that you were able to bring out of that. [...] You, this year, [are] not only a cancer survivor, you're also the 2020 spokesperson for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance and the Oral Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Program.

Can you talk a little bit about your experience and then also being able to turn that into a positive experience for fellow survivors or even just yourself?

Rob Paulsen: Well, thank you firstly, Dave for bringing that up, I really appreciate [it.] [...] I had a battle with metastatic throat cancer, it had spread from a tumor on the base of my tongue in my throat to a lymph node in my neck, and I am fine. It took a pile of radiation and chemo to get me through it, it beat the living Christ out of me, but it does to everybody. I have to say that never once did anything happen to me that the doctors did not say would happen. I asked for the truth, I asked for the straight dope and they gave it to me. When I was really going, "Oh my God, I'm not ready for this," it was exactly what they told me. They just said, "You're not going to believe it, buddy, it's going to get tough, but you will get through it. You're going to think you can't, but you will," and they were right and I did.

However, the important thing, and what got me this wonderful opportunity to be the 2020 Spokesperson / Toon, with the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance is, I think, because of what I do for a living and because I was able to get through it at an older age. When I was diagnosed, I was already 59 years old. So, even if the doctors had said to me, "All right, man, we're going to keep you comfortable, but you're on your way out." Dave, you know right now, there are people listening to this who know precisely what I'm talking about, maybe you even do. Who are in their own circumstance or have people they love who've literally gotten that message, that, "Yeah you've got this glioblastoma in your brain we're going to take it out, but it's going to come back and we're going to keep you really comfortable but you've got maybe two years if you're lucky."

Now will some people beat that? Yeah. But most of the time, people know what they're talking about, or it's stage five or stage four pancreatic or ovarian and presented very late and they're done. Okay, that's not what they told me. They said, "You're going to be fine, we can cure you, we're not talking about remission, we're talking about a cure. You've got a 75% chance of cure, which is always great odds. But before we cure you we almost have to kill you; it's brutal, for obvious reasons, your throat your mouth, all that, can't eat, can't swallow it's rough.

But they were right, I'm through it, Rob 2.0 is different in many ways. I lost 50 pounds, I gained 20 of it back, I don't look even close to what I used to look. I don't consume food the same way, I don't taste food the same way, I don't crave food. Everything is, a lot of it is different. But there are also things that are different that are much better. I don't have a silver lining in my story, I have a platinum lining there.

Because of what I do for a living, long before I was diagnosed, I had hundreds of children and parents and loved ones who have found solace in Raphael, Carl, Pinky, Yakko, you name it and I would get calls from child life specialists, hospitals, doctors, parents, from all over the country, and again not just me, all of [them] want to talk to these characters. They don't care if it's Rob Paulsen they just care that their little boy or little girl is talking to Raphael or Yakko that's all they want to know.

Often these parents would work this out knowing that their children weren't going to make it, knowing their kids were on their way out, but they just by God wanted to talk to Raphael. Are you kidding me? It blew my mind to what was happening. My son is now grown and married and healthy and happy and all of that. Okay so what happened when people started finding out about my experiences, these parents would start to keep in touch with me or rather they would start to get back in touch with me and say, "Rob, Hi, you don't remember me, but you spoke to my little boy Ian or you spoke to my little girl, Stephanie, and ... I still have the pictures of her talking to Yakko on the phone when she was eight. She made it to 11 and she's been gone for 15 years now. But you need to know et cetera, dot, dot, dot."

[...] So I have a story now about the power of joy and kindness and love that come from the most unexpected places because I have my own anecdotal experience for decades of it. It got me through my six months in the cancer cage. Now, I get to get on shows with nice folks like you and talk to, God I've been shows, roundtables about Head and Neck Cancers with folks from the CDC and world class oral surgeons and head and neck surgeons, oral pharyngeal surgeons who have to dissect people's throats and put them back together and learn how to help these people live their lives. I can give first-hand experience about what it's like and there are folks who will actually pay attention to me because of what I do for a living.

It was that kind of cancer. So man I am here to tell you that I get it and I get the power of joy, I get the power of humor and laughter. I've been able to see it both from the sidelines when I got to go visit children and their parents in the hospitals dozens of times talking on the phone hundreds of times and now I lived it. [...] I can't wait to talk about those experiences and I get to as a result of my experience with the Head Neck Cancer Alliance. To the extent that people are interested in learning more about that type of cancer they can go to headandneck.org and they'll see yours truly his ugly mug there and they can learn all about this type of cancer.

It's unfortunately becoming more and more ubiquitous however it's very treatable and my story is a great example of, hey man, if a guy who does Yakko and Pinky and a couple of Ninja Turtles for a living can get back to doing it, you'll be fine.

You know it's a fascinating story from all different sorts of levels. When I first heard about the diagnosis I thought it was kind of cruel in the irony that that specific type of cancer happened to a voice-actor

Rob Paulsen: Yeah how about that huh?

I love that you'd had that kind of joy and positivity that came out of it. Are those stories in your recent memoir? Were you able to include them in that publication?

Rob Paulsen: Yes. In fact yes it is, they are rather. My book is called "Voice Lessons: How a Couple of Ninja Turtles and an Animaniac and Pinky, Saved My Life." It is precisely an expanded version of what we were just talking about. It is not just a compendium of [anecdotes] ... because the last thing the world needs is a celebrity bio or memoir another one. Especially from a non-celebrity. This goes right back to the characters are famous.

I'm important but I'm not, it's not all about me. But the stories of joy and laughter and strength and courage and empathy that have come as a direct result of these characters that I've been involved with and how they help me through my time of dealing with cancer and how they can do nothing but help people in the future. At the very least they bring joy and at the most they literally help people save their lives.

Just the simple act of joy and laughter is so powerful, especially in these times. So we're definitely looking forward to the new [episodes]. [...]

Before I run out of time with you today, when you went back to booth, back to read those scripts and those songs, what was that feeling like? Was it just like picking up right where you left off, or did it take some time to roll into that?

Rob Paulsen: Well, it was, in fact there's a passage in my book where I talked to Tress when we were doing the original Animaniacs and we had one of those days where we had a huge cast for I think two different episodes and they were all in the booth at the same time. [...] Tress, Jess, Maurice, Frank Welker, Billy West, Jim Cummings, ... Dick Clark and Ed McMahon were on an episode and we were there at the same time, it was mind-blowing. Mark Hamill ... over and over and over, it was crazy. I remember looking at Tress and I said, "[H]oney take a picture of this because this, unless you're on The Simpsons with what we do, this is as good as it gets. Steven Spielberg, Tom Ruegger everybody who's won Emmys who got the best of the best, best musicians, best writers, best everything. Unless you're, you know it's just that this don't get no better."

Cut to 25, 26 years later, the first episode of Animaniacs in this new realm with all this new technology, streaming services, it was not even part of the landscape when we did the old batch. In the book, that is the truth, I said, "You know, I was wrong, it actually can get better." There's a great old love song called "The Second Time Round." One of the lyrics is, "Love is lovelier the second time around." It's kind of like what it basically says is you're through all the crap and you know what you want and you recognize it in yourself any other person and it's just lovelier the second time around. [...] It's mind-blowing to see that people who wrote these new episodes start to shake and get a little tearful when they hear Pinky and the Brain reading their work [...] So I get to see it. I'm a lucky man, dude and I'm able to kind of just share all these really wonderful thoughts with you and your audience so thank you so much. From the water tower you get free tickets for your rest of your life, unless of course you're arrested walking on the lot, then you're on your own.

Well I could talk to you and your various characters all day, I'm sure, but since I'm almost out of time with you today, I want to give you a chance to tease any other upcoming projects you may be working on.

It kind of blew my mind that you said you were still doing auditions, I feel like you could just say your name and people would be like, "Here's your part..." So what else are you currently working on?

Rob Paulsen: Well that happens, too, but I get it. You know, look, if I were recognizable, it probably be different but it isn't. There's always a cachet of a celebrity and that's the way it goes, I can take a punch. But I'm working on a lot of stuff, I've got a podcast called Talkin' Toons and we're rebooting that.

Nice.

Rob Paulsen: [...] I do signings online, I have one coming up with the original four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Townsend Coleman, Michelangelo; Barry Gordon, Donatello; Cam Clarke, Leonardo; and yours truly Rob Paulsen, Raphael. All four of us are going to be doing a signing. If people would check me out on social media there will be a live signing on Instagram, that's how we'll be blasting it out there, but it's with a company called Instagraph, and they do it via Instagram.

But a lot of people love the old school Ninja Turtles. So there will be a really sort of fun COVID-Con if you will with the original OG TMNT. Keep an eye on my social media that will be out there in the next couple of weeks. But I'm always letting folks know because I'm very grateful that people stay in touch. The truth is, I can't get enough of it; I want to die being exhausted from saying, "Thank you." I just love it, I can't get enough of it and I'm a grateful beneficiary, there's so much love I don't deserve it. But while people throw it my way, I sure want to suck it up, baby. So thanks a lot for giving me the shot, Dave.

Well, thank you so much for carving out some time for us today. My last question to you, you've shared a ton of positivity today but specifically for folks out there who may be struggling with quarantine with all the other pressures that come with it, do you maybe have a brief message for your fans out there who just need a smile or a good word?

Rob Paulsen: Yes! I touched on it earlier and I really do live by this axiom. I appropriated from Readers Digest when I was kid; they have a thing in their magazine where there were was jokes at the end of each little magazine, it was, "Laughter is the best medicine." I appropriated that and added my own, it's, "Laughter is the best medicine, and the cool thing is, you can't OD and the refills are free," and that is absolutely the gospel truth.

I had chemo therapy and radiation that killed the cancer, but it was the laughter that got me through the pain. It was the laughter that got me through constant days of dry-heaves. It was the laughter that got me through not being able to eat for a month. It was that same stuff that's gotten people through much worse than I. So I tell people my prescription from Dr. Rob is to laugh from your soul every day and there's no limit on the prescription. Try to find a way whatever it is, that brings you joy and laughter to do it til it hurts from your soul and you know what that means. The kind of laughter that makes you cry, the kind of laughter that makes you can't get your breath.

If you can find a way to incorporate that into your daily life folks, you'll find as the song says, Charlie Chaplin said it many decades ago a lot better than I could, you'll find that life's worthwhile if you'll just smile and there are a lot of ways to get that. So, please avail of possibly enumerable ways of finding joy. It's there and it's often much closer than you suspect and like love comes from the most unexpected places. [In Pinky's voice:} "Sometimes even from a stupid loudmouth, narf."

Very well said, all of you.

Rob Paulsen: Thank you.

So thank you very much again for your time today. Best of luck with the Animaniacs roll out as we get closer to that release. On a more personal note, all the best to you and yours and thank you so much again, I really do appreciate it.

Rob Paulsen: Not at all, Dave. It was utterly my privilege, I worked really hard for this privilege and thank you for giving me an opportunity. You take good care of yourself, too, my friend.