The Voices of Pinky and the Brain Talk the 30th Anniversary of the Spin-Off’s Debut

In 1993, two megalomaniacal mice from Animaniacs began hatching schemes for global domination. Two years into their plotting, they made their boldest plan yet: to launch their own spin-off, Pinky and the Brain.

At the time, fans of Animaniacs, produced by Steven Spielberg, loved the classic-comedy-duo dynamic so much that Spielberg and The WB thought Pinky and the Brain could make it in primetime as the network’s answer to The Simpsons, while also running the same episodes on Saturday mornings. Unfortunately, the primetime angle was a bridge too far, especially since the show ran opposite 60 Minutes, making Pinky and the Brain’s ratings as diminutive as the height of its stars. 

But The WB didn’t give up just yet. The plotting mice were kept on Saturday mornings, where they enjoyed a four-season run and a legacy that extends to today: The duo was featured in a recent Hulu revival of Animaniacs and the men who voiced them — Rob Paulsen (Pinky) and Maurice LaMarche (the Brain) — regularly revive the characters for their Animaniacs Live! musical roadshow. 

Now, 30 years since Pinky and the Brain’s debut, Paulsen and LaMarche, who have worked together countless times over the years, are as close as the characters they voice. In honor of the show’s anniversary, I recently spoke with them about the spin-off’s enduring legacy and how their own friendship parallels their respective rodents. 

Before getting into Pinky and the Brain, do you remember the first time you worked together?

Maurice LaMarche: On anything? We absolutely know what it was. It was Johnny Quest. 

Rob Paulsen: Then we both did Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. 

LaMarche: Yes, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. In that, our characters didn’t interact that much, but in the studio we were always interacting. I don't know who did the first snippet of Monty Python, but as soon as one of us stepped forth with a Python thing, the other joined in and we just began back and forth. I went, “This is my kind of guy. I like him.” (Said in the voice of the Gremlin from Looney Tunes.) “I like him. He’s silly!”

Paulsen: Ditto, and the love affair hasn’t yet subsided. It’s not surprising to me that, in the fullness of time, Pinky and the Brain has stuck around and continues to resonate with audiences of sometimes three generations because the relationship between Pinky and the Brain is an authentic one in terms of love and respect, despite how comedically it’s portrayed. And Moe (Maurice) and I, we’re like brothers. We really do love each other. We’ve helped each other through difficult circumstances. I think he, more than I, has helped me. 

LaMarche: You’ve helped me.

Paulsen: Well, I know, but nonetheless.

LaMarche: Remember a couple of weeks ago? I couldn’t get the gas thing back into the thing and you said, “This is how you do it. You put it right back in.”

Paulsen: Yes, he said, “I couldn’t get my gas out,” and then all of a sudden we heard—

LaMarche: Alright, alright.

Paulsen: (Makes fart noise.)

LaMarche: Stop that. It was the nozzle. I couldn’t get the nozzle back in the thing, and I had to FaceTime him in. 

See, the thing is, we’re similar yet very different. He’s a car guy, I could give a shit about cars. He’s a sports guy, I’ve got sports blindness. But, where it really counts, human connection, relationships, that type of thing — and humor. Humor is the defining glue for all of us. You help more people through humor than any kind of preaching. We’re together on that. He ends his podcast with: “Laughter is the best medicine, and the good news is the refills are free and you can’t overdose.” Though, the cynic in me always pops in: “Unless you’re asthmatic.”

Paulsen: Moe’s more literal than me. He’s smarter than I am, which reflects in these characters.

LaMarche: I don’t know if that’s true, actually.

That actually brings me to a question I had for you two. In your friendship, who’s the Pinky and who’s the Brain?

Paulsen: Oh, without question, I’m the Pinky. 

LaMarche: Yes, he’s the Pinky, but the thing is, like the human inspirations for Pinky and the Brain, (Tiny Toons writers/artists) Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald — they were extremes in personality, but neither was an idiot. They were both geniuses. Eddie Fitzgerald was extremely clever and creative, and so was Tom Minton. The same is true of us. Rob is the optimist, and I’m the cynic. He’s cheerful, and I’m the curmudgeon. But in terms of intelligence, Rob might be a little smarter than me.

Paulsen: You know what? Moe’s smarter than me in Canada. I might be a little more in the U.S.

LaMarche: (Laughs.) Yes, if you exchange my Canadian intelligence for U.S. intelligence, with the exchange rate, Rob comes out ahead. 

Paulsen: We’re both more than willing to defer to the other because we have the most wonderful kind of respect for one another. I adore Maurice. I love what he’s about. He’s one of the most honest humans I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.

LaMarche: Sometimes to a fault, actually.

Paulsen: Well, yeah. I’m an eternal optimist, but there are times when that Pollyanna vibe doesn’t serve me. Moe has helped me learn that. Moe has a healthy amount of skepticism.

In fact, I recall when Sam Register — the wonderful head of Warner Bros. Animation at present — started mentioning that Steven (Spielberg) had been talking about doing Pinky and the Brain again. I would say, “Ooh, well, if Steven’s talking about it, it sounds good!” and what balances us out is Moe saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” which is a healthy way to look at it. It all boils down to a deeply respectful and loving friendship. I don’t care if we’re just together having lunch or if we’re at conventions, I’m always better when Moe is there.

You’ve each played literally hundreds of characters, but did anything about Pinky and the Brain stand out to you at first?

Paulsen: To Moe they did.

LaMarche: Yeah, when we did the very first one — I think “Meet John Brain” was the first one we recorded — the chemistry of these two characters struck us. I remember saying to Rob, “Boy, I love those two guys. I hope we get to do them again.”

I remember the third one was “Bubba Bo Bob Brain,” and I really thought we hit our stride. That’s when we found the voices of the characters, their attitudes and that infectious enthusiasm Pinky has for helping Brain really came to the forefront. 

Paulsen: Moe locked into Brain sooner than I locked into Pinky. When you hear Moe’s performances from the beginning until today, it’s really consistent. 

LaMarche: I’ve gone down an octave since my 30s and that, to me, only lent a little more Orson-ness to Brain, but the attitude has always stayed the same. I prefer my work in the later episodes because the real depth of Orson Welles makes its way in there.

Speaking of Orson Welles as the inspiration for the voice of Brain, I’m still in awe that you guys made an entire episode honoring that famous Orson Welles frozen peas commercial. 

LaMarche: Whenever we were doing our mic checks, I’d just sit down and recite the entire Orson Welles frozen peas outtakes, playing all three parts: the engineer, the ad guy and Orson. I’d do it all the way through, waiting for (voice director) Andrea Romano to go, “Okay, Moe, thanks. That’s enough,” and she almost never did. The way Rob can sing the countries of the world as Yakko, that’s his thing. Frozen peas is my thing, and they wrote that whole episode for me.

Also, the timing of it was such that the episode was recorded on the day of (comedian and actor) Sam Kinison’s funeral. Sam Kinison was a dear friend of mine, and I had just come back from the funeral. It was exactly what I needed because we didn’t stop laughing the whole time. It felt like an act of love.

Going back to the beginning again, tell me how you found the voices for these characters.

LaMarche: For Brain, I’ll start by saying that I’m perpetually five minutes late for absolutely everything, but for this, my agent at the time just drilled it into me, “You can’t be late. You can’t be late. This is the first audition of the day of a new Steven Spielberg series. So, if you’re late, you’ll upset the rest of the day.” So, I got there at 8:30, and the auditions didn’t start until 9. When they put me in the studio, the first thing I saw was this lab mouse with this big scowly face and sloped forehead and jowly cheeks and I went, “Oh, this is Orson Welles. They have created this character with me in mind, so I will give them what they want.” 

I warmed up by doing the frozen peas, and I went in there and did it and, years later, I was told by Andrea that they didn't let anybody else read for the Brain. They cast me on the spot.

As for Pinky, I remember at the end of the first day, the frontrunner was John Astin, who played Gomez in The Addams Family, but then the next day, my partner in crime came in.

Paulsen: As Moe mentioned earlier, we’re both enormous fans of British humor in general. The Pythons, the Goons, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, The Two Ronnies — all that stuff resonated with me and, in the audition, you try all kinds of stuff. Doing an accent for the character may seem like a bizarre choice, but there are no wrong choices. By that point I’d been doing cartoons for quite a while, and I’d learned to be really unselfconscious and Pinky came out of just trying all kinds of things.

I’ll tell you though, Animaniacs was the only time in my career when I had gone to (creator) Tom Ruegger and Andrea Romano and said, “If you don’t hire me for this, you’re making a mistake.” It wasn’t out of arrogance, it was because that was my pitch. I was right over the plate, all I had to do was connect. And that show changed my life. The rewards are evident at this very moment.

LaMarche: Apart from Rob’s brilliant improvisational skills, there’s no reason Pinky is British. I always wanted to have, in one episode, Brain to turn to Pinky and go, “When the fuck were you ever in England?”

Paulsen: (In Pinky's voice) What do you mean? Where’s England? Is England like Legoland?

My last question for both of you guys is, how would the world be if Brain were in charge?

LaMarche: You can't play a villain as though he knows he’s doing wrong. And I never thought of the Brain as a villain and neither did Peter Hastings, who really co-developed the characters. Brain believes that, once he takes over the world, he will fix everything with his genius I.Q. I know that’s how Donald Trump thinks as well, but it ain’t working because 90 isn’t a genius I.Q. 

But anyway, I’m not smart enough to conceive what the world would be like with Brain in charge, but I think Brain knows he will cure all known diseases and bring peace and prosperity to all countries and that the world would be a better place because he’s running it. That’s why he wants to take over the world.

Paulsen: (In Pinky voice) And I will continue to butter my feet! Narf!