The Cast and Crew of ‘Ducktales’ told me a lot about this show
I am a big fan of Ducktales. I watched the show as a kid, and have many of the seasons on DVD. It is an amazing show that all ages can enjoy. Now there is a new version coming out. I was lucky to interview the cast and crew at D23 this year. Here is what they told me about this show.
So how did you hear about this project?
Ben Schwartz: I did a TV show called Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja for Disney XD. Did a hundred episodes of that. And when that ended, I was friendly with the casting guys. The second someone told me there was a chance that they were rebooting Ducktales, I was so excited because I was a huge fan as a kid. Then I auditioned like everybody else. There was the audition, call back and all that stuff. Luckily, they had picked me and liked the way I had played the character. But I was so excited to find out,because all I wanted to do was to get a shot to audition.
What was the audition like for you?
Kate Micucci: It was similar to what Ben was saying. I was super excited that they were bringing Ducktales back. I auditioned just like everyone else and when I got a call back I was like ‘Oh man’. You try not to get too excited. But this one in particular because it is so iconic and there is such a love for this show. I was kind of like ‘Oh, I hope this goes well’. So yeah, when you get the call that you got the part. It was pretty fun.
Dis you guys have a favorite Ducktales episode growing up?
Ben: Well, if you asked me today about the shows that I watch. Like what is my favorite Larry Saunders or The Simpsons episode, I can do it in a heartbeat. But I feel like as a kid, I was so young that I could never really differentiate between the episodes. I have seen all of them many times over but I don’t know a specific one.
Kate: I know, I have been having trouble with the same question. However I will say I really, really love the Nintendo game. So that was one of my favorite Nintendo games, was Ducktales. I think also I will say as far as the theme song goes that it is one of the top theme songs ever written, maybe in the history of television.
Ben: And in terms of that Nintendo game, my ringtone was the Moon theme for years.
Kate: No way! That is amazing (laughs).
So how did you hear about this show?
Beck Bennett: Well, my two agents (Film and Television) changed agencies. It was a big shift from CAA to UTA with comedy agents. They were at UTA and were like ‘You should meet our voice over agents’. I met them and they were like ‘Oh, you would be good for Launchpad on Ducktales‘. That was kind of like my first audition with them. I went out for it, and now I am Launchpad.
Toks Olagundoye: I do a little bit of voice over work, so I audition for a lot of different things. It was an audition I was sent by my people at Innovative. I recorded it and emailed it off to them. Many weeks later I found out that I got it.
What was your biggest challenge in voicing your roles and making them your own?
Beck: Well, I have done a lot of animated voice over auditions, and have not gotten pretty much all of them. That is kind of how it works. You get one for every hundred or two or whatever. For me, I play these types of confident fools a lot. These sort of guy guys, like these macho guys who think they are macho but they are kind of stupid and they mess up a lot. Because I have this deep voice and sort of that presence. So, when I got the audition and I had watched the original Ducktales. I kind of immediately knew what I wanted to do. With some animation I have been watching recently, I really like voices that are like not trying to be incredibly different. It is like an essence of their own voice. So that’s kind of what I wanted to do, was close to that. I kind of knew what I wanted to do right away.
Toks: Well, there was a description when they give you an audition. One of the more prominent things in it was Helen Mirren. And that did it for me. I grew up watching her. So I took that and ran with it. I mean, you never know. So you just have to look at the description and make it your own and keep it moving. I like her. I never watched Ducktales before in my life. So I don’t know if she is like the original or not.
What was the biggest challenge in bringing this show back?
Matt Youngberg: I think the biggest challenge is doing it right. It really is. It is a lot of work and a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves. To make sure that we are making a show that lives up to the legacy of what Ducktales is. Cause Ducktales means a lot to a lot of people. Like to everyone around the world. If you are in our age group or younger it means so much. We want to make sure that we are doing something that is true to the original series but is also creating that same nostalgic feeling that we have but creating it for a new generation. So yeah, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves.
Francisco Angones: Yeah, there is definitely a feeling that someone in our generation gets when we they hear Ducktales. There is something about it. And that’s the feeling that we are constantly trying to chase. And figure out, how do we give that feeling to a new audience. The times have changed, the methods have changed. But if you still get that feeling at the end of the day, we always say. If you are working on Ducktales, the right person to work on Ducktales is a make up of fifty percent so freaking excited that they get to help bring the show back and fifty percent so impossibly terrified of messing it all up.
Matt: So we were doing the sound mix for our first episodes and it’s been so much work to get it ready. To get it to the point where we are ready for the world to see it. And I had a dream the night before the sound mix. In that dream Frank watched it and he didn’t like it. I was so mad because we worked so hard. That pressure dream came from the fact that we both are working so hard to give the audience the right thing. We want it to be the right thing so badly that just the idea that we didn’t do it right was infuriating.
Francisco: We are also such huge fans of the original. Part of the reason that this felt like the right time to bring it back was because we originally identify with Huey, Dewey, Louie and Webby. And now we are identifying with Donald. We have our own kids, Matt and I have daughters. There is something interesting about the decor of our version of the show. Is this relate able family dynamic. That is part of why we distinguished Huey, Dewey and Louie a little bit further than they had been before. Why we incorporated Webby as part of the kids. We never say its the boys or the nephews, its always the kids as a group. Because today family means different things to different people. It’s not always a mom and a dad. You know ‘What is it like to be a triplet? What is it like to be the friend whose so close that she might as well be family? What is it like to be the bodyguard/ housekeeper? What is it like to be the Launchpad?
Matt: To have these uncles, these crazy uncles? These father figures? There is a lot to mine for the show. That we want to present a family to the new generation of kids. A family that they’ll understand and see themselves in.
What was the process like of bringing Ducktales back?
Matt: Well I think what we did was we tried to look at what was it that made us nostalgic about the original. Why for thirty years have people loved Ducktales? What are the iconic things about it. How can we approach those things using modern story telling and modern animation techniques. So it’s not about just rehashing what has been done before but it’s also not throwing away what has been done before to do something completely different. Something worked. Something fundamentally worked about that original series. So we need to be able to bring that and then bring our modern story telling sensibilities into it.
Francisco: The thing we recognized in Ducktales being such a beloved property was that Ducktales mean different things to different people. For some people Ducktales is the original series, for some people it is the Carl Barks comics. For some people it is the international comics. For some people it is the Nintendo game. For some people it is the rebooted version of the Nintendo game. And for some people it is the original Donald Duck shorts. And the Huey, Louie and Dewey shorts. We tried to take all of these things that people thought of and said, ‘Yeah, its all game. It’s all part of the mix’. It is part of the reason that we set up the story as we did at the beginning of our series. Huey, Dewey and Louie don’t even know that they are related to Scrooge McDuck. And that Donald and Scrooge had a falling out over something that happened years ago. We wanted to use that as a way of saying ‘Scrooge McDuck and by proxy Ducktales, was this amazing fantastic thing that went on a high flying, rip roaring, stupid crazy adventures’. And then it stopped for a period of time. Now we are bringing these kids in and introducing them to that. Letting today’s modern viewers relate to them and be exposed to it in that same way.
Duckatales premieres Saturday August 12th on Disney XD. You can follow this show on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.