This was my second Celebration attending the panel dedicated to the voice actors of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. While Catherine Taber was absent this go 'round, James Arnold Taylor, Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Tom Kane and Dee Bradley Baker put on quite the entertaining show. It doesn't hurt that their all just generally likeable people who truly seem to enjoy each other's company. This wasn't necessarily the Clone Wars panel where you expect to get juicy details on the upcoming season, though we did get one little cool tidbit you'll see in the cliff notes below. Here, the voice actors simply talked about their characters, recounted how they got their roles, took part in a little Star Wars trivia quiz and talked a little about their personal upcoming projects. Here are some of the post-worthy cliff note details...
- James Arnold Taylor dedicated the panel to to the late Ian Abercrombie, which elicited a nice round of applause from the crowd. - Dee Bradley Baker noted that clone fans are going to find Season 5 rather interesting. - Matt Lanter was re-cast as Anakin and had to re-record a number of the first episodes after another actor had already done so. - Ashley Eckstein originally auditioned for Padme but her voice sounded a little too young. In addition, Ahsoka was originally supposed to have an Icelandic accent. - Much as Kevin Smith had fun with the sign language crew, it was fun watching them try to express the odd creature sounds being created by Dee. - The was a Midichlorian Count Star Wars trivia quiz in which Ashley won. - Ashley did note that the popular Ashoka Her Universe hoodie will be coming in adult sizes as of October. - Dee spoke of how little they actually know about the episodes when they record. The episodes are clearly mapped out by that point but they don't see the finished product for a year or so. - If you're interested in the path to becoming a voice actor, Dee Bradley Baker created the site IWantToBeAVoiceActor.com - Finally Matt mentioned a scene that was recorded recently featuring Anakin and Ahsoka that the other actors didn't know about. Apparently everyone was kicked out of the studio for this particular recording session.
The panel ended with a read through of a script prepared by James Arnold Taylor in which Anakin, Ahsoka, and Rex land on a mysterious planet known as Orlando after losing contact with Yoda, Plo Koon and Obi-Wan. It turns out they were over in the Official Pix autograph area of Star Wars Celebration. None of the actors had seen the script ahead of time, but all had a great time with it. Kudos to Taylor for writing a nice and topical way to end a very entertaining panel.
We enjoy The Clone Wars because we love Star Wars and Dave Filoni's crew puts together top notch entertainment for us week after week. However, having such engaging and fun actors within that show helps to make us love it that much more.
Here are just a couple short clips from the panel...