Greg Weisman, who has served as producer, writer, story editor, voice actor, and voice director for a number of animated series, talks with Toon Zone’s Marvel Animation Age about his work on The Spectacular Spider-Man, and had this to say about working with the voice cast:
[When] we started working on the show, we didn’t have a voice cast yet, so once the voice actors come in and they start to breathe life into these characters, that influences you. This great cast did a magnificent job at handling everything we threw at them, but once you get to know those voices, it becomes easier to write towards their strengths and do fun stuff with them. Jonah’s obsession with wasting time was something that sort of tossed into the pilot, and that became sort of a trope for him, because when Daran [Norris] did the character and he’d put these ridiculous deadlines on things. On the humor side, that’s where a lot of discoveries got made. [From] a character standpoint, a lot of that is by virtue that the voice cast is doing such a great job.
MAA/TZN: I know a lot of times I hear that someone will come in and read for a part, and that will really change or sharpen or define the character for the writers. You just mentioned something like that for J. Jonah Jameson, did that happen with anybody else on the show?
WEISMAN: Yeah, I think almost every character taught us those lessons, like what Crispin Freeman did with Electro, and with Flash Thompson. Certainly Josh LeBar did amazing stuff with Flash that really encouraged us, especially in season 2, to give more depth to his character. We think that Grey DeLisle is hilarious as Sally, the girl that everybody loves to hate on our show, but we think she’s really funny, so we gave her some more attention. Even Kevin Michael Richardson as Principal Davis. Principal Davis has, I don’t know, 8 lines total in season 1? But in season 2, he’s got a couple of great little ad libs there that we kept in because they were just both funny, but they also really helped define Davis as an individual and not just as a functionary character.
Continue reading: Marvel Animation Age and Toon Zone Interview Greg Weisman on ‘Spectacular Spider-Man’ [Toon Zone]
Previous ‘Spectacular Spider-Man’ news: 3.20.2009 — Josh Keaton is Spider-Man