Conroy on Batman’s Voice

Warners released an interview with Kevin Conroy on his past workings on playing The Dark Knight while talking about the next DC Universe movie.

The legions of Batman animation fans have hailed you as the definitive
voice of the character. How did you originally settle on that particular
voice?

Kevin Conroy: To tell the truth, after reading the original script, I
really went to audition for the character voices – like Commissioner Gordon and
Harvey Bullock. Like most actors, I really love to be challenged, and I thought
they’d be more interesting and really push me. And then Bruce (Timm) and Andrea
(Romano) said they wanted to hear me do Batman. The only exposure I’d had was
the campy Adam West live-action series, and they said that wasn’t what they
wanted. So I put myself into a very dark place in my voice, and my voice got
deeper and darker and huskier, and it came out very mysterious. I really just
took a stab at what I thought the voice would be, and then I saw Bruce and
Andrea and Paul (Dini) running around the booth, so I knew I either was very
good or very bad. That’s how it started — just me in a sound booth, them on the
other side of the glass describing the character, and then the voice just came
out of my imagination. And it worked. So initially I was much more interested in
doing the character voices, but luckily they talked me into Batman.

Definitive, yes. God, I don’t think so. Stating that means it’s refusing or unwilling to allow others to take a crack at it, cause I’m one of the few fans out there that was impressed by Jeremy Sisto’s performance in New Frontier, who did a good job of being ominous and forbodding.

To read the full interview click here.