Skylanders Academy showrunner on giving Crash Bandicoot a voice in the show
Skylanders Academy premiered on Netflix back in October. After the show appeared, it came as somewhat as a surprise that Crash Bandicoot was in, and even had his own voice.
GameSpot caught up with Skylanders Academy showrunner Eric Rogers to talk about giving the character a voice. He also touched on the mixed reaction and why the news of Crash’s involvement wasn’t talked up beforehand.
Head past the break for Rogers’ comments. Read GameSpot’s full interview here for other topics, including what’s in store for season two of Skylanders Academy.
On the approach of giving voice to Crash…
It was a pretty simple approach of taking what we knew about Crash–which is mostly action-oriented from his game lore–and trying to apply that to what was best for his particular story and his short stay in the Skylanders universe. We wanted him to be fun and gung-ho and engage viewers in the same way he delighted players of the game. And he has an Australian accent because he is a bandicoot from the Wumpa Islands off of Australia.
On voicing Crash…
Busted! I haven’t divulged this info anywhere yet because, well, I didn’t know if I could! But I guess the proverbial bandicoot is out of the bag now.
It was great fun voicing such an iconic character, but I never set out to be the one to play the role. My role as showrunner was always to write the best possible version of the character, along with my co-writer on that script, Brittany Flores. When it came time to record, I voiced Crash with a scratch track, thinking nothing further of the process. A short time after, my creative partners asked me to voice the role full-stop. I tried to talk them out of it! But it was very flattering that they valued my performance enough to really give it a go for the two episodes Crash appears in, so I dove in head-first and didn’t look back.
I used to act in high school and college, so the performance side of it wasn’t too daunting–I always know how I want my characters to sound when I’m writing them on the page–but the Aussie accent was the biggest challenge. And luckily, I’ve been married to an Australian for the past 16 years, so some of that Australian inflection and cadence seeped into my brain at some point. I know there’s been a bit of backlash about the accent… but my hope is that Australia still lets me into their country despite any criticism anyone might have.
On the mixed reaction…
I knew there’d be varied opinions on not only Crash speaking, but his accent as well. Luckily, I’ve been writing long enough to realize that not everyone is going to love everything you do. We had a great time bringing Crash to the screen, and appreciate that viewers who grew up playing the game and loved Crash were able to see the character with a new perspective!
On why Crash being in the show wasn’t talked up…
I didn’t want to distract from the series as a whole getting the attention we all want it to receive. It was never about me playing Crash, and I didn’t want any of my own horn-tooting about his appearance to distract from the buzz around the entire series. And I thought there was enough pre-release hype about Crash appearing in the show anyway, so I didn’t think I needed to add anything more to that.
