Will Friedle has endured and enjoyed the TV & Animated industry for over 20 years now, voicing hundreds of animated characters in a ton of popular shows such as being Star-Lord in the brand-new Disney and Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy animated series and Bumblebee in Transformers Robots in Disguise animated series. The list goes on and on, including Batman Beyond, Spiderman and Deadpool.
Will didn’t start in voice acting however; you may remember him as the not so smart, but absolutely lovable character of Eric Matthews in Boy Meets World way back in 1993 (feel old yet?). I got to chat with Will before he arrived for his Supanova events this month in Brisbane and Perth and of course, we had to ask is this versatile voice actor a DC or Marvel fan boy? He voices both, so which side of the fence does he lie on? Let’s find out!
So, Will, you’re finally coming down to Supanova?
Ahhhh I can’t wait.
You’ve been to Australia before?
No never. This is my first time. I’m taking my wife and we are just ecstatic to get down there.
Have you got anything you want to do outside of when you arrive around Supanova?
No, I mean we’re kind of those people that we like to play things by ear. We plan certain things. We love food, so I’m sure we’ll plan some good restaurants and some good meals, but other than that, it’s kind of wake up and what do we want to do today?
Nice. That’s how you should play it.
That’s how we roll yeah, because to me if you have everything planned out then it doesn’t necessarily feel like your kind of chilling out. We are certainly working and meeting the fans the two weekends that we’re at the Cons, but other than that, we may just, one day, want to kind of sit down and read a book or just take a nice long walk through the city. We don’t know. We like to play it by ear.
Well, I have to say thank you for doing such a bloody good job with Star Lord. Me and my boys love watching the series. It’s fantastic.
Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for saying that. And I had so much fun doing it.
Your many amazing list of voices, my favourites being of course Peter Quill and your Batman Beyond. There just awesome to behold. If I listed them all, we’d be here all blood day, so I won’t. Is there anyone you haven’t voiced yet that you’d love to give a go?
Yeah, you know, it’s funny because I get asked that question a lot, so it really made me think, okay who would I want to play? And the only one that I can come up with that constantly jumps to the top of the list is, I’m never allowed to play a bad guy. For some reason they just don’t let me play bad guys. I would love to be Cobra Commander from GI Joe. Yeah like the 80s Cobra Commander, like original whiny Cobra Commander, that would be pretty cool.
Nice, since Boy Meets World you seem to have stepped away from having your face on TV so much. Then a new series, Girl Meets World came out. Were you nervous to get back into the live action series after so long?
It was very nerve wracking for me in one aspect, because I hadn’t been on camera in so long, and I didn’t think I ever wanted to do it again, but it was like coming home because it was the same cast and the same crew. So, if I ever was going to go back and be on camera again, they couldn’t have aligned the stars any better than they did for me to come back.
I thought I was going to jump back on camera, have a little bit of fun and leave and, of course, that got the juices flowing again, and I started to do some stuff on camera. And I can’t talk about some things, but I’ve got some pretty cool stuff coming out soon. I’m excited again. It’s been a really interesting time in my career.
I was going to ask you what have you got coming up next? Anything you can talk about?
Sure, we’ve got another season of Transformer Robots in Disguise coming out. We’ve got another season of Guardians of the Galaxy coming out. I’m on a new show on Netflix called Stretch Armstrong, which is an animated series about the Stretch Armstrong toy. So yeah there’s a bunch of stuff that I can talk about, but then some very cool things that will hopefully be coming out, well I’ll be able to talk about them in the next two or three months.
You’re coming back to being Bumblebee? That’s exciting!
Oh, I am absolutely for Robots in Disguise.
We’re seeing more of Guardians of Galaxy too, so that’s not being canned anytime soon, which is good news in today’s era of much loved shows being cancelled too soon.
No kidding, right? Yeah, no, the Guardians is going strong, we’re having an amazing run and the new season is pretty fantastic. We’re excited to see all the stuff that comes out. The cast is amazing. Some incredible guest stars. A really incredible story line. We’re excited, we really are.
Well I have to ask, we’re a bunch of geeks here at the Iris so you know, video games, TV shows, movies, but are you a DC or Marvel fan boy?
I’ve been asked this a lot. Now I am not a huge comic book fan. For me it’s all about cartoons and movies, so as long as they’re good I don’t pick a team, because I’ve been Batman, I’ve been Star Lord, I’ve been Deadpool, I’ve been Green Lantern. I straddle both sides of the fence. I know it’s a very political answer, but it’s true, because if it’s a good cartoon, I mean, yeah for years DC cartoons with Batman the Animated Series, Superman, Justice League, those are all unbelievable. But then Marvel started to kick butt with The Avengers and Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy, so you know I’m a fan, as long as the product is good, you got my money. I’m excited when any of these films come out, I’m one of the first ones there. I was just as excited for Guardians of the Galaxy as I was for Wonder Woman, and I love them both. I’ll talk all day if it’s something I can nerd out about.
Perfect answer. What do you do in your downtime when you’re not in a studio voice acting or showing off?
Well I’m married so with my wife, we like to hang out, we like to travel. I am a big fan of Dungeon and Dragons so I’ve got my weekly D&D game.
Oh yeah?
Oh yeah! There’s some fun stuff. I’m most relaxed and most at myself when I am sitting down somewhere quiet with a big thick fantasy novel in my hand. That’s when I am the happiest! When I’m halfway through the Wheel of Time for my eighth time around, I’m pretty excited. Also, Brandon Sanderson’s new book is coming out, The Stormlight Archive, I think is coming out in November. I can’t wait, so that’s going to be awesome.
Well I’ve been trying to get my kids’ faces out of the iPads and back on to the table top. So yeah, we’ve been getting into some King of Tokyo and some other great table top games. You know, ease them in, it’s been great.
That’s awesome, how old are your kids?
10 and 6 years old.
Does the 10-year-old like to read yet?
Yeah, he does.
So, you’ve got an amazing young fantasy author over there, an author named John Flanagan who does an incredible series called the Ranger’s Apprentice. Ranger’s Apprentice John started writing because his son didn’t like to read, so he started telling this story and then he started to write it down. There’s now like 12 or 13 books. They’re awesome. So, 10 years old is the perfect time to start him on them. He will love these books.
Done. I’ll look into that definitely. Well thank you so much. Look forward to hearing about your Australian adventures soon.
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Will Friedle arrives in Brisbane this weekend for Supanova Comic Con & Gaming Expo on the 10th – 12th November and Supanova Adelaide 18th – 19th November 2017.
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