In honor of the upcoming new season of the Disney animated series, Phineas and Ferb (premiering on June 5 Disney Channel), I sat down with Vincent Martella, notable voice actor about his career and what it is like returning to the character he started when he was 13 years old and again, 15 years later.
Tara Jabbari
How does it feel after so long that the show is coming back?
Vincent Martella
Yeah, it’s fantastic. I’m so, so excited to be able to keep bringing new episodes of this show to our audience and to new audiences, which is really cool as well. Because people who grew up watching the show and experienced the whole first run now have children of their own and they’re gonna probably share it with their kids
I feel like it’s such a rare opportunity and so it’s something that I feel really lucky to be a part of and I think we really utilized these new seasons and these new episodes to tell stories that are different than the stories that we were able to tell during the first run of the show, but also keeping the same humor, keeping the same excitement with the adventures and the inventions that the boys build, let alone the music on the show, which is such a big part of the show. So it’s going to be very, very fun. I really can’t wait.
Tara
Yeah, and it’s already been picked up for even past this just this one time season. It sounds like it’s coming back for more and more. Was there always a demand for it to come back or how did it come about?
Vincent
There was definitely a large demand for our show and that’s why we were able to come back and do more seasons. I mean, basically everyone on works the show would love to keep doing this forever.
We’ve kind of always been in the Top 10 of things streamed on Disney Plus in terms of content that they have. And so I think that allowed us to have the ability to come back and make more episodes because the way that content is consumed now.
I think Disney thought, “Hey, you know what? These are characters who people really care about and we will give them more of their stories.” So I hope we get to do this forever, I really do.
Tara
You started when the show first started was you were 13 years old. Were you nervous as a child actor? Your voice changes as a kid growing up so how did you and your family, your agents, cope with that and how did that work out for you?
Vincent Martella
Well, for me, mean, that’s a reason why a lot of young voice actors don’t get opportunities like I was able to get. And a couple of things benefited me. One being that I’m not using my regular voice. I’m using a character voice I created to play Phineas. So that benefits me greatly because it’s a voice that is not mine. I was not just using my 13 year old voice when I auditioned for the role and when I did the pilot.
I also did a lot of things in terms of making sure I was able to consistently do this voice and consistently perform the way that I need to as Phineas because you were asked to do a lot of things on the show. Whether it be yelling and screaming because you have some invention you’ve built that’s in the sky or singing a lot of music. And those things are very taxing on your voice as well. And you want to make sure that you have the vocal capability to do that with a voice that you’ve created. So I did and still go to voice acting workshops to try and get better.
There’s always things I can improve on. I was even going to opera singing teachers to learn better vocal exercises to preserve my voice and to extend my range.
So I was doing as much homework as I could vocally so that I would be able to do this role that’s very demanding and keep this role a huge part of my life. And luckily that worked and that hard work helped me sustain the career that I have right now. And like, when I hired an opera professor and did lessons, it’s things that I wouldn’t use practically for music. Like I’m never gonna sing opera, but it’s just the techniques used to strengthen your voice and to extend your range were incredibly useful for me and incredibly practical for me to use every week when I was going into recording. I still use some of those techniques today. So that’s how I navigated that.
Tara
Well, I wanted to also touch base that you also have done on-screen work over the years too. A little bit about the pros, the cons, the similarities and things like that. So can you kind of touch base on those experiences?
Vincent Martella
Absolutely. I’ve had the great benefit of working on some really, really great live action projects as well as some really good cartoons. And the biggest difference is, you pretty much never do group records for animation. They were much more popular in the 90s and the early 2000s, but I’ve only worked on maybe two projects where it’s group records and such an important part about acting, especially in live action is listening and responding to someone else’s performance. Things that they are giving you impact how you respond. That’s just human nature. And that’s what makes it so exciting working with a scene partner. And we don’t have that benefit with animation. We are by ourselves. And so that burden, a lot of the times, falls on our voice director to help us understand what the other actors in the scene have done. And then we have to respond to it as though we’re in the scene with them. And so I do find that that’s something that certain actors struggle with if they haven’t done much animation is you really have to make it sound like you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone when they’re not there. And, you know, a of times you’ll do it line by line. so each individual line has to sound like it all makes a scene. And so that’s its own kind of technical thing that you start getting better and better at as it goes along.
I don’t think I have a preference. I just love working on fun stuff and, and I’ve learned like, there’s still so much for me to learn about getting better at both of those skills, like whether it’s live action or animation.
Tara
I’m surprised that even today that a lot of the animation projects still film the actors separately. Do you know why that is?
Vincent Martella
It’s very expensive to do group records. I would say that is probably the number one reason. I know that’s not a very exciting reason, but it’s very hard to get a studio big enough to reserve enough microphones to get everyone in the same place on one day and to spend that much time going through everyone’s performances in one day. There are very few shows that still do it.
Tara
Do you have any advice for anyone who is interested in possibly being a voice actor specifically?
Vincent Martella
Absolutely! One of the great things is that there are more classes and workshops available to people online all around the United States that you can expose yourself to. And there was not that when I was getting into the industry and not even like 10 years ago, let alone when I broke in. So there is a big amount of information that you can find and you can get taught by taking workshops with casting directors, with voice directors, with other actors who are voice actors. At the end of the day, it is very hard still if you do not live in Los Angeles to become a successful voice actor or Texas. The people who work in Texas are mostly non-union workers because they work on anime. There’s a huge anime market in Texas. I can’t work on any of those things because I’m a member of the Screen Actors Guild. So it is very difficult.
Los Angeles is really kind of where you have to be at the end of the day if you want to make like pre-animation like the type of animation I make or you know work on Nickelodeon or work on big AAA video games.
My number one piece of advice that I always give everyone is one of my co-workers is Dee Bradley Baker. He is one of the biggest voice actors ever. He plays Perry the Platypus on our show, but he is Appa on Avatar the Last Airbender. He is all of the Clones in (Star Wars) The Bad Batch. He is truly one of the biggest voice actors ever. He runs a website called https://iwanttobeavoiceactor.com/
It’s completely free and it gives so much information to people at different levels of voice acting about equipment you can buy at different price points, access to classes, access to information. It is a really invaluable resource that I tell so many people to go to. So if people would like to, then go to that website and he updates it a lot and he is truly the type of person you can trust about this advice. I wish everyone the most success!
Tara
Thank you so much, Vincent! That’s a great resource because, as much as there’s so much information out there, there’s also some scammers out there. So we really appreciate that really great resource. Thank you so much!
The fifth season is set to premiere on June 5 on Disney Channel and Disney XD, with the first 10 episodes available on Disney+ starting June 6!
You can also follow Vincent Martella on TikTok and Instagram.
