SpongeBob's Tom Kenny & Bill Fagerbakke Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED

we're in a bar and someone comes up and goes so you're together in real life yeah the guy was like you're spongebob and i go yeah and that's patrick and they're like oh my god [Music] hi i'm bill fingerbocky and i'm tom kenney [Music] this is the wire auto complete interview here we go what is tom kenny doing now man just uh just working from home every day on various stuff everything from spongebob to rick and morty to everything in between what is tom kenney what is a tom kenny a tom kenny is a 58 year old geek what is his favorite spongebob episode oh favorite spongebob episode that is way out there on the internet that is uh bad geeks of course i believe it i've heard him say it what is tom kenny good adhesive what is his phone number grab your pens and paper everyone my phone number is uh is a closely guarded secret because i hate talking on the phone if you want to sail a paper airplane uh through my window i'll read your message what does tom kenny look like he has a face made for voice over we know that tom kenny basically looks like every other schlubby caucasian man you've ever seen and that's why voiceover is awesome i'd be playing like confused dads on tv right now you call that a bathing suit nice read what does tom kenny sound like well it depends on the day um let's see tom kenny sounds like a lot of things he sounds like sponges snails he sometimes sounds like french guys saying two hours later sometimes he sounds like the mayor i'm a powerpuff girl said sometimes he sounds like the narrator on the powerpuff girls basically tom kenny has multiple personality disorder and he's managed to make a living from that nice work if you can get it what is tom candy's favorite voice that he does you know i love you spongebob been very very good to me i love spongebob and some of the ones that you don't get to do as much like uh on a show called foster's home for imaginary friends it was a cartoon network show oh there was a big purple monster named eduardo and i got to be here the only problem was doing that for four hours uh was like gargling drano we call this one how bill fagerbach so question one how do you pronounce bill fogerbachy you can't mispronounce it i accept finger bacon fake and bake they're all they're all good i'm sure you heard them all by the time second grade rolled around you had kind of psyched that's right how old is bill fogerbach can i rephrase that how young is bill fargo i am 63 years old i was born on the day the russians sent up the sputnik and my parents called me sputnik for about six weeks they came to their senses and gave me an actual name how tall is bill fargo bucky i am six six and a half one of the first movies i worked on was a secret of my success and and i was so excited to meet fred gwynne who played herman munster and car 54 where are you yes yes double genius i went up and introduced myself to him the only thing he said to me was you're too tall for this business and he walked away nice to meet you how did how did phil bogger cocky uh get uh get uh cast in spongebob pretty standard audition wealth no i can't say that because it was stephen hillenburg and nothing he did was standard so actually the first thing he said is i want you to listen to this and he played me a tape of tom it was called spongeboy at the time he said this is what spongeboy sounds like and so he said uh i want you to read for his friend patrick what a fantastic way to audition for something and uh and yeah i got lucky there how do you oh how do you meet bill fagerbach if you're making me food we'll meet or if you're dropping off a delivery at my house as you can see from bill's background he actually lives in a tent that's right we're accessible at comic cons when those start up again bill and i will do the occasional comic-con and fans come out to say hi to us but the bad news is you might have to meet me too so that's kind of good news bad news last question on this page bill how bill fagerbach does the patrick voice well i does it the way i do most voices i take a deep breath and then sound comes out i guess everything's down in my torso i guess there's a lot of room in there it's down here as opposed to squidward who's up here we all wonder who tom kenny but let's take a look daddy wonders who tom kenny who does tom kenny this is like the match game who just talked any voice in rick and morty michael says i've been everybody from um like i'm squanching here dude squanchy uh to mr jellybean to you know alien prison guard number four you never know who you're gonna get when you walk in the door he just goes you're this this this and this who does tom kenny voice in futurama futurama wow that was a long time ago again that was one of those shows where they had their main cast and they would just bring you in and you were somebody that they ran into i know i was abner double deal the commissioner of robot boxing the episodes that most people know me or remember best from futurama with me is where i was yancy fry which is the brother of billy west's main character fry that was really fun people say me and billy sound kind of alike anyway in our nat are just regular speaking voices it's fun to be beat billy's brother and you know matt granny come on who was tom kenny in pokemon this comes up every so often i don't think i've ever done pokemon there's stuff that i don't remember like i did it and and my kids will go hey that's your voice and i'll go i never did that show and then they'll point to the credits and they'll go yeah dad that was you and i guess it was i think with pokemon there was a guy named tom kenny who no bought the series and somehow got re-dubbed it you know and got the rights to it or or something and made a bazillion dollars on pokemon i wish i was smart enough to have gotten a hold of pokemon no not not that smart so i don't think i have any pokemon history if there is the internet will slap me around and go like don't you remember wow i wonder if there's another bill feigerbachy out there that's going to do something okay who is tom kenny married to my wife is named jill talley she's an actress i met my wife on a show called the edge then we did a show called mr show with bob and david and she also plays of various characters on on spongebob in the spongebob verse she is karen uh plankton's computer wife and that's that's who i'm married to she was crazy enough to marry me they are a fantastic couple i can attest to that the folks on the internet say who is tom kenny i why would they ask if they didn't talk i have to answer that question myself i will say that tom kenny is the mel blank of our day and we are very very lucky to have him who does tom kenny voice in spongebob oh wow let's see well oh you know that pink c star this one hangs around with i don't do him and now it is time to move on to our ding what bill fogger bucky round what happened to bill what the hell happened to you bill well i i stepped into a big bucket of awesome good fortune stumbling into voiceovers um in the 90s and and oh my god what a fortuitous route that was what is bill foggerbachy like i'm a sports fan i'm a music fan oh and i have i have two daughters that are amazing and they're in their 20s now bill's daughters are incredible people and super talented in their own right which is surprising because as children they were horrible no i'm kidding they were great kids too what does what does bill foggerbocky sing uh i'm a baritone i actually none of this performing stuff would have happened to me if it hadn't been for high school choir i had a fantastic choir director in high school i had the great good fortune to actually reconnect with that acquired director just a few years ago and uh we had a nice long talk and i was able to express my my gratitude was he like why are you wasting your talent on that silly cartoon what voice bill fuckerbacky do besides patrick oh nothing this is all i'm good for what you see is what you get that is not true you started out on the cult animated series gargoyles disney's gargoyles still when you go to comic cons and stuff has a devoted cult following and you did clifford the big red dog you did the you did uh didn't you did you do something clifford no you did beethoven yeah i did beethoven yeah so i knew it i knew it involved a large canine what is bill fagerbach's favorite spongebob episode i think i know this one aha yes he does not mine is the pilot that's where spongebob gets his his job at the krusty krab because it opened my mind to what stephen hillenburg created you know when dorothy wakes up after the house lands and awes that was me watching the pilot that i'd already recorded i didn't get it when i was recording it but watching that pilot it was wow are you saying that your life up until then had been kind of sepia toned and brown just yeah dusty and windblown you know what it turns out that when people turn on their computers they often say when did tom kenny start voice acting i kind of um began my career in stand-up where i did a lot of characters and things like that and then sketch comedy with the edge and mr show and you know it all kind of led towards just the that pure theater of the mind where in cartoons if you can sound like the character you can be the character and that's that's really freeing to not have not have any of this when is tom kenney's birthday my birthday july 13 1962 when did tom kenny start voicing spongebob uh let's see we did the pilot in 1997 and went to series in 1999 and now it's uh 2021 so spongebob has been a part of my life for at least what two-thirds yeah maybe i don't know i'm not good with fractions nobody becomes an actor because they're great at math when did tom kenny stop voicing spongebob well um today i'm announcing my retirement um thanks bill for no i'm never going to stop voicing spongebob i hope um i never want to retire i love what i do and spongebob brings so much positivity and fun and great people like bill and everybody else on the show creativeness creativity i'm still recording spongebob maybe hopefully they're not just being nice to me and then dumping my my recordings and bringing in another guy this one is called is bill fogger bucky the first one is bill fogger bocky nice oh well i try to be i think it's important to be nice to our fellow humans so i do my best it's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice yeah i can say bill fogger bucky is very nice one of the nicest people ever he never phones it in he always brings his a game and uh and that's no lie is bill fagerbach in coach i would think you could afford first class by now first class tonight is bill fagerbach that was me that i was living in new york and uh got that uh job and uh nine years later yeah i was a full-time resident in california and there's still people in fact we ran we ran into somebody with somebody who was interviewing us or something the other day that had just put it together that you that's right we're on coach right yeah yeah yeah and then they're like wait what and you're like wow who doesn't know that but but this guy didn't and he uh it made him very happy it was nice to watch is bill fogerbach and tom kenny friends oh i think so as far as i'm concerned we're friends frenemies would you say we're friends is bill fagerbach on cameo so cameo of course being the service where people pay you to do greetings and shout outs for birthdays and bar mitzvahs and things who knows maybe someday but no i i am not it's crazy like during the pandemic like we're just recording all the time and there's multiple spongebob series and projects plus all the other non-spongebob stuff so it's like i feel like i'm i'm up in my cave and you're bill you're in your cave enough i do enough greetings just through people i know and friends of friends and stuff is bill fagerbucky on instagram no i'm not on social media i am just out of the loop my social media is the texting i do with the people i know and my friends and family i'm not on social media either i i've never i've never tweeted if people find that mind-blowing bill people just expect that of actors now you're supposed to be a one-man pr department and i just uh i'm too busy screaming hey all you googlers we appreciate the googling thank you internet stay wired oh that was smart he's smart you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 656,523

Rating: 4.987433 out of 5

Keywords: autocomplete, autocomplete interview, autocomplete spongebob, autocomplete wired, autocomplete wired spongebob, bill fagerbakke patrick, bill fagerbakke squidward, patrick voice actor, spongebob, spongebob autocomplete, spongebob bill fagerbakke, spongebob interview, spongebob tom kenny, spongebob tom kenny spongebob, spongebob voice actor, spongebob voice actors, squidward voice actor, tom kenny spongebob voice acting, wired, wired autocomplete interview

Id: WTSy_JjCTGg

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021