Interview with Dee Bradley Baker
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Dee Bradley Baker
American voice actor known for the clone troopers in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Appa and Momo in Avatar, Klaus in American Dad! and Perry the Platypus.
These answers are taken from Dee Bradley Baker | Toon'd In! with Jim Cummings on Toon'd In with Jim Cummings's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with voice acting?
My first show biz job was a game show called Legends of the Hidden Temple, and I voiced this giant talking rock in this kids game show on Nickelodeon. Before that I had done stand-up and children's theater and plays and musicals, and shows at Disney World. I worked at Disney World four and a half years doing a kind of sketch improv show, and also street theater storytelling in the World Showcase at Epcot. And then I was also the walk-around Beetlejuice at Universal Studios when that opened up in 1990 in Orlando.
I'd do these squeaky clean family shows during the day, and then at night I'd go over and don the Beetlejuice makeup and just kind of harass people in a way that they just loved. It was all the things I liked. It was character, it was improvisational, and it's about stepping over boundaries, but in an amicable way.
When did you start doing voice over work?
I started doing plays and musicals in second grade, and I really liked doing plays and musicals, but I never thought I was an actor. I never looked at it as a career. I didn't study acting. I did a lot of performing. I did choirs and musicals and plays and stand-up. Even when I graduated college, there's no way that I said to myself, now I'm going to be an actor, let alone a voice actor. But I kept doing those kinds of performing things that I thought were fun, whether they paid or not, which usually they didn't.
It really wasn't until my late 20s that I started considering, oh, that's actually a career, and it's actually fun, and I think I've got some of the skill set to make it work. The host Kirk Fogg said come check out Los Angeles. My wife was an actor, and we just said, life's good out here in Orlando, it's sustainable, but it can get bigger and better in LA. Let's just give it a try. And happily it worked. I would be around 29 or 30.
What drew you to a career in voice over?
I was working on Cow and Chicken, which was my first really full series, and I remember the producer of an on-camera show was going to take me to producers, but it conflicted with a Cow and Chicken recording. The casting director's basic take was, are you going to go with me to producers, or have I wasted my time with you? This is a fork in the road, kid. If you want to do your little voice-over thing, that's fine, but that's it.
And I just thought about it fairly briefly. Voice-overs: let's see, it's air conditioned, I don't have to memorize lines, I get to work with really fabulous people, it's quick, it's close to home, they only use me for like two hours, maybe three. I think I'm going to be a voice actor. I can't sustain trying to get two airplanes off the runway that are going in different directions. That would be probably around '95 or '96.
What do you enjoy most about voice over?
Freedom is the right word. It's a daily dose of totally fresh freedom. It's a different one every time something comes at you. That's the fun and the challenge of it: to jump off a different diving board with a crazy character or a different idea or a different style, a different tone. It could be different things on multiple different shows a day, and it's such great variety. I just feel bad for on-camera or sometimes even stage actors who are in this little box and much more confined with their physical type. In voice acting there's this maximized freedom.
But it's not easier. It may be free and it may be fun, but what you're bringing to bear as an actor is no less specific and no less contextually aware. It's an art, but it's kind of a hidden, invisible one. What people don't see is that process of finding the idea, honing it so it just works beautifully, and then moving on and clearing the deck for the next idea. That's what's really impressive and beautiful to me about it.
What was a great moment for you as a voice actor?
It was thrilling and scary and adventurous to perform Daffy Duck in Space Jam. That was early in my career. I'd only been out here for a couple of years and I didn't know any better. It was fun to be thrown into that mix with the challenge of a classic character like that, and to be working with Ivan Reitman and Billy West on this whole big production. I got to work with Michael Jordan for a day wearing the green suit.
And also an education, in that we weren't invited to the premiere. Billy West got his agent to call up, and finally they gave two tickets to me because I was Daffy and two to him because he was Bugs. My wife gave up her ticket so I could take Porky Pig, which is Bob Bergen. We show up at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and the big guy with the clipboard says, sorry, you're not on the list, you're at the theater over to the side. There's a sheet up on the side of the building and a guy with a projector. But plus, this is exactly what would happen to Daffy Duck if he were actually in a movie. It was a great lesson and a great adventure, and kind of a launch that affirmed a little more confidence in myself, which I think you carry into your auditions, and that leads to more work.
How did your voice over career unfold?
When I came out here I was open, trying a lot of different things. I was doing on-camera commercials and commercial voice acting and auditioning for little one-off cartoons at Hanna-Barbera, but I was also trying to work my way into television, and comedy television fit me the best. I did a little series called The Journey of Allen Strange for Nickelodeon, where I was on camera as a UFO nut. Then I was working on Cow and Chicken, my first really full series, with the brilliant Charlie Adler and Candi Milo and a lot of other monstrously talented people who taught me a lot very quickly.
When I was starting out three decades ago in Hollywood, I was in the room with Frank Welker and Jim and Charlie Adler and others like that who are really confident, and I could see, being this little insecure, comedy-oriented weirdo, how you bring the power that's unique to you into a session so that it's collaborative and fun. The answer is not to try to replicate any of that, but you learn from that and you sort of catch the spark from it and ignite your own flame. I'm very lucky that I came into this industry with that sort of an education available to me.
What advice do you have for new voice actors?
To do this kind of stuff, you really have to want to do it despite the door slammed in your face. You need to hear that the odds are terrible. There's a deep bench of people who are very established and very, very good that you're going to have to compete against and be as good or better than, and you're going to need luck as well. But if this is what you've got to do, then you've got to do it. Just don't be naive. There are all kinds of resources. I've got my own website, iwanttobeavoiceactor.com, that has my opinion on a lot of things about becoming a voice actor, and it's free.
For me, doing things like stand-up and improv, where you're working with a live situation, was hugely important in being ready for this kind of work. You start to be able to read the room.
And obedience only gets you so far. When you're auditioning and when you're working, your job is not to be obedient or to make people like you. Your job is to make something awesome that fits, that works. You bring a confidence of good ideas. That is real power, and you should embrace that about yourself and not be apologetic about it.
Think about a demanding director, producer or client in a session. What made them difficult, and how did you work with them successfully?
In directing, the gradient is from control to freedom. Some directors are very controlling and they'll give you a line read, and they want it to be exactly this way, and it's a miserable long experience that goes on too long. On the other end is just freedom: well, there's a script, but if you've got anything better, just go for it. And that can be too free.
Sometimes they just want the line read. It's like, okay, I'm a session player, sure. Tell me the line and I will say it as you did. But if I can, I'm going to try to give it to you the best that I think it can be. In a way you're kind of hired for your opinion. To be really good at something means that you've got a really strong, compelling, sensible opinion of what needs to happen, and it brings others along. It doesn't threaten them, and it helps.
Has your voice over career progressed the way you expected?
I never looked at it as a career. First of all, I didn't think that's really what I was. I didn't know what I was. And plus, I didn't think you can earn a living doing that. I always looked at performing as just something I do because I like it, and if it can pay me, then great. I kept trying different versions of it until it finally just kind of narrowed into voice acting.
It's a suit that fits me well, and it's a lot of fun, and it's something that I like that likes me. It's a great career. I listen to a lot of memoirs and autobiographies on audiobook of on-camera people that do movies or television, and I'm very interested in that, but I've never listened through one to say, gosh, I wish I had that career. Every time it's like, man, I'm really glad I'm a voice actor. I have zero regrets about going into voice acting.
Of all the voices and characters you have recorded, which is your favorite?
The one that breaks my heart the most is Fives. He died really tragically, and he was heroic. He was a hero that came that close. He's one that breaks my heart that I really love. But 99 and Rex, of course, and I can't really narrow that down very well.
I'll say that it was really fun, it was thrilling and scary and adventurous, to perform Daffy Duck in Space Jam. If I could be Daffy Duck, I would love to be Daffy Duck. This kind of benevolent chaos. He's all over the place. It was fun to be thrown into that mix with the challenge of a classic character like that that I resonated with. And my Daffy was not pitched. That was my voice.
Who is your favorite voice actor, and why?
[Frank Welker is] a great inspiration, and he's the best. I always said he's like Coke and I'm like RC Cola.
I really miss being around Corey Burton and seeing him do his thing, which I got to see a good amount of in The Clone Wars in particular. He played Cad Bane, and Count Dooku. To be in a room and see someone do that, in a way that everything that's coming out of his mouth is this unexpected, almost frightening surprise, and it just doesn't stop, and it's so effortless. It's both intimidating and invigorating and inspiring. It's such an actor's education. He walks into the room, he's a Chatty Cathy, and then he gets going. It's like, look at that, that was a mask, he's got lots of different defaults. Maybe there's more in me than just this thing that I've been doing. I wouldn't have known that if I couldn't see someone who can do that kind of switch-up with such ease and such brilliance.
Describe your voice and your style.
I think of myself as a session player, part of an ensemble that's mostly anonymous, not really in it to be front and center doing the rock star solo necessarily, although there are times where it falls to us. For the most part we're there to connect with others, to read the room, to read the script and to work with the producer and the writers to find something that flavors the stew as beautifully as we possibly can.
I think of improv like seasoning. It's like asking, what about salt? Well, let's taste the soup and see if it needs it. A little can go a long way. You have to serve the story first.
I'm going to look like an idiot doing what I do. It's ugly, it's grotesque, it's humiliating, it looks awful, and that doesn't matter, because I'm doing my job of making something that they want that's useful. I like doing weird stuff. It's acting, but it's also this other weird stuff of sounds and characters. I like it, it likes me, people like me doing it.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your demo list.
I did a singing telegram for a day and a half maybe, and it was the worst thing. It was over Easter, and so I had to be the Easter Bunny, and I had to wear the big goofy helmet with the ears and everything. The little one comes to the door, and I go, "Hey, it's me, the Easter Bunny," and I'm singing, and I realize that I'm breathing the same air over and over again and I'm going to pass out because I didn't have any fresh oxygen. And I pulled the thing off my head, and I'm soaking in sweat, and to the little five-year-old, the Easter Bunny just ripped off his head. The lady looks at me and goes, "Are you all right? Why did you do that?" I don't even think I got paid. I said, you know what, I should go.
I posted on my website, creepyyard.com, pictures of my Halloween yard. I don't do a Halloween costume, because every day I go to other planets and I become other creatures and other beings. I'm in service of other people's worlds. But for Halloween I get to make my own world. My yard is the world that I make that's mine.
Dee Bradley Baker's Full Biography
Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor from Indiana. He first became known for voicing Olmec in Legends of the Hidden Temple before voicing Daffy Duck in Space Jam. He is well-known for voicing Klaus in American Dad, the Clone Troopers in several Star Wars media, Ra's al Ghul in Batman: Arkham City, Momo and Appa in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Perry the Platypus in Phineas & Ferb, Sunny Jim in Lobo, Kevin the Sea Cucumber in SpongeBob SquarePants, Numbuh Four in Codename: Kids Next Door and Gravemind in Halo 2.