Are ya ready, kids?
Though I did hear that there was a push to have Fred Savage play SpongeBob.
[They] left the microphone on the table we weren’t in a booth.
[It was] awkward and weird.
I had never done that.
There’s the mic and there’s Steve.
And there was a fly flying around.
I’m watching the fly, trying to do it, and it landed on the paper I had.
And I [slams on the table] killed it.
I never kill anything!
I always catch things and put them outside, and I totally panicked.
KENNY:Did you suck in that dead fly’s life force and channel it into your audition?
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:Oh my God, I don’t know.
But when I left, I was like, “There’s no way.”
MR. LAWRENCE (Plankton):But that’s Sandy!
That’s a Sandy moment.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:It’s true!
I actually read for SpongeBob with Plankton’s voice.
I was like [does Plankton’s voice], “I’m ready!
I’m ready, Gary!”
But I read all the pages like that.
All I know is they kept listening to the tape while they were making the pilot.
It sounded so stupid.
It did not work at all.
He definitely loved that.
He’s a little sarcastic.
It was a match made in heaven with my personality.
KENNY:I felt like I just got [SpongeBob].
Steve did such a good job with it.
Everything was right there.
You go, “Oh, I know this guy.
I can embody this guy.”
I feel like there’s some shared DNA between me and this character.
We’ve all felt that way.
That’s part of Steve’s brilliance.
He seemed to be pretty sure of his decisions once he made them, and couldn’t be dissuaded.
I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get most of the jokes.
“Why am I saying ‘Who’s ready?’
Okay, it’s for 4-year-olds.”
Then when I finally saw it, my head blew up.
It was so delightful.
BUMPASS:I played the pilot for my family.
I looked back 11 minutes into the thing, and my father was asleep.
I thought, “This is the weirdest $600 I ever made.”
I was just doing some pirate voice.
I said, “Steve, you’re the director, right?”
He said, “Yeah.”
“Then direct me.”
All of a sudden we had the latitude to do other voices the “Krusty Krab Pizza” thing.
He’s totally out of character!"
I didn’t realize [SpongeBob] had that latitude to be anything he wanted to be.
But now, Clancy riffs as Krabs all the time.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:I was always terrified [of improvising].
BUMPASS:When we first started I was very monotone.
Each scream had to be a different pop in of a scream.
There, they learned I could scream, so now, every episode they make me scream.
[Laughs] But that’s how it expanded.
Now [Squidward] is more me than anything else.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:I can’t remember the first time that Sandy got angry.
But I know there’s something about her being mad that became a thing.
WALLER:It was when they were messing with Texas!
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:Right!
That’s where my personal life and Sandy [merged] also.
It’s the same with Sandy.
MR. LAWRENCE:We still make a run at [record together] as much as we can.
It’s jazz riffing.
I like watching it and I like doing it.
WALLER:That’s where some beautiful invention comes from that’s not in the script.
KENNY:And a conviviality.
It feels like a workplace.
I want the kind of job where you’re just hanging around with funny people."
This is as close to that.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:But we were unique.
A lot of shows don’t record like that.
BROWN:I love stuff [like “My leg!"]
that comes out of left field.
I know Roger does it all the time.
We all do it because it’s so stupid.
KENNY:The voice-director just needs people to go “Agh!
Like, “We’re still alive under this rubble, kids.”
It was kind of like that.
“Give me my legs!”
We all laughed and started doing it more.
It became a joke for us to do it.
Nobody’s writing “My leg!”
KENNY:It was never intended to be a meme.
I was onRen & Stimpyprevious….
But it was all fun.
WALLER:Yes, much more collaborative.
From beginning to end, rather than when you’re done, everybody comes in and collaborates.
It’s one thing to write a visual gag in text.
KENNY:One picture is worth a thousand words, right?
“His tongue unrolls like a staircase.
His eyes bug out and hit the wall.”
Unlike, say,King of the Hill, which should’ve been a live-action show.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:As an actor, it’s a lot more fun being able to get the board.
I mean, that’s huge.
It helps you so much to see what that gag is.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:Right!
You know, and it’s amazing.
you could see Sandy’s jumping off an enormous mountain instead of a little mountain.
you’ve got the option to’t see that in a written script.
KENNY:Steve built a great foundation for this house.
I think about that all the time, how much he knew what it was going to be.
He was good at that.
BROWN:Different milieu, though, right?
Nickelodeon was its own thing back then.
KENNY:I guess everything was a different milieu back then.
I always say withRocko, the inmates were running the asylum to a pretty crazy degree.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:Lot of creative freedom.
And now…
KENNY:It’s a little less so now.
It’s a double-edged sword: If something gets gigantic, there is a lot more at stake.
A lot more eyeballs.
They don’t really mess with us so much, content-wise, even to this day.
BROWN:I also think it’s because nobody really knows how to f with it.
Guest-Star Parade
BROWN:The stunt-casting sessions are always strange.
You never know when somebody comes in what they’re going to be like.
We’ve got our thing, but then you add somebody in who’s a stunt.
CAROLYN LAWRENCE:Early on, didn’t it make Steve crazy?
Everyone called him wanting to be on his show and he didn’t want them.
BUMPASS:Bruce Willis wanted to be on.
FAGERBAKKE:We’re not accustomed to it.
It’s not like in every episode there’s a wacky guest.
“Wheel of Celebrities!”
You had to give them almost a tutorial.
It’s a heightened reality.
You probably won’t be too big.
And if you are, we’ll tell you.
But you probably won’t.
BROWN:Did you ever have to tell someone to pull back?
BROWN:Dennis Quaid came in pretty hot.
KENNY:That’s true.
We all just hung out and waited until he was done.
KENNY:Same with Tim Conway [Barnacle Boy].
It was the first thing they’d done together sinceMcHale’s Navy, so that was fun to watch.
MR. LAWRENCE:It was arresting.
For me, it was like if someone squeezed in your stomach.
You’re seeing these two guys in that room.
Just like, wow.
FAGERBAKKE:Jon Hamm was awesome.
He clearly was enjoying himself.
KENNY:He actually stayed after he was done recording.
We were like, “Okay, that’s it, Jon.”
He goes, “You mind if I stay?”
MR. LAWRENCE:I remember Scarlett Johansson coming into the first movie we did [released in 2004].
She was so excited.
We all got into the booth, and we were all there at the same time.
You could see she was scared.
Just the intimidation of watching us all do it at once, up front.
And then: She was great!
It was so much fun for us to do something so wild.
MR. LAWRENCE:We keep surprising.
We’re trying to keep a surprise going with things.
And…it’s going to be hard to surprise people after this one.
KENNY:It’s like being married for a long time.
You’re like, “We’ve gotta spice things up!
Here, put this on!
Dress like me!”
MR. LAWRENCE:Like we just did an episode about “My leg!”
CECCARELLI:Personally I like the two stop-motion specials we did.
Back when I was 10 years old, I wanted to be Ray Harryhausen.
That was my entry point into this fantasy world.
FAGERBAKKE:And that’s probably the only chance you’ll ever get to do stop-motion animation.
It doesn’t happen very often.
KENNY:I love those episodes, too, because it’s kind of imperfect.
There’s an imperfection to that the 2D version of SpongeBob has too.
you’re free to see people’s thumbprints.
In the stop-motion and the 2D version of it, it’s imperfect.
I went to Pixar once, and they had this giant bank of computers.
I like records with bad notes, where the drummer misses a beat.Spongebobhas still got that.
KENNY:SpongeBobis one of the last remaining super-visual cartoons.
There’s just not a whole lot of shows like that anymore.
In some ways, I feel like I’m working in this time-machine job.
Like working on a radio show orLooney Tunes.
It’s pretty cool that we’re still able to be employed as milkmen in 2019.
