If you’ve watched a DC Comics animated project from Warner Bros. and thought to yourself “wow, this show sounds just right,” you can probably credit voice casting/dialogue director Andrea Romano, a strong creative talent whose participation in said projects has gone on for many years.
We spoke with Ms. Romano at last week’s red carpet premiere for the latest DC Entertainment direct-to-DVD animated feature – Justice League: Doom, which assembles many fan favorite voices from various series including Batman, Superman, and Justice League along with some new favorites. As we get closer to the premiere of Justice League: Doom on Blu-ray Combo Pack and DVD on February 28, we’ll be sharing some interviews from the event. We posted Phil Morris earlier in the week; now let’s see what the legendary Andrea Romano had to say!
Our questions are printed in bold; Ms. Romano’s answers are not.
Can you talk about getting the “old gang” of fan favorites back together for this production?
There are a lot of the fan favorites in this piece; it’s kind of like having a family reunion with hand-picked family members; people that you want to be in the room with for a big party. And yes, we do work, but it’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of laughing.
It’s a little bit easier for me because the actors know the characters so well. They’ve played them so many times for so many years, that they know the characters often better than I do. And a lot of them are comic book fans themselves, so they know history that I don’t even know, because I only read comics that deal with the specific pieces I’m working on. When I was growing up, girls didn’t read comic books. We read the romance comic books, if we read anything. So these guys are much more knowledgeable about the background and the back story, and that’s very nice to have them so well-prepared when they walk in. But it was kind of like a reunion, and like a party.
Do you have any new people joining the team for Justice League: Doom?
We do. There’s an actress named Claudia Black that I had never worked with who plays Cheetah. She’s lovely, and I can’t wait to work with her again. Paul Blackthorne plays Metallo, and he’s wonderful. He, too, I would work with again. There’s a lot of actors. Nathan Fillion comes in to play Green Lantern. He’s played him before, but never played it in the Justice League before, so that was very nice, to have him in there. Phil Morris, I’ve worked with many times. He did play Vandal Savage before. I’d use him any time I possibly could, he’s so wonderful. Carl Lumbly, so beautiful, so wonderful. And he gets the double duty of playing J’Onn J’onzz and his arch-nemesis Ma’alefa’ak so he has a really nice acting challenge to do both Martians, but with a slight difference so you can tell who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. Olivia d’Abo we were looking to get back to play Star Sapphire. There’s wonderful actors that I work with every day – the rank and file voiceover actors, like Jim Meskimen and Dee Bradley Baker and Juliet Landau, who are just fantastic, and they come in and play the Royal Flush Gang which starts the piece part. And you might hear me in there somewhere, because I like to throw myself in every once in a while, and Bruce Timm shows up in there too.
And even David Kaufman – who played Jimmy Olsen for me in the Superman series – shows up as Jimmy Olsen for a few lines. And one of my favorite castings was Bumper Robinson as Cyborg. Bumper, I met when I was a casting director at Hanna-Barbera. I think he was ten years old. He now has a child of his own. So that was fun to work with an actor that I had been working with for – not going to say how many years.
Did you direct the actors to play the characters as any older than we’ve seen them before, or any different way than we’ve seen before?
No. I didn’t direct them differently. They naturally read the piece, read the background information. They did their homework, and so they didn’t require me to do anything. I just had to be sure to get the best possible performance.
Our thanks go to Andrea Romano for speaking with us and for the Justice League: Doom team for allowing us the opportunity. Check out Justice League: Doom on DVD and Blu-ray Combo Pack February 28! Order your copy from Amazon.com and support this site!
