Cowabunga dudes!
If you grew up a rad eighties child or a gnarly nineties kid than it’s very likely you were raised with the voice of Pat Fraley.
He wasn’t one of the turtles, however, he was actually the guy helping the turtles and the creature opposing them. That’s right, Pat played the sports sporting vigilante Casey Jones as well as the slimy screaming sack of Dimension X brains known as Krang!
Having started his career doing Shakespeare in Australia, he was pulled into the the voice over world when an audition call came into his theatre asking for someone who does a James Cagney impersonation. He got the part and, after going into record the spot, realized he not only enjoyed it but also made more from that one gig than he made from a week at his theatre.
Soon after, Pat came back to the States and moved to Los Angeles where he got his first cartoon credits as additional voices in Hannah-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood. He continued on doing Scooby-Doo villains in the late 70’s but, according to Pat, everything took off in the 80’s when more new original cartoon series began airing in the afternoons and not simply on Saturday mornings. Suddenly work was flooding in like crazy for Fraley and others lucky enough to be in animation at that time as there were, in his words, “only about twenty of us that could do multiple characters in a 22 1/2 minute show.” His first credit as a recognizable character was Major Glenn Talbot on the early 1980’s The Incredible Hulk cartoon series.
Pat called that time a “golden era of animation” as far as the work went. His co-voice-actors and him would take on all the additional voices as well as primary characters. Pat jokes there would be conversations that would go:
– Producer: “Alright who’s light on their contract?”
– Pat: *Raises his hand*
– Producer: “Ok great, you’re the Asian professor.”
– Pat: “I can’t do Asian!”
– Producer: “You do now!”
Finally in the late eighties, Pat landed on a gold mine when he auditioned for and booked the roles of several reoccurring characters on the soon to be smash hit show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He went in to audition for the show and remembered thinking to himself “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…oh this’ll never go anywhere, what a stupid title.”
With only minutes to prepare a voice and after reading the brief description: *KRANG: An evil bodiless blurb of a man. A chortling villainous character but funny; Pat began breaking down his thoughts on the character. Check out the video, it’s a hilarious story.
He eventually went on to book, not only Krang and Casey Jones, but also Baxter Stockman and the crazy teenage turtle Slash.
With the Ninja Turtles, Pat says he finally came to the point in his career when his kids were interested in “daddy’s work”. Often in his kid’s school functions during auctions and sales, they would actually auction him off to use his voice for whatever purpose the bidder had in mind.
Pat is a veteran of animation voice over and one of the first in the group that essentially founded the business. He was, however, a bit younger than the rest, and such legends as June Foray, Daws Butler, and Mel Blanc would affectionally call him “The Kid”.
He attributes his success to both his mentors, such as Ed Asner and Chuck Blore, and to God and Jesus.
Currently, Pat is continually hard at work in the voice over business having done recent work on The Legend of Korra and the feature film Box Trolls. He’s been on a countless amount of radio shows, podcasts, blogs, and TV programs giving his stories and lessons. He offers coaching as well: http://www.patfraley.com/Learn/Learn.html
Pat got a reputation for his ability to quickly create characters. This, among other qualities, proves Mr. Fraley to be a model in creativity and risk-taking.
NEXT WEEK’S FEATURED VOICE ACTOR: He’s strongs to the finish when he eats his spinach, it’s Jack Mercer the VO man!
Chrispoiriervo 