Yahoo Lifestyle "Sailor Mouth" Made Tom Kenny Laugh So Hard He Cried, And 13 Other Fun Facts I Learned From The "SpongeBob" Star
Tom Kenny is not only one of the biggest names in voice talent but is also one of the most genuine people you could ever meet.
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Continuing to celebrate 25 years of SpongeBob SquarePants, I had the opportunity to hop on Zoom and learn about voicing one of the most iconic animated characters of all time. Here are some fun behind-the-scenes facts I learned from Tom over the course of our chat:
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1.Tom wasn't nervous voicing SpongeBob in the pilot episode "Help Wanted."
Tom Kenny: I actually felt quite comfortable with it and with him; I don't recall any nervousness or uncertainty, which is unusual for me (laughs) since I spend a lot of my waking hours being nervous and uncertain. SpongeBob always felt like a nice, comfortable shoe, like a nice slipper that I could just slide right into, and I could turn my brain over to him and coexist very comfortably with him.
And, of course, the reason for that is the writing. The writing, the storyboards, and Steve's [Stephen Hillenburg, the show's creator] concept were so clear that there's nothing left to chance. I've said this before about Steve: once he hired you to do anything on the show, any position on the show, graphic or thespian, whatever it is, he would just let you do it. He hired you for a reason, and he wouldn't micromanage you.
Once he knew that I knew who SpongeBob is, he was just kind of like, "Okay, let's make this funny cartoon live." And we did. ["Help Wanted"] I think is a perfect on-ramp for Spongebob because it kind of tells you everything in such quick, broad strokes; it just tells you who everybody is.
2."Band Geeks" is a stand-out episode for the cast, and they recorded it together as an ensemble.
Tom Kenny: I remember this was a standout episode, and we all thought it was really funny. We all recorded this episode as an ensemble, at the same time, which is not always the case. It definitely stands out as being one of the few triumphant endings for put-upon-beleaguered Squidward. I always respected that the writers, despite the success of that episode, never went back to that very much. There are also those standalone lines: "Is mayonnaise an instrument," "(does SpongeBob's voice) Is this where we start kicking?" It just has so many funny, brilliant lines, that it even stood out a little bit from other episodes for us.
I'm trying to think if Steve played "Sweet Victory" for us before we recorded it or after. I'm remembering that I had heard that song, and Steve had played it for me like, "Listen to this super generic power ballad that we found somewhere," just power-ballad-101. It's kind of super basic, but also perfect. I think that's what Steve thought was funny about it—it's so bombastic, but it's also so by the numbers.
3.Tom provided the voice of Mary's elderly mother in "Chocolate With Nuts."
Tom Kenny: Like so much on Spongebob and so many characters that I do, it was kind of an amalgam [mixture] of different things. Steve wanted me to play her for some reason—maybe he heard me do something similar, just fooling around or something. She's kind of a mix of unpleasant old ladies, like the movie Throw Momma From The Train, about an elderly mother who's driving her son nuts. She was also based on people that I would hear when I was in New York, "(does elderly mother voice) What, what, what do you want?"
This cranky lady with a sandpaper voice makes Squidward look pleasant and seem pleasant. Those were great, doing the scenes with her and her daughter Mary, voiced by Sirena Irwin. We had a lot of fun on the back and forth between those scenes, and as always, Steve encouraged ad-libbing and messing around, trying to take it to a different level, just off the script.
It is great to have that freedom as an actor. Not every show gives you that. But, yeah, that episode has a lot of off-the-hook, unbuttoned, crazy moments in it—explosive psychosis, as I would call it.
BuzzFeed: That scene in particular has really stuck with my generation. When I was in high school, we'd walk down the hallway, and you'd hear someone scream, "What are they selling?" And then someone screams back, "They're selling chocolates!"
Tom Kenny: That's great! That's awesome—kind of like a call and response.
4.Tom was able to record "The Campfire Song Song" in only one or two takes.
BuzzFeed: I've tried to sing the song, and it's very difficult! Was it tough to sing when you were recording it?
Tom Kenny: I just sang it last weekend at a Comic Con in Pittsburgh. They did a panel with me, like a Q&A, but it was in a heated tent outside the convention center, and I said, "Wow, this is great. We're all in a big tent. I feel like we're camping!" And then somebody said, "Campfire Song Song!" And I'm like, "Alright, let's do it!"
Yeah, it is pretty difficult to sing once it gets speeding along. That song was written by Dan Povenmire, an early SpongeBob writer, also a writer on Rocko's Modern Life, and then co-creator of Phineas and Ferb for Disney. So, he definitely has cartoon street cred, and he's a musician and a songwriter.
The song speaks to Spongebob's hyperactive-gung-ho-ness, and then he can't contain himself, and he starts singing faster and faster. He throws it to Patrick, and Patrick's brain does not work that fast. Patrick is totally in the dust and panics like a deer in headlights. One of my favorite Squidward moments is when SpongeBob tries to throw the song to Squidward, and Squidward's just like, "No!" So, yeah, it was fun. It was hard to sing, but I don't think it took too many takes, maybe one or two.
Fast-talking and fast singing like that can freak you out if you think, "How am I going to sing this so fast?" They didn't speed it up or anything; it's all in real time. If you break it down into small steps, you go, "Okay, I can handle this." I do a lot of fast talking in commercial spots, so I had some experience in that, and I still do that. So you really just have to stop even thinking of them as words. It's almost like you're scatting; it sounds like you're Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong or something. If you think of them as words, and you try to make them make sense, you can't.
5.The SpongeBob cast did takes for "Sailor Mouth" using real curse words.
BuzzFeed: I read that you all originally thought of words to replace the dolphin noises. Do you remember the words that you used?
Tom Kenny: That's how it started out. In the script, it was kind of Fred-Flintstone-type swearing. I think actors reading those words can kind of get hung up on them. Steve said, "The words aren't important, but you gotta just let it fly. You gotta get up to that apoplectic level when you're just so enraged that your stuff's coming out of your mouth." It's kind of like the movie A Christmas Story, where they get a flat tire on the road, and Darren McGavin is letting stuff fly that his kid has never heard.
It's a very funny episode, and it's a very sitcom-y episode. In a way, it could be an episode of Leave It to Beaver, or Everybody Hates Chris, where a kid learns a word that he has no idea what it is and is just tossing it around. Every adult probably remembers when they uttered some word that was spicy, but they didn't really know what it meant, and the adults around them freaked out. So I think the episode taps into that.
After a while, Steve just said, "You know what, let's try something. Let's really cuss. Let's just use whatever words you would use." And we did, and Steve said, "They're going to get bleeped out anyway; none of this is going to get on the air." It did help the acting, and then they added the dolphin bleeps later.
6.Tom can neither confirm nor deny the rumor of the 'hidden tapes' containing the 'unedited' version of "Sailor Mouth."
Tom Kenny: I know there are tales of the original tapes existing, which I cannot confirm. I've never heard them. Maybe they were erased on that day; maybe they're buried 500 miles at the earth's core. I have no idea. Maybe some big Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse, full of wooden boxes of forbidden tapes? Or maybe they don't exist at all? I don't know, but I get asked that question a lot of Comic Cons. People have constructed simulacrums of that with AI, and claim that it's real, which is completely fake.
But that was a really fun episode to do! And boy, when it came to cursing a blue streak, Clancy [Mr. Krabs] was the champion, all-time winner—gold medal!
We laugh a lot on Spongebob and always have and still do. But that is one particular episode where I remember just crying, just hearing these characters do that. Just gales of laughter, tears from laughing, and when those things happen, you say, "Wow, this is my day job. This is my occupation." When I'm laughing my head off with hilarious people, that's when you're super grateful for the job you have. You feel like you dodged a bullet in terms of not having a plan B.
7.Gary is one of Tom's favorite characters to voice besides SpongeBob.
BuzzFeed: SpongeBob is one of your many voices on the show. Who would you choose if you had to pick a favorite voice besides SpongeBob?
Tom Kenny: Oh wow, well, I do love Gary. I love his personality. It's funny—people would think it's just meowing and making cat noises, but his sounds have a variety of meanings. It's kind of like Snoopy, right? It's not just generic needle drop 'meows' that we use. We record every "meow" thinking about: "What's Gary thinking? What's his attitude?" I love doing him, and it's a challenge, even after all these years.
8.When Tom voices the French Narrator, it brings a connection to creator Stephen Hillenburg.
Tom Kenny: I gotta say, I love the French Narrator too. (Does the French accent) He's sort of a calm voice. He's also based on Jacques Cousteau, the oceanographer, who was one of Stephen Hillenburg's personal heroes. Stephen really had a lot of respect for the ocean research that Jacques Cousteau did for decades, and Steve even got involved after Jacques Cousteau's death, before SpongeBob. Philippe Cousteau is Jacques's son, and there's a Family Foundation. They're still very involved in ocean research and preservation of the oceans. Steve got involved in terms of charities, donations and stuff like that.
So whenever I do the French Narrator, it's hard not to think of Steve. I always think of him; he's always there. He's always there somewhere in the mix, even if he's been gone for some years now.
I think that's what keeps us on the show—not that we need a reason to be invested. It kind of gives you a little more sense of a mission. We have to carry this on, whatever the script, whatever the project. We have to bring these characters to life, that Steve gave us, that Steve entrusted us with.
9.Tom had a great time portraying Patchy the Pirate at the Macy's Day Parade.
BuzzFeed: You recently brought Patchy the Pirate to life at the Macy's Parade!
Tom Kenny: I felt that in Macy's Parade with Patchy, I was not just a guy dressed up like a pirate on a float in the rain; I was Patchy the Pirate! There's kids out there, you know? Patchy has got to be Patchy.
BuzzFeed: I saw you all over TikTok that morning!
Tom Kenny: Oh, good, wow! I don't look at social media. What was the word? Did they like it?
BuzzFeed: Oh, it went viral! I saw one video of someone shouting hi, and you waved back to her, and it got millions of views.
Tom Kenny: This sweet person yelled, "Patchy!"
BuzzFeed: I'll make sure to link the video in the article so you can see it!
Tom Kenny: Steve cast me as Patchy, probably just because I was standing there, but he's like, "We need a cut-rate kids' show host on your local TV channel, and he's a pirate, but really, he just thinks he's a pirate. He lives in the suburbs, he lives in a split-level house in Encino but he dresses up like a pirate. He goes to work every day as a pirate, and he's the biggest SpongeBob fan in the world. Tom, do you want to do that?" I'm like, "Of course, that sounds great!"
I gotta look up the [Macy's Parade] videos now because I'm not on any social media. I'm a total social media hermit. But I love that, because when you're doing that stuff, you're not aware that you're being filmed or whatever. You're just interacting with people.
At the staging area where you're waiting and you're getting on your float, there were these kids from these marching bands, and we're all soaking wet. We're all just so happy to be there, and they were excited to see Patchy. A bunch of them were tuning up their instruments, and then I said, as Patchy, "Are you ready, kids?" And they responded, "Aye, aye captain!" They were just so happy and into the spirit of the fun of it. I found their enthusiasm for what they were doing, despite the pouring rain, to be really SpongeBob-ish—you know what I mean? It was a blast.
10.Tom is not only a performer on the show, but is also the voice director.
BuzzFeed: What are some parts of the job a voice director focuses on?
Tom Kenny: I guess overall, the job of the voice director is to know the script and the storyboard inside and out, to know exactly what the editor is going to need who will be assembling the audio for the episode, and because the animators animate to our voice tracks, to give them the best stuff possible to work with.
With Spongebob, that's a little more sizable of a job because it is so storyboard-driven. There are many little things that aren't lines and not in the script. So, I would say a granular knowledge of the script and then just getting the right performances out of the actors, which, after these guys have been doing their characters for 25 years, is not a real heavy lift on my part. It's more about the timing and stuff like that.
For example, in the storyboard, they're standing a little further apart than that, so give me a couple more decibels, or they're right next to each other, so you don't need to be so loud. Oh, by the way, Squidward is yelling down from his window on this line; he's not standing in the doorway next to them. So, just things like that.
The third thing, just as important, is making the actors comfortable with playing around and experimenting. A lot of times, the people I'm directing are guest voices, maybe celebrities, and sometimes older people or kids. So that's the job of a director, and it's a little bit psychological as well—you just want to make them feel comfortable. It's been a very interesting job for me. And again, that came directly from Steve, and I didn't know if I had that in me or in my skill set. Steve saw it, and he said, "I really want you to try it." That's another really enjoyable aspect of my job, and it's something that I've been able to do now on other shows that aren't SpongeBob.
Whenever I talk about directing, I am always amazed that I enjoy it so much and after like 10,000 hours, have gotten the feeling that I'm okay at it now. It's something I never would have dreamed of doing because I was an actor who got directed—I worked with a lot of great voice directors, a lot of them Emmy-winning people. I take it really seriously. It's definitely extra labor, but it's extra labor that I really enjoy. I'm so happy that Steve pushed me into that. I'm grateful to him for that. I never would have thought of it by myself.
11.The classic "Imaginaaaation" image is Tom's most popular photo to sign at Comic Cons.
BuzzFeed: I personally love SpongeBob's imagination; what do you love the most about his character?
Tom Kenny: Imagination resonates with a lot of people. I do a lot of Comic Cons all over the country. Small towns, big cities, everywhere, east, west, south, north. I find it really interesting to see what moments people say are important to them. When people wait in line for hours, and they want to say, "This is what I like about Spongebob," the imagination aspect is very important to people.
That episode ["Idiot Box"] is about Squidward not being able to give himself over to being childlike—to come in the box and just let himself be a kid. And that particular image of SpongeBob with the rainbow, I probably sign more than any other autograph. I think people just like to see it, you know what I mean? It's kind of like an inspirational image—keep at it, you know, don't get beaten down.
12.Tom Kenny admires SpongeBob's resilience.
Tom Kenny: For me personally, what I love, and it's kind of the key to the whole character, is his resilience. Steve always said that SpongeBob was the most complex character on the show and the hardest to write for.
SpongeBob does get beaten down—he does not get the promotion and he does not get his driver's license. Sometimes people think that the key to the character is just, "Everything's wonderful," and he is naive, to some degree. But that's not all there is to it—he also gets back up when he's beaten down. I think the key to him is he approaches the world with a smile, and an assumption that the world is a good place and people are good at their core.
I think of "The Best Day Ever," the song that was written by myself and Andy Paley, who recently passed away, and we're doing a big celebration of his life next year. When he and I wrote that song, that's what we wrote it about: "It's going to be the best day ever." "Sometimes the little things start closing in on me." "When I'm feeling down, I want to lose that frown." We wrote that about his resiliency—not just about wide-eyed wonder, but about keeping your wide-eyed wonder when it gets the crap slapped out of it. That's SpongeBob's philosophy. It's not just the smile; it's the smile that you have to work to retain, even when things suck. For me, that's the most inspirational part of that character in my life. Doing a job of any kind is hard, and there are slings and arrows, and just living is hard, but there are also fabulous things happening, and you're discovering wonderful things, like Jack Skellington, "What's this? What's this?" I try to live my life like that.
BuzzFeed: I love the Nightmare Before Christmas reference!
13.The best parts of SpongeBob have rubbed off on Tom.
Tom Kenny: Part of the reason that I try to live my life like that, is this fictional character that I play rubbed off on me. It really has. It's a little bit of a chicken or egg question. Steve cast me as SpongeBob because he said, "You're a lot like this guy already," but playing SpongeBob made me more like him in a good way.
That aspect of SpongeBob also connects with other people, 20-somethings, 30's, that grew up with the show, and now they're adulting, and adulting is hard, and they carry SpongeBob into their adulting, and he's still an inspirational figure to them. That's why I love doing these Comic Cons—you hear those things, and it's nice to hear that, and people want to tell you that. So, that's my answer. I love his resilience. I almost said his positivity, but it's his resilience.
(Jokes) You should add in, "Kenny trails off and looks pensively at the screen."
BuzzFeed: I'll make sure to do that!
(Tom Kenny trails off and looks pensively at the screen.)
14.To end the interview, I asked a question that I've always wanted to know: Do you think SpongeBob will ever get his driver's license?
Tom Kenny: Oh wow, that's kind of his white whale, you know? I mean, when Captain Ahab finally found Moby Dick, it didn't go well. So I don't know, I've never really thought about that. I think it's always kind of like if the rabbit from Trix finally gets the cereal—what happens?
One thing I can say with certainty—whether he'll get it or not, he'll keep trying. He'll pick himself up, dust himself off, and jump back in the driver's seat with the full expectation that he is going to get it.
Thank you to Tom Kenny for sharing his incredible insight!
Can't get enough of SpongeBob? Catch "SpongeBob & Sandy's Country Christmas," now available to stream on Paramount+.
Have any memories you want to share with Tom? Let me know in the comments below!
