Years ago, I had a birthday party that was everything Batman: The Animated Series. I still remember how vivid the shade of blue the cake was, and I still have the little figurine of Batman perched on a gargoyle somewhere in storage. I loved the comics and movies a lot as any other kid, but there was something about that cartoon that spoke to me, and I grew up hearing Batman’s deep, gruff voice in my ears. Twenty years later, I nearly fell to the floor when I heard that voice say to me, “Hello Eric,” so casual like we were getting Starbucks.
Kevin Conroy is a Shakespearean-trained actor best known for playing Batman in the Emmy Award-winning Batman: The Animated Series, several animated feature films, and the extremely successful Batman: Arkham video game series.
This weekend, Netflix premiered the second season of Turbo FAST from DreamWorks Animation Television. In a special episode, Turbo meets his hero The Stinger (played by Conroy) and becomes his protege until the cocky hero needs rescuing himself.
Last week, I sat down with Kevin Conroy to talk about his new role and its relation to Batman, as well as everything else Batman because I was talking to Batman.
You’re guest-starring in TurboFAST, playing a character called The Stinger. How different is playing The Stinger from your other, more notable roles? It looks like you’re letting your hair down for the first time.
Kevin: [laughs] He is in many ways, he’s everything Batman is not. He’s arrogant, he’s cocky. The wonderful thing about Batman is he’s so understated. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. He wants to do good, but remain totally anonymous. The Stinger is the exact opposite. He’s a complete narcissist. It’s so much fun playing this guy who’s outwardly similar to Batman, but just so cocky and such a narcissist. It’s so much fun.
I enjoy doing comedy a lot. There’s a thin line between drama and comedy. Comedy is basically drama in sort of a cockeyed world. It’s always funniest if you play it straight. If you play for the comedy, you kill it. You play it straight, but the whole world is slightly cockeyed. This character is, I think, hysterically funny.
How much elbow room did you have? Were you directed to be like, “Yes, play it like Batman,” or were you given more freedom than just playing it like a spoof of him?
Kevin: The nice thing about the casting process is the basically trusted my instincts as an actor. They let me play it the way I wanted to play it. I hope it worked out. I haven’t actually seen it.
Based on my understanding of you, you didn’t really grow up with comic books, but you’ve etched a legacy within them. Does it still ever catch you off-guard to think about that?
Kevin: Isn’t it wild? I love to quote the John Lennon song: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Because I didn’t plan on this at all. Yet, when the character came along, I mean, I was all geared toward classical theater, you know, Julliard, John Houseman, Shakespeare, the Greeks. That was all my early years, and Broadway.
Suddenly, the first animated role I go in on, this was the first one I auditioned for, was Batman. I had only been exposed to the Adam West Batman. The sort of campy ’60s, which is a wonderful show, but not at all what they were going to do with this. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini had to explain to me the whole Batman ethos. The Dark Knight legend, the tragedy of his childhood.
As they were explaining to me, I thought this is a classic, tragic hero. This is like a Greek tragedy. This is like a Hamlet character. This is an archetype. I can relate to that. I’ll just use my theater training. I just went to the darkest, grittiest place I could in my imagination. This voice came out of me. Taking him so seriously, so dead seriously was absolutely perfect for the character, so it was an odd, very unique kind of hand and glove meeting of my background, my lack of preconceptions about the role, my real naivety about the role, and meeting this character who’s a very classically-etched character. He’s really modeled on the great tragic heroes. It was a very unique meeting of actor and role, and it just worked out really well.
Back in high school I wrote a paper on Batman and Hamlet and how they were kind of similar. I believe it was you made that connection in another interview that inspired that paper. So thanks you for getting me an A!
Kevin: [laughs] Oh, great!
But before voice acting, actually, you were a stage actor and you also do screen work from time to time. Which do you find as an actor more comfortable for you?
Kevin: For me, the stage is the most comfortable. The stage is where the actors are in charge. Stage is the actor’s medium, film is the director’s medium, and television is the writer’s medium. The only place the actor’s in charge is on stage. I love being there. I am so comfortable there. Unfortunately, that’s the one thing that doesn’t pay. [laughs] It’s impossible to make a living there, which is why I haven’t done it in a long time. [But] I love it. I love it.
You are so associated with Batman, and The Stringer that you’re playing now in this guest role is, of course, an offshoot of that. Do you ever find your association with that character at times difficult or overwhelming?
Kevin: Typically, overwhelming isn’t an adjective I would use to describe it. What it is is I find it very humbling because he’s a really unique character culturally, in our culture. He’s the ultimate tragic hero who rises above his own adversity to do pure good for the world. He wants complete anonymity. He wants no one to know he’s doing it. It’s just a kind of altruism that’s so pure. Young people and older people, so many different ages, relate to this guy, especially young people though. They invest so much emotion in him because he’s a cartoon. He’s a character. He’s an animated character, so that’s a character that really lives in people’s imaginations. I find that audience members create a much more intimate relationship with him than they do with live action characters. There’s an intimacy with that man.
People come up to me at Comic-Con sometimes with tears in their eyes and tell me stories about their horrible childhoods and how Batman was the only friend they had or was the only escape they had or was the only sanity. A young woman came up to me in Chicago at a Comic-Con and said, “I was born in the projects on the South Side. Most of my friends are dead. I got out of there because of you.” I said, “Wait a minute, it had nothing to do with me. It was you that got you out of there. Don’t forget that.” She said, “No, it was your character. It was that world. Every day after school, I came out and you were there. It was such goodness.” I thought, wow, that’s amazingly humbling to be a part of something like that.
That’s gotta be heavy, to be told something like that.
Kevin: Well, it is heavy. That’s what I mean by humbling. He’s an amazing character that people invest so much emotion into, and then tangentially they project that onto me sometimes. It’s an odd position for an actor to be in, but it’s very humbling because he’s a wonderful character to be a part of.
One of my favorite stories that you’ve told about your impact as Batman was when you were a volunteer at a kitchen in 9/11. You’ve probably told it a hundred times already. Is there anything else you remember from that moment, how you felt that day?
Kevin: It was an amazing period to be in New York [at that time]. The thing I think people don’t realize about that week that that happened was that everyone was have that picture seared in their minds of people running from the cloud of dust as the towers were coming down … all those photos of people running away. But no one has ever seen or I didn’t see any pictures of were the people running back. The second the dust cleared, hundreds of people were running, trying to find people, trying to help. [New York] is a city of 8 million people, but it’s a lot of small communities. There’s a lot of neighborhoods in New York. Whenever they come to New York, they’re always shocked at how friendly everybody is. I always say, well, that’s because we all live on top of each other. We have to be familiar or we’d kill each other. New Yorkers are very involved with each other’s lives. Sometimes a little too much so. They’ll tell you exactly what they think of something and so we get this reputation of being very blunt.
I’m in Brooklyn right now. I totally get it, yeah.
Kevin: Or you’re in Brooklyn? Well, you get it. You get it. [laughs] The wonderful thing about New Yorkers is they’re very involved with each other. The turnout at ground zero wasn’t … There were so many people that when I first went down, I wanted to be helping with the digging and the tunneling, and they said, well, we have all the diggers we need. We have all the tunnelers we need. We need people to cook. Do you have any restaurant experience? I said, I’m an actor, of course I have restaurant experience! [laughs] You’re talking to the right guy. That’s how I ended up in the kitchen. I ended up doing a couple of weeks there.
It was the night shift, and the things you saw at night at ground zero for those two weeks after the attack were extraordinary. The human dramas. The people still looking for loved ones. The man who started screaming one night and throwing things at us in the street outside the restaurant, hurling things at us, screaming at us. The cops came out and circled around us to protect us. I thought, this guy’s going to be shot. I’m witnessing suicide by cop. He’s forcing the cops, I was sure the cops were going to have to shoot this guy. Instead, I saw them surround him, talk him down, calm him down, and then eventually escort him away.
This is happening at two in the morning with the ground zero digging going on a block away. In the midst of all that, this was going on with this guy. As the cops came back to me, I said I am so impressed with how you handled that. I was sure you were going to have to do something really drastic. The one cop said, “Well, thank god we didn’t. The reason he’s screaming is because his son hasn’t been found.”
Wow.
Kevin: You know, the son probably never was found. Things like that were happening every night. It was a highly emotional period. In that moment when someone in the kitchen recognized me and said, “Hey guys, Batman’s been cooking your dinners!” Everyone roared and started clapping. It was such a great moment of release from all of that tension. It made me realize that the people who work in animation, you know, we’re not wasting our time. That it means something.
That’s incredible.
Kevin: That night the cops talked that guy down was really amazing to me.
After 20 years of portraying Batman, do you still find anything new after all this time? Does anything still surprise you?
Kevin: I’m always amazed at his decency. He goes to levels of decency that I wish I could find in myself. He is such a purely good person. It’s why he never kills anyone. He is vengeance, but he’s purely good at the same time. He’s a funny mixture of things, so there’s always more to find with him.
The second season of Turbo FAST is now available on Netflix.
Update: This interview originally contained an error, stating Kevin Conroy’s appearance was a two-part special. It is only for one episode. That error has been corrected.