A Comic Conversation Ep 36 - Tony Oliver - Gem State Comic Con 24

[00:00:00] NERDS, it is truly time to get nerdy. The guest in this week's episode was a producer on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Voiced Lupin the Third, Minato and Naruto, and of course Rick Hunter in the classic Robotech.

[00:00:47] We got to talk about it all in this episode of A Comic Conversation. We talk with Tony Oliver, the legendary voice actor and producer who has worked on almost all of our childhoods. We talk about his long and illustrious career, the roles he's gotten to play,

[00:01:04] and even shows he's produced that have a place in most of our souls. So get your power morphers ready, brush up on your Japanese translation, and power up those mechas. It's time for another exciting A Comic Conversation.

[00:01:20] Our next guest is a legendary actor who has voiced some of the world's most known anime characters, has done hundreds of characters that span generations. He's been a part of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Transformers, Hunter x Hunter, Beyblade, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, you guys get it right?

[00:01:38] But you probably know him most from Naruto, which actually I was just playing a song from Naruto right there, and Robotech. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tony Oliver! Thanks guys, thank you. Yeah, God, what an intro. I sound really old. I assume you're not though.

[00:02:07] Oh yeah, no, I'm old. I think we should replace old with legendary. Yes! I'm seasoned, how's that? Seasoned, there you go. Seasoned is good. The legend of Tony Oliver. My own mind, absolutely. And the mind of the people who are sitting in here as well.

[00:02:24] So Tony, we have a segment on our show called Growing Up Geeky. What did you geek out on when you were a kid? Batman. Yeah, my mom took me down to the Coliseum to meet Adam West. I did all of that stuff so I was a Batman nut.

[00:02:39] We share that. And then I moved into Star Trek. That time I was getting too old for Batman, Star Trek showed up. So that's kind of what transitioned. We share that because that was my Growing Up Geeky thing too, 66 Adam West Batman. Wow, yeah, that was so cheesy.

[00:02:53] I think that was a lot of people's first intro to Batman, was 66. Because they showed it after school. That too, Batgirl, loved, very first superhero I ever loved. Ironically years later I was doing a parody, a Lord of the Rings parody for a joke thing

[00:03:13] that was going around on YouTube and they put, they set me up as Frodo and I was in and when we were shooting in this cave and I'm looking around going, oh my god this is the Batcave. We were in the Batcave. It exists, it's a real place.

[00:03:25] You were in the Batcave. Yeah. That's real meta. And you're just like, wait, wait, wait, where are we? This is Gotham right? I didn't know Gotham was actually a place. More a state of mind.

[00:03:36] So let's talk about like you growing up since we're in the Growing Up part. What was it like growing up in Puerto Rico? I didn't grow up in Puerto Rico. That's a misnomer. I'm from Puerto Rico, I was born there but I grew up in Los Angeles.

[00:03:49] Oh okay. I grew up in Los Angeles. I grew up in Los Angeles. I was about a year old. We moved to San Francisco for a couple of years while my dad finished up his army stuff and then we moved to LA after that.

[00:03:59] So I spent most of my time there. So I grew up in La La Land. Oh okay, alright. Never mind. He was born in Puerto Rico. I was born there, yeah. And you know, my household was born culturally in Puerto Rico. Yeah, yeah, Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican, see?

[00:04:13] I think I want this, so I mean like you know, we're close. Yeah. And now they're bonding. So you began acting on stage. Which production made you think, I want to do this for the rest of my life? Oh god, almost every one of them.

[00:04:29] I guess this will tell the story. It was in sixth grade. I was in the choir in sixth grade and I got the Christmas solo. So I got to sing a solo. And I was really nervous and I went and sang it.

[00:04:44] And I was like, I'm going to sing it. And I was really nervous and I went and sang my solo. And I got a standing ovation. And I kind of went, oh I like this.

[00:04:55] So I kept doing it and then I got into junior high school and my voice started to change. So I could no longer sing. And so I took stage crew. I was going to just run the curtains or something.

[00:05:05] And I'm watching, they're doing a production of Up The Down Staircase. And I'm looking going, I could do that. I want to do that. So I just, I started pursuing it when I was really young. Theater workshops and things like that. And then I could.

[00:05:20] I started auditioning and had very little success. As you do with auditioning in general, right? Yeah, it's just, I turned out I'm not, I did well on stage. But you can't make a living in LA on stage. At least not at the time. It's a little better now.

[00:05:34] And TV didn't like me. And I was in a couple of really bad movies. And I was terrible. I mean I was really bad. I was very over the top and not pleasant to watch. And then I auditioned for my first voice job. And I landed it.

[00:05:49] And my second voice job I landed, a lead in a feature film called The Sea Prince and the Fire Child. And my third audition was Robotech. And I landed it. So it's like, okay, the universe is telling me I need to be a voice actor.

[00:05:59] And so that's how I ended up in that path. That's awesome. And Robotech, I mean, come on. Yeah, I know. That was going to be my exit. I had quit acting at that point. My second child had shown up, was being born.

[00:06:13] I took a job with a friend at a radio station 100 miles north of another city. And in sales, not even on the air. And suddenly I landed Robotech. So I'm driving 100 miles each way to do the job. Figuring this is going to be my last job.

[00:06:23] At least I'm getting paid once in my life to act. And then it turned into what it turned into. And it became a career for me. Yeah, our other host James, he couldn't make it to the show.

[00:06:31] But he's so upset because you were one of the big ones for him. He was like, dude, you're going to interview Tony Oliver. Robotech is a big deal for him. So, oh well. I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm going to interview Tony Oliver.

[00:06:41] Robotech is a big deal for him. Oh well, thank you. It's a big deal for me actually. So for posterity I got it on the interview so that he knows in the future. Yeah, so this is how important Robotech was to me.

[00:06:52] Carl Masek, who is the producer, hired me. I had no credit. I had one credit in voice acting that I don't think he even knew about. I had no television credits. I had a little bit of stage and I did a nice audition.

[00:07:02] And he cast me in the lead in his new show. I mean that was a tremendous amount of trust and faith. And because of him I have a career. So he's gone. So thank you Carl. But generally what was your experience with Robotech? I'd never dubbed before.

[00:07:17] So I'm learning how to dub as we're doing this. Back then we didn't have the technology we had right now. So right now we have beeps and visual stuff and all stuff that will lead us to the line.

[00:07:23] Back then you're kind of eyeballing it as it goes by. The lip-flap thing, right? Yeah, so most of the time I was trying to act and I was terrified that I was going to get fired. Because I have no...I couldn't... I was trying to get fired.

[00:07:33] I was trying to get fired. I was trying to get fired. I was trying to get fired. I was trying to get fired. And I didn't know, I couldn't quantify how I'm doing because I've never done this before. And I think it's okay.

[00:07:46] And they keep bringing me back. But I haven't met the other cast because we record one person at a time. And most of the time I'm driving down from Bakersfield so I'm not even starting until like 8 or 9 o'clock at night. I had a job in Bakersfield.

[00:07:54] And so it was really interesting and terrifying and scary. And it wasn't until Carl sat down with myself and Becky and the main cast and kind of explained his vision of the show going forward. It never did what he wanted to do.

[00:08:14] But it kind of started making me feel like I'm where I belong. And yes, maybe I'm a part of this. Maybe I'm not going to get fired. Every big job I ever had I just assumed I was going to be fired by the end of the day.

[00:08:26] It's kind of funny. Does that ever go away? I mean in general, not just for you? No. In fact I have to teach my students. I teach a lot. We all have this little voice on our shoulder that tells us we suck.

[00:08:41] We're terrible and we shouldn't be doing this. But there's also a voice that got us to start doing theater. And that's the voice over here saying, hey this is fun, this is good, you can do it. And the problem is we only listen to one voice.

[00:08:51] So in order to last in this career you have to listen to them both. Which means you have to have an ego but you have to keep it in check. When you first started playing in Robotech, did you have any references?

[00:09:05] Like did you see the Japanese version before you were able to kind of create the character? Yeah, I was guided through the character by the director and the producer. I had no idea what I was doing. So I was playing what I felt.

[00:09:18] I was just trying to play the emotion I'm seeing on the screen. And then they would give me the technique to do it. I just didn't know what I was doing. So that kind of led me. They did show us the first... No, they didn't. No actually no.

[00:09:37] We didn't see that. On Seeprints of the Fire Child they showed us the movie before we recorded it. But on Robotech they didn't. So you just went in blind? Which is anime, we do that all the time. I had no idea it was going on TV.

[00:09:53] It started out as a... The initial casting was for an OVA. Which was the Macross, the first three episodes of Macross. And we recorded that and it was sent out as a VHS. And then a couple months later I get a call.

[00:10:05] And they've sold this as a series now. It's no longer called Macross, it's now called Robotech. And we need you to come in and you're the lead. So yeah, the whole time it was just like... So after you woke up from fainting?

[00:10:21] Yeah, then I just tried to do the job and enjoy it. I thought it was going to be my last acting job. So I tried to enjoy it as much as I possibly could. And then I saw myself on the air and it was like,

[00:10:31] well this is kind of cool. And my kids didn't care. Because I was doing radio and TV commercials up in Bakersfield at the time. So they heard my voice on TV anyway. And so they're going, is that you dad? Yeah, it's my series!

[00:10:46] On the opposite side of that though, at what point did you realize it was a hit? When I got my first convention call actually, they were doing a weird thing. They were trying to send out people that looked like their characters.

[00:11:03] So they sent a guy named Frank Catalano out and was pretending to be me essentially. Because I'm a round guy. I'm not a skinny teenager. And so it wasn't until I got to that, it was a Star Trek convention with Robotech attached.

[00:11:22] And they told me, I arrived there and there's Kleons everywhere. I'm like, my people! And they said, okay come to this back door and they're going to announce you. When you come in, just turn the stages to the right. Go up there, do your panel.

[00:11:39] And when we're done, security will escort you out the front door. I was expecting 20 or 30 kids. What I had was 400 college students who were losing their minds over this. And they're asking me questions I can't possibly answer.

[00:11:53] Because I've only seen the little part of the show I did. So I found somebody in the audience. This is the first time I ever experienced debilitating stage fright. Because I was on stage without a script for the first time in my life.

[00:12:04] So I'm trying to be myself and all this stuff. And then they take me out to the security at the front. And people were losing their minds about it. They plopped me down and I'm sitting next to Scotty from Star Trek. James Duhan.

[00:12:14] I'm playing Scotty from Star Trek in this scenario. So I am totally fanboying. But trying to be the cool actor, I can't do that. And then he starts to talk to me and he doesn't have an accent. He's from New Jersey. So it's like, my mind's like, what?

[00:12:28] Where's the... yeah, it was weird. That's awesome. You're not a Scot? So then I started learning. I started looking into it and realized it was a fairly big hit. In syndication. In the towns that it played. Because it didn't play the whole country. Yeah, right.

[00:12:46] So when you did see it. And you saw all of the cool starship, spaceship. Almost like... Robots. Did you ever think how cool it would be to have that technology now? Like in real life. Of course, yeah. The mech in that is very military.

[00:13:11] So it's something that didn't necessarily appeal to me. I like the motorcycles in Mospita much better. Just because that's something I could actually... The Mospita section, that's the second part. But yeah, I was just happy.

[00:13:25] I was just happy and impressed that my voice was coming out of a TV screen. In a series that sounded like a real show. And we all sounded good. So that was blowing my mind. I didn't think I would ever get there. That's awesome.

[00:13:40] We already asked you that one. You know, I actually do. I am wearing a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger shirt. And you were really involved. I didn't realize how involved you were until we started doing some research. You're basically the Mighty Morphin Power Ranger guy. Well, yes and no.

[00:14:05] This is very rare because usually studio heads don't create the shows. They take credit for them. But Haim Saban actually created this. And I was working for him. So my job was to be the head writer. I wrote the story bible. I wrote the first episode, the pilot.

[00:14:23] And to kind of help develop it. We had a team. So it's not just me. There was a whole team of people involved in putting this together. But yeah, I had my hands right in.

[00:14:33] I did all the monster casting because I did direct that part of the show. Because of my anime background. And then we had other directors and producers do the big front part of the show. Once the show got going, I mostly spent time on the post-production.

[00:14:49] On the back end of the show. Making sure it was okay for you guys to watch. I threw out some Power Ranger plushies at the beginning here. She got a Green Ranger. And kind of like jumping into that character. You played Saban.

[00:15:04] And it's just kind of like, oh so you got to play the White Ranger sword. It was not designed that way. It usually isn't in those cases. I wanted to hire an actor named Ted Layman. Ted Layman had played Exodor in Robotech.

[00:15:18] He was the little kindy guy with a really strange nasally voice. So I wanted to cast him, but I couldn't find him. It turned out he had moved back to Tennessee. He was 76 years old. He had moved back to Tennessee to take care of his mother.

[00:15:29] This is a long-lived family. He's 76 and he's going to go take care of his mother. He's over 100 by now. So I was talking, well I can't find him. We need to recast him. And they said, what does he sound like?

[00:15:44] I said, well he sounds a bit like this with the British accent. They said, well you're an actor, you do it. That's how I end up playing that part. That's awesome. So, um... I mean we're talking about Power Rangers. And you talked about creating it.

[00:16:05] So some of the other properties that you've been involved in and things like that. There's so many. I know. Cowboy Bebop got an animated reboot. Not the live action stuff they try to do. If Cowboy Bebop had a live action reboot, if Cowboy Bebop had an animated reboot,

[00:16:20] which character would you want to reboot? Oh, okay. Well, I've told this story before. This is probably where you heard it. It's the only mainstream show I've ever auditioned for that I didn't get. I auditioned twice for Cowboy Bebop. I was up for Spike.

[00:16:38] And I was doing my audition. Steve Blum was in the next room waiting. By this time I'd been casting. I'd been doing a lot of stuff. I'd love to do this, but I'd cast Steve in this. Sure enough. He's who got the part.

[00:16:55] I basically gave my chance away as somebody who worked in casting. So I would take any part in Bebop. And the people that did Bebop are still alive. So I don't want to take their parts away from them. You know how it is. Sometimes they'll reboot and say,

[00:17:11] oh we need to cast somebody else for some... Yeah, I hate it when they do that. Anybody who saw the new Powerpuff Girls? Yeah, there was a lot of backlash for that one. So kind of going on that same line, you've been on both sides.

[00:17:27] Which do you prefer? Do you prefer casting or do you prefer... obviously not auditioning, but playing the character? Auditioning actually is fun. If you approach it right, it becomes playful. You get a chance to go play and be an actor for 15 minutes. While you do that stuff.

[00:17:45] You have to have that attitude. You finish it, you edit it, you send it off and you forget it ever happened. And then maybe someday you get a call. I don't cast anymore. I don't like casting. And the reason is because when I was casting a lot,

[00:17:59] my friends would get mad when I wouldn't bring them in. Which you're not right for the part. Yeah, but you didn't bring me in. I just wanted to audition. Why waste our time? So I'm glad. I work a lot with Bang Zoom Studios now.

[00:18:11] They have their own casting department and I am grateful. And they have a great casting director there. We do a much better job than I would. So my preference, it depends on what I'm doing. It depends on the show.

[00:18:23] I directed Fate Zero and I direct a lot of the Fate series. I'd rather be a director on that show. Because I've got my hands in the entire story and it's really a cool story. Especially with the way directing works with animation and stuff like that.

[00:18:39] It's so much different. Enhanced storyboarding is like what it's been described. Well yeah, we're dubbing. So it already exists in Japanese. So we're taking a lot of inspiration from the Japanese. When we do original animation, that were coming up from scratch.

[00:18:55] I was the voice director for Scott Tilton takes off last year. So that one we did in a traditional way. But because they're all celebrities, each person worked by themselves. Generally we work in an ensemble together. You got some really good performances out of them in that too.

[00:19:12] Because I've been in the show for a while. I feel like some of those performances were better than the live acting. Well thank you. I can't take all credit for it. I'm not the guy that's going to tell Chris Evans how to act.

[00:19:25] He does much better than I do. I'll tell Chris Evans anything he wants me to tell him. That is her forever crush. He's probably the most prepared actor I've ever worked with. He was so good, he was so prepared and ready to go.

[00:19:41] What we recently did with that show is we let them be them. We let Aubrey Plaza be Aubrey Plaza and Brie Larson be Brie Larson. That's my crush. You hit both, we both love you now. You're our favorite person in the whole condo.

[00:19:57] Not to say anything bad about Michael Cera, but I felt like his performance in the animation was better than his live performance. He was having more fun. He was having a ball during all of that. He was really busy.

[00:20:12] We went beyond my contract so he actually finished after I was done. He seems like he was a lot more emotive in this one than he was in the other one. He got it, he got the joke. The joke is it's not about Scott Pilgrim at all.

[00:20:25] So he got the joke and that's what I think he liked about it. You've also got to think that a lot of them were so young when they did it originally. Coming back to it, they learned so much more from the industry. That is it.

[00:20:40] I think one of the things that I love about all the anime actors and stuff I work with is that our anime actors are just as good. But Brie and those guys, they just get to it so much sooner. Because they're doing it every day.

[00:20:50] So they get to it really quickly. Where sometimes with the anime actors, we have to really search for the character. Speaking on that, when you get to be a character, I know it's different from anime because you have a reference when you're doing anime.

[00:21:07] When you are doing a character from scratch. Do you have a lot of creative freedom in creating the character? Sometimes the backstory is already done, but do you get to make up parts of that in your head to give him more? You have to.

[00:21:27] That's each of my students. If there's no backstory, make one up. As long as there's a backstory present in your mind, it makes the character seem bigger. Even if it's the wrong backstory. I did a show called Gormiti years ago.

[00:21:42] If you were in Canada, you may have seen it. It was not very good. We've spent most of the days making fun of the scripts. But I played this character named Obscurio, who was the villain. He was one of these guys, looks really dark.

[00:21:58] I've not done a lot of original animation, so I'm playing a main character in a real cartoon. I got myself together, I got all my subtexts going. I showed up and I'm doing the slow burn. Tony, what are you doing? He's Obscurio, he's angry.

[00:22:13] Just be loud and pissed off. You can create, but sometimes they go, yeah, that was nice, but don't do that anymore. That is the best director's note. I learned from that director a lot, because she directed with a lot of brevity.

[00:22:35] She would use movie references to get the emotion and then a lot with the fewest words she could. I actually used her technique. It's Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. I stole her entire directing technique. It's so effective. We won't say stealing, you homage her. I've totally told her that.

[00:22:56] I borrowed it. I'll give it back to you later. It will only be slightly bruised. How do you find the voice for the characters when you approach? We talked about how you had that new character and you did that.

[00:23:18] I did a lot of live acting, and I was always about the shoes. When I found the shoes for the character, that's how I got to my character. How do you do that with your voice? How do you find that character?

[00:23:31] I should have focused on shoes when I was doing camera work. The way I approach it is I look at the character descriptions and I get a sense of what that character feels like. What does the character feel like? What's the character's personality?

[00:23:54] Then I open my mouth and see what comes out. Most of the time, I'm using that first or second version. When I start to think about it, the character gets stiff and it's no longer appealing.

[00:24:08] I have a class called Getting Out of Your Head How Not to Voice Act. That's how I approach it. Sometimes it doesn't. At least it's a jumping off point. The important thing for an actor is to make a choice.

[00:24:27] To lay a choice down and then we see if it works or not. If it doesn't work, we just change it. Nobody ever gets it in one take. There are some actors that are just that good. There are some, but I make them do a second take anyway.

[00:24:47] He lost his place. I took us on a couple of tangents. That's fine because I'm so interested in what's going on. I forgot where we were. You've done various animation, video games. Can you tell us the difference in recording styles? Original animation, you animate to the voices.

[00:25:14] You're usually working on an ensemble with multiple people at the same time. Sometimes they even put a camera on your mouth so the animators can use your mouth positions. We do long scenes at a time. We'll do a minute and a half worth of dialogue.

[00:25:33] We'll do an episode. An easy episode is about two and a half hours. A complicated one, something like a Spider-Man is going to take three and a half hours. Anime, we work one person at a time. We preview what we see on the thing.

[00:25:49] We take inspiration from that and then we take out the Japanese voice. We keep the music and effects in, by the way, so you can be in the story. Then you just read. There are beeps that lead us to it. You talk and you're finished with that.

[00:26:03] It takes about two and a half days to do an episode that way. Video games, it depends on the video game. The gotcha games, the phone games, you generally go in and they just run a page.

[00:26:14] You just read, read, read, read, read, read, read, and then they go, we'll do this one, one, three, and five. We need you to do a game. Then we redo it. They do a little direction. Most fun ones are the ones with action.

[00:26:24] For the RPGs, for that sort of thing, it's kind of like doing an anime. You're by yourself, but you can't hear the other person because they're on a different... The way you...

[00:26:36] The way you do an anime is you just create an entire track that covers the whole thing. Video games, each line has to have its own file. So one file after another. And so you record the one at a time. And it's a lot of screaming.

[00:26:47] And generally, if you're doing an anime, if you're a lead character, you're going to maybe have 100 lines in an episode. I think the smallest roll I ever did was 1,500 lines in a video game. Wow. And that was a small character. So there's a lot more dialogue.

[00:27:01] A lot of dialogue. So you're doing a lot of dialogue. So there's a lot more dialogue. The biggest video game I've directed was 19,000 lines of dialogue. For about two and a half months. Oh, you're not supposed to do that in a day? I do that in a day.

[00:27:18] I was saying the fun stuff in that is like doing a Skyrim where you have to do 1,000... Ugh! Yeah! Honestly, out of all of the movies I was working on, the one I've made the most money on was Kingsclave. Final Fantasy XV. The feature film version of it.

[00:27:36] And I did just that. Ugh! For four hours. I literally had to go see a doctor afterwards. My throat was so raw that I had to go see... They'd stick a camera down my nose and look at my vocal cords. Okay, you're okay. But yeah.

[00:27:50] Discomfort for the art. It's fine. It's tough. There are people who do that for a living. That's all they do is reactions and wall-in background stuff. And they do quite well. But they really hurt their voices after a while.

[00:28:03] These are the people that live in LA, that are actors, but you never know who they are. You've never heard of them. You don't recognize them. But somehow they afford that house they're living in. Exactly. Gotta make that money. So, of all the work you've done,

[00:28:19] what is one of the fondest memories you have on any project? There's something that just hits your mind like, oh man, this was a fun thing we did. Um... Probably not. The one that came to mind right away when you asked that was on Fate Zero.

[00:28:34] We were doing a scene with Matt Mercer. And Matt's great. He's great. And his character had to kill his... the woman who raised him, essentially. At this point he's had to kill everyone who's ever loved him. Right. And for good reason. It wasn't he being a murderer.

[00:28:50] He had to kill them. And he finishes basically downing this plane. And he has a complete personality breakdown on the bow of this boat. And the performance was so powerful. I'm crying about it now. The performance was so powerful. That it was like... we had to stop.

[00:29:07] We had to wait 15 or 20 minutes before we could start again. Just because it was just so powerful. Those... I love those moments. I live for those moments. As a director, because now I kind of go, ha! We did it. It's teamwork.

[00:29:21] That moment I know we've told the story. In a way that people are going to get it. If I can get somebody to cry, that's a good day. It's probably one of the few times that you can say that. Yes.

[00:29:34] One of my favorite stages was I was doing Godspell. In a tiny little 80 seat theater. It was a box theater. So the audience... We're on the ground and the audience goes up from us. And I'm sitting, I'm playing John the Baptist.

[00:29:46] And it's the scene where he betrays Jesus. And I'm on my knees. And the guy who's playing Jesus is a powerful actor. Who's right above me. And suddenly right next to me I hear the audience start to cry. The woman begins to song. And then another one.

[00:30:01] And then another one. And this was better than drugs? Better than sex? It was like, this is the moment actors live for. And it was... Oh God, I love that. You feel the emotion. That's what appeals to me about being an actor.

[00:30:15] Is that I get to create a feeling over there. Right. And affect people the way I've been affected by these things. Right. Yeah. That's always the goal is to feel the emotion. I said it earlier today is I feed off of your energy. Yeah.

[00:30:31] So that's the whole thing is I... I mean, I'm taking away. It's not about me. It's about you. Let's move to a dream role or franchise that you would love to be a part of. Oh gosh. I auditioned for Star Wars. At one point Star Wars Rebels.

[00:30:51] Steve Blum got me an audition. Really lovely of him to do. Because I didn't get the part. You remember who you auditioned for in Rebels? No. And... Bebop. I would love to do a Bebop. But as a director this time. Oh, that'd be great.

[00:31:12] They created such a thing there that I don't think I could improve on or add to it. I could only take away from them. So I would want to do something different with that. So you want to make them your puppets? No. Actually, it's interesting.

[00:31:27] A lot of directors I've talked to think that's what we do. We're puppetry, but we're not. What we do, the good directors, create the context for the actor. So they can say that line in a way that's believable because they're feeling the context of what they believe.

[00:31:43] So it becomes more real that way. That's what we do is help them discover the reality of their character and not actually puppet them. Or spiritual guide. Something like that. So we're not Kermit the Froggy in that sense. That's fine. It's not easy being green.

[00:32:02] So we're going to go back to learning about. That's what we call it. After that, we will have audience questions. So if you guys have any questions, percolate them right now. There's a microphone up there. You guys are welcome to ask questions. So what would be

[00:32:21] the worst movie sequel ever made? Oh god. Any Sharknado. They've already done four, so at this point, Sharknado 5. Any Sharknado. We've had some pretty good ones in the past. We had somebody that said Passion of the Christ to the Resurrection reboot. We had Titanic 2 because

[00:32:45] they just bring the boat back. Ghost boat. Which they did a movie called Titanic 2. And I think it was like 666 and there's like a zombie Titanic movie. It was weird. Alright, so in the great debate, do you prefer coffee or tea? Coffee. Oh.

[00:33:06] I love how quick the answers are. It's interesting. When I've worked in Australia, and I've gotten to work in Australia, I've gotten to work in England. There I drink tea. It's really where when I'm there I want tea. Alright, I'll try crepe coffee. You know, I'm with you.

[00:33:23] I'm a half and half-er, so you know. My wife's a tea drinker, so that's fine. Okay, okay. If you could be a superhero or super villain, which one would you be? And what ordinary everyday task would just frustrate the hell out of you?

[00:33:37] Oh god, you're asking me to be creative. Superhero or villain. I forgot who it was yesterday. They said Dr. Doom and opening a can. The Flash. Okay. And just trying to drive through LA traffic. Really slowly. That is perfect. That is great.

[00:34:04] Who would you most like to sit next to on a 10-hour flight? Oh, well. Dead or alive, anybody. Well, my wife actually. I don't know, it would be... It'd be interesting to spend 10 hours with George Lucas. I would love to pick his brain. That's actually a frequent answer.

[00:34:26] We get Lucas a lot, and we get Spielberg a lot. Spielberg I just steal from. The few times I've gotten to direct on movies and camera work, I think of, well, how would Spielberg shoot this? I'm going to shoot it that way.

[00:34:42] What are you currently nerding out on? Oh, gosh. I'm starting to get really into this. I'm starting to get really into the anime I'm directing, which is something new for me. I used to enjoy them, but not really get into them. I'm doing Undead Unlocked right now,

[00:34:57] and I'm really getting into it. So I think I'm becoming an anime nerd in a full sense of the word. I think our friend Jackie Lash was on that. Yeah, Jackie and Ben Valmaceda is playing Andy. It's a great cast. Once again, I'm Ami Okada.

[00:35:11] I bang Zoom casted. She's fantastic. Nice. So I guess that's what I nerd out about. I'm going to go through all my Picards and all my Mandalorians. So I'm kind of waiting for new stuff to get into. Speaking of that, those are the yellow travel biscuits

[00:35:26] from season three of The Mandalorian, if you would like one. I don't know if you want one or not, but they're there for you. It's not in my way. Do we have any audience questions? Anybody have any questions? Want to say hi?

[00:35:44] Go for it. Go up to the mic. So you... Oh my god. Sorry, my bad. You wrote a lot of the Power Rangers stuff, right? Is that what I'm understanding? So you saw the original to the Japanese, right? How did you decide to make

[00:36:00] the story in the English versus what was going on from the Japanese? That was a decision made by Haiyam Saban, first of all. At the time, we were... Anime was in a transition. Prior to Power Rangers, everybody did what 4Kids does, we Americanized the crap out of everything.

[00:36:18] So that's... And frankly, I did two or three anime with Saban before we got to Power Rangers. One of them was Samurai Pizza Cats. They gave us a two-line synopsis of the episode and said, write what you want. So we wrote our own story.

[00:36:34] That concept of doing that was not unusual. In fact, that was actually the first place they go to. Second of all, the Japanese story was heavily steeped in ancestor worship. There's no corollary here to that. We just don't have anything that's even close to that.

[00:36:46] So if we're going to throw that part of the story out, we might as well throw the whole story out. Plus, my job, what I was told to do, was take out all of the Japanese stuff, people running down the street scared, Kanji, cars on the left,

[00:37:00] all of that stuff. And what's left is latex monsters and spandex Power Rangers. And then we were to write a story weaving in and out of all of that. So we had to throw out their story to do that.

[00:37:12] Because we got rid of all the Japanese stuff that was happening in there. So that's why we went that direction. When Disney took it, they went back to the starting honoring the Japanese story. The ratings went down. We were kind of right.

[00:37:26] I guess the only people who were still watching it were people who already knew Super Sentai. No, no, they still had growth. But they lost all the women. They lost all the girl viewers. Because they made it very, very male-oriented. One of the reasons we were so popular

[00:37:40] is because we were number one with women, with girls too. And that's because we had... Yeah, but that's one of the reasons because our chief creative executives was a woman. Made sure that we honored that and we didn't have the women

[00:37:56] always have to be rescued by the men. That was... We really worked hard on that. To make sure that we didn't inadvertently do stuff that was going to counter that concept. Well, the Pink Ranger really was. I was very anti-pink in the day. But the Pink Ranger... Yes!

[00:38:16] She spoke to me. And she actually had a lot to do with the creation of her character because originally she was written like Buffy. So total Valley Girl, total... Lots of tubular, bad hair day. The pilot, she has a bad hair day joke, all that stuff.

[00:38:32] And she really fought against that. She really pushed against that. Pushed back and she was right. So we went away from that pretty quickly. And I'm not saying I didn't like the Yellow Ranger either, but no, Pink Ranger alive. Trini was a badass.

[00:38:48] I'm just throwing that out there. It's funny because she's the only one in the group that was not a martial artist or a gymnast or anything like that. She was just an actor. She was actually a little clumsy. That's why she does Tai Chi. She looked cooler.

[00:39:04] She was there... Because of who she was, Trini was originally supposed to be very much of a kick-ass character. And then Audrey left and then we got Tui and Tui is very gentle. So we decided to kind of make her into the heart. So that's why her character

[00:39:20] kind of went that way. Playing to her strengths. That's awesome. So before we start getting into the wrap up questions on this, I saw she pulled it out, but I actually want to know this question. Being someone of Puerto Rican descent, what is your favorite Puerto Rican dish?

[00:39:38] I have a few. I like aca-pufria, which is kind of a fritter with meat inside and yuca and pintain on the outside. But I only like my grandmothers. I only found one restaurant that actually could serve it that way. So I like that. I like arroz guisado,

[00:39:56] which is a stewed rice with pork. That's the version that I make. And... Well, lechon is okay, but those are my favorite. I'm a big pernil fan, man. Yeah, I just... I make it all the time, but about every third time it comes out right.

[00:40:14] And of course Puerto Rican staple, arroz con condoles. Condoles, yeah. I go to restaurants for that. My... Those beans are really hard to make. And make them taste right. Our similar thing is gallo pinto, so it's very close. So getting into the wrap-up questions. Sticking with food.

[00:40:36] The realm of food. The hardest question you're going to be asked all day. What is your favorite kind of taco? Oh! I like... That's easy. I like a soft taco with marinated chicken, cilantro and onion. No sauce. I like that. Some people that agree with you there. So...

[00:40:58] You can only get them at food trucks in California. So what is some advice you might have for somebody who's trying to get into the industry? Patience. It takes a long time, and you may never get there. So you need to enjoy the journey. That means take classes

[00:41:14] and get yourself educated, but take classes from people that build you up, not tear you down. Make sure that you understand... Acting is a vocation. It's a calling. That doesn't mean that you have to be paid. I know a lot of people who are very good actors

[00:41:30] who've never been paid a day in their life to act. So you want to be an actor first. And that is taking classes and getting on stage and doing all the stuff you need to learn the fundamentals.

[00:41:40] Even if you hate stage and it scares the crap out of you, get up there anyway. And be scared. And learn how to act while you're scared. Because you're going to be nervous when you go in the booth too.

[00:41:48] The first time I went in the booth, I was like... You know? And I've been acting professionally for about a year and a half or two years at this point. But this is the first time doing this. Like, oh crap. Big eyes.

[00:42:00] I say it all the time. It's a small V, big A. Yeah. The voice doesn't matter as much as the actors. Yeah, so get your acting together too. And then you'll figure out your voice. Because the idea that you need a funny voice

[00:42:12] to be a voice actor is an old concept. I had it too. I thought you had to be Mel Blanc. I thought you'd be able to do Bugs Bunny. And I do one cartoony voice in my life. The rest of it is all versions of me. So it's...

[00:42:24] Get your acting together first and your voice will come. It's like when you study Mel Blanc and realize how good of an actor he was. Well, that's another thing. It's all about Tom Kinney. If you listen to Tom Kinney, Spongebob. Listen to Spongebob sometime. But listen critically.

[00:42:36] He's saying funny things in a funny way. But there's a lot of subtext behind what he's saying. Which is what makes it funny. What makes it good and what makes you love him. What other parts you need to learn? You learn in acting class.

[00:42:48] They always point out this fact about Mel Blanc. If you guys have never noticed this. Mel Blanc could play one of his characters playing another character. So he would do Daffy playing Bugs and Bugs playing Daffy. And change the personalities with a different voice.

[00:43:06] And the whole thing is, yes, he was versatile with his voice. But his acting ability was uncanny. The one class I teach you about getting out of your head, the whole point that I teach you is that you build the emotion first

[00:43:20] and then you lay the character voice on top of that. So you could, you're playing, so I'll have them do a scene where one, somebody's a drug addict, a really dramatic scene. And then they'll lay like a Spongebob voice on top of that.

[00:43:30] And it sounds funny, you laugh. But by the end of the thing, you're crying because this Spongebob thing is working because the person's feeling the drama. So it doesn't matter what the voice is, it's the acting that makes the difference. So that's why you're always drawn together.

[00:43:44] That would be funny. So what's next for you? Currently I'm directing Undead Unlocked and Beyblade, I direct Beyblade also. I'm starting a new show on Tuesday that I can't talk about yet. And... NDAs are fun? That one's in, yeah.

[00:44:02] I have a friend of mine who has a great button that says all my best work is NDA. And convention wise, I'll be in San Antonio and I'll be in San Jose and Chicago the week after that. Nice. What? He said Ghost Spurs. Oh, Ghost Spurs, yeah.

[00:44:20] So again, another hard question. Who wins in a fight? Rick Hunter with the Veritek fighter or Minato Namazaki? Oh, me not sure. One Rasengan will blow that thing out of the sky. He's a badass. So where can everybody find you and learn more about you and follow you?

[00:44:40] I've TonyOliver275 on Instagram and TonyOliverEntertainment.com is my stuff and TonyOliver Voice Actor on Facebook. And those are the places I kind of hang out. I no longer work on X but I do stuff on threads so if you want to do that as well. Awesome.

[00:44:58] Yeah, well Tony, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you. Everybody give a round of applause for Tony Oliver. We hope you enjoyed this week's Comic Conversation. This was the production of the Distance Nerding Podcast in Time for Tacos Media.

[00:45:14] For more content, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok all at Distance Nerding. If you enjoy our content, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks and keep nerding together. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.

[00:45:30] Signing out from another amazing episode of Comic Con Radio. Tune in for your daily shows of Comic Con Radio. Go to ComicCon-Radio.com. Reach us on social media, Instagram, Comic Con Radio, Comic Con Radio. Taking the world one listener at a time.