Interview with Rob Paulsen
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Rob Paulsen
Voice actor and singer from Michigan, known as Yakko in Animaniacs, Pinky in Pinky and the Brain, Raphael and Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Carl in Jimmy Neutron.
Source: Dave Lee Down Under on YouTube
These answers are taken from Animaniacs & TMNT's ROB PAULSEN Talks A Life In Toons! on Dave Lee Down Under's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with voice acting?
I was asked by my agent, have you ever considered doing animation? I said, of course I have, but there are a handful of actors who do it all. And she said, yeah, but they're auditioning for a couple of new shows at Marvel, which turned out to be G.I. Joe and Transformers. Would you like to audition? Of course I want to work. I'll audition for anything. So I auditioned, I got the job, and the first thing I noticed when I got into work was it was like any other acting gig, except nobody cared what I looked like. It was about creating characters, going through a script, breaking it down, adding my own stuff, all of that which I would do in any audition or any gig, whether it's being on St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues or MacGyver. Same process. But I was not limited by being an average-looking Caucasian boy from Michigan. And now I am not limited by being an old Caucasian boy from Michigan.
What drew you to a career in voice over?
I had already developed a keen sense of improv and a desire to create character voices, inspired by the usual suspects: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, the Goons, Jonathan Winters, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, and a lot of American talent. So it wasn't foreign to me. I had just never worked in a proper cartoon.
Also, I've been a singer longer than anything, and I just used to sing in character voices because it was fun, no different than Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters. It made my soul happy. It made girls laugh. Humor is a very powerful tool in terms of getting someone's attention. And even if people didn't pay attention to me, it made me happy and it cost me nothing. I still do it. I was doing it on the way into work today. I was working on a song I've been writing and singing in character, because it makes me happy. I don't know that anything will ever be done with it. Doesn't matter.
What do you enjoy most about voice over?
The ultimate metric by which my success is judged by me is the amount of joy that I am now able to see on both sides of the equation. I don't draw them, I don't write them. It is a deeply collaborative effort, the upshot of which results in an instantaneous, authentic, organic smile. I've been well paid, and a lot of those shows I'll never make another dime from. That's not the point. What is the point is the joy, happiness, love and nostalgia that is generated by those characters. So man, I won the lottery.
People tell me the most incredibly wonderful stories about these characters, and it's often way bigger than a paycheck or an action figure. People tell me, often through tears, my mom's gone now, but she struggled mightily with breast cancer, and Pinky and the Brain was her laugh slash medicine every day for six months, and we shared it together. Stuff like that over and over again. I can't get enough of it.
What was a great moment for you as a voice actor?
I remember when Tress MacNeille, my sister Dot, used to sit between Jess and I, my brother Wakko, at every recording session for all 100 episodes. I remember one particular episode, a two-parter, in which we had everybody who was anybody in the Hollywood toon vibe around us. We were playing musical microphones. Billy West, Frank Welker, Jim Cummings, the best of the best. And I remember looking at Tress and saying, boy, honey, take a picture of this. Unless you're on The Simpsons, it just don't get no better.
Cut to 23 years later, the first episode of the new version. I sat next to Tress as usual, and I took her hand as we were getting ready to start, and I said, sweetie, do you remember when we had that episode of Animaniacs? And she stopped me and said, it doesn't get any better. I said, yes, you remember that. She said, you bet I do. It does, doesn't it? And I just got a little sideways, because she gets exactly what I'm talking about. Rebooting a show that became iconic with the four main cast members and Steven Spielberg, that is very unique.
How did your voice over career unfold?
I loaded up my little 1976 Honda. My dad was at work. My mother was on the porch, tearful, as her oldest boy drove off into the sunset for Hollywood. I had a theater background, music background, and came out here to apply my trade in the big kids' pool like everybody else. I was 22 years old with three years of practical, live experience on the road. I was auditioning for TV, movies, commercials, doing music, and I put myself in a position to get lucky. You have probably heard that axiom that luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
That would never have happened had I not driven out to California. Little Rob Paulsen from Grand Blanc, Michigan. I'm an itinerant actor. I'm a blue-collar worker in the dream factory, baby, and very proud of that. It was probably the 25th time I've been on the Paramount lot in my 40 years here, and just like the first time I took a moment to pinch myself. I'm still doing it. It never is not wonderful.
What advice do you have for new voice actors?
Nobody forces you to be an actor. I chose this, so if it gets tough, it's on me. And that is not to say that if you decide it's not for you, you're somehow failing. Not at all. You don't know until you try it. The lowest points that I've had out here never were more difficult than the high points. It was never a situation where I said, well, it's been slow for six months. Would you prefer to have low points back in Michigan? No. Are you still involved in making it happen? Yes. Then probably you shouldn't leave.
The most glorious aspect of voice acting is it is not about the way you look. You're limited by your talent, your willingness to play, and the kindness of producers to hire you.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a voice actor?
Often folks on the autism spectrum are deeply affected by animated characters. They literally speak to them. I've been told this in person dozens of times. Young Matthew here is 26, and [parents] would start to get tearful and say, Matthew was non-verbal until a cousin exposed him to Animaniacs. For whatever reason, Yakko really spoke to him, like a laser beam. We drove four or five hours, and I'm not sure if he knows who you are. I don't give a [bleep] about that. What Matthew wants to hear is Yakko.
Matthew knows every word to "Yakko's World" and is now verbal and communicative because of the fire that Yakko, not Rob, and it's not false modesty, lit under Matthew to start to speak. How on earth can you quantify that? This is not about money at all. It's about the joy and empathy and passion that is lit in a young man's or young woman's life as a result of some wacky cartoon character. That's not a small thing.
Who is your favorite voice actor, and why?
Today I'll be walking into a studio with people who are my closest friends in the world. They're all incredibly gifted actors, and if you punch in Tress MacNeille or Maurice LaMarche, it'll blow your mind what they've accomplished in their careers, and they're still working every single day. Tress is still like a sister to me. I talk to her all the time.
The word genius gets bandied around a lot these days. I'm really good at my job, but I'm not a genius. Randy Rogel is a quantifiable genius. He wrote "Yakko's World," he wrote the states and the capitals. His audition piece for Animaniacs was "Yakko's World." He had that song in his back pocket, never played it for anybody, never made a dime. He wrote it because he thought, there's something here, and maybe I can use it someday.
What is the biggest audience your voice has reached?
We're talking about a franchise in terms of Turtles that has been responsible for, I don't know, billions of smiles and hundreds of millions of action figures and birthday parties. And I'm not talking about 10-year-old birthday parties. I'm talking about 35- and 40-year-olds now, celebrating with their 12- and 14-year-olds who love Turtles too. The franchise is arguably as powerful now as it was in 1987 when we did the pilot. Six billion in merchandise. I've had two rides in the Turtle van, as Raphael and as Donatello in a later iteration on Nickelodeon, and then I directed a version also at Nickelodeon.
The number of artists who have been inspired just by Turtles to try to pursue art as a livelihood is incalculable. I know there are artists at Disney, Pixar, Amblin, Nickelodeon and Warner Brothers who were inspired from the get-go by Ninja Turtles. That's not a small thing.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your demo list.
One day I went to visit my doctor, having had a lump on the left side of my neck for a few months, and it turned out to be stage three metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the throat, at the base of my tongue. I was told at the very beginning, Mr. Paulsen, we're virtually sure we can cure you, but before we do, we almost have to kill you. And I laughed out loud, because that's how my brain works. They said, are you gonna be able to do your job at the same level? We don't know.
I got through it. Nothing happened to me that I was not told would happen. And the good news is I can do my job, and no one is any the wiser. My cancer experience has not left me with a silver lining. It is absolutely a platinum lining. I am now the spokes-toon for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance. In most cases, if it's caught early enough, it's curable. Getting screened is simple.
In which area would you like to improve as a voice actor?
I'm really good at my job, but I ought to be. I've been doing it forever. It's difficult to be objective, but as objective as I can be, I'm better now than I was five years ago, because I don't stop learning. I don't stop knowing where I can shave little rough edges off and get better and better. And I don't think, frankly, that that's unusual. There is no real playbook.
What drives me is, as Lexus says, the relentless pursuit of perfection, which I will never reach. And I think that's kind of good news, because it means I got to stay on my toes, and I'm happy to do it.
Rob Paulsen's Full Biography
Robert Paulsen is an American voice actor and singer from Detroit, Michigan. He is known for voicing Raphael in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Yakko Warner in Animaniacs, Pinky in Pinky and the Brain, Carl Wheezer in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Hadji in Jonny Quest, Donatello in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Party Juju and Tlaloc in Tak and the Power of Juju, P.J. in Goof Troop and A Goofy Movie and Peck in Barnyard. He is also the host of a voice over talk show called "Talkin' Toons with Rob Paulsen".