How Corey Burton De-Aged Count Dooku's Voice For Star Wars: Tales Of The Jedi [Exclusive Interview]

I'm a huge fan of the Haunted Mansion and I really love your work with that attraction. I've read that the Mansion and the work of Paul Frees was your initial inspiration to get into voice acting, can you talk about that?

The character voice work of Paul Frees was my inspiration. I just thought he was just the greatest voice man ever. His characters were the funniest. He had such rich and interesting and funny and dramatic characterizations, very unique. And when I was a kid, I remember we'd go to Disneyland once every year or two and this house was there and they'd have the sign up, on whatever date this will be a new attraction. The Haunted Mansion, I thought, "Oh, that'll be cool."

The moment I stepped in, I heard that voice and I was thunderstruck by what I think is the greatest single piece of narrative performance ever. It's got everything. It's creepy, it's intense, it's dramatic, it's hilarious. And it's just got that unmistakable sound that I just thought, "How does a human being even sound like that?"

From there, after attending that first visit, I just thought, "Who is that? I have to meet him and these voice people. And who knows? Maybe one day I can do this for a living and get to maybe work with people like that. Wouldn't that be something?" And so I set about first finding the name. 

Interestingly enough, there was a Halloween radio commercial playing, and I think it was maybe a Bela Lugosi impression Halloween radio ad and I knew it was the same guy. And I said, "Who is that?" And one of the answers I got was from the radio station, I guess it was KMPC. And it was Gary Owens himself answered the question, who was an idol of mine also from "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In." And anyway, he says, "Yes, he's one of the busiest voiceover men, named Paul Frees."

And then he was tied to June Foray because Paul Frees and June Foray did most of the character voices for Jay Ward cartoons, which I was a big fan of as well. One Saturday I was it my uncle's place I think, and on the TV was the "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" and I was watching the credits and there it said, "Voices: Paul Frees, June Foray, Walter Tetley, Bill Scott, William Conrad." And I went, "Oh, June Foray!" And I turned to my parents and I said, "Oh, she's incredible. She does every female voice that you hear on these shows. And she's Rocky and she's the witch and she's this and she's that."

And my mom said, "Oh, your uncle knows her."

I said, "Well, he does?"

"Yeah. Hey Burt, do you know June Foray?"

"Oh, I know June."

"Can I meet her?"

He was the manager of the Thrifty Drug Store that was in Woodland Hills where she lived. And he knew her quite well because she was a very friendly, chatty person. And I got to chat with her by phone at first. And then I got to meet her and I met her with Daws Butler who became my teacher. And it just sort of grew from there.

I'd heard a story from Matt Wood [Supervising Sound Editor, Skywalker Sound] once that you'd had done all of the episodes for "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" movie and then they had to dub Christopher Lee over it. Matt Wood told me that Christopher Lee was listening to the guide track of you and he asked Matt, "Are you sure you really want me to do this? Because this guy's really good."

Yeah, yeah. Matt told me that, it's so flattering. Christopher Lee was a big star, but he was like one of us, a character actor. Just, "What do you need me for? Sure, I'll play that character." And apparently he liked my version of his Count Dooku character.

I don't think from what I heard that he was all that keen on doing that job anyway, it's just that one of the actor's agents saw that there was this movie and in their contracts, all of the film actors had the right of first refusal. So they replaced [me], which was very disappointing because at one of the first "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" sessions, Dave [Filoni] said that George [Lucas] had listened to all our tracks and had seen the first bits of animation and he had a message for the voice cast. George had said, "I'm not doing movies anymore. This is now 'Star Wars.' And this voice cast, you are now the official characters. So play it the way you would play it. Don't imitate the original actors, but do your own natural version of it. You have license now. You sort of own these character voices now since it's now animated."

How do you feel about Dooku as a character, especially since you've played him for so long. I'm wondering what your sense of Dooku is after having embodied him for all these years.

Well, I'm a trained radio actor from the traditions from the 1940s, so I approach it like any scripted character in a radio drama. And I always hear the voice in the words themselves. I see the words and I try to tune into the writer's mind's ear, the voice that the writer is hearing and I try to do that and make it an organic kind of thing. I don't change my own style of performance or whatever because I play characters, I don't play myself. It's hard to put into words.

It's an instinctive kind of thing, guided by Dave as well, how he hears it in his mind with each piece of dialogue, each scene. You want to get a sense of the energy level, what's going on in the scene, maybe how the character feels. Often you don't need much. Really good dialogue performs itself. You just see it and what it sounds like, like when you read a novel and you're reading the dialogue. You don't see the words, you hear the voice from the page, you hear it in your mind. And I figure it's my job to produce that character as I hear it in my mind's ear from the writer and through Dave or whatever director I'm working with. I don't know if that makes any sense.

I've talked to Dave Filoni a lot and people on the crew of "The Clone Wars." And they said with George Lucas, really everything is sort of a classic movie reference. That's really kind of what his worldview is of shaped around. And I've watched interviews with you where everything feels like those classic movie actors, but also classic radio. I'm wondering, what sort of stuff did they throw at you? I heard the story about how Cad Bane's voice came to be. And now that I've heard it, I can't unhear it.

Yeah. He's a blend of Peter Lorre and spaghetti western bounty hunter, looming, sinister, tough guy characters. Peter Lorre in the Old West is the way I perceive him. But yeah, so much in "The Clone Wars" incidental characters or supporting roles or whatever parts that pop up here and there, Dave will say, "Yeah, yeah, why don't you do this? You got anything? Here's a guy who's like a bartender from whatever." And I'm thinking like, "Oh, you mean Sheldon Leonard from..." I don't know if it was "It's a Wonderful Life" or whatever. 

I know all those voices because I grew up watching a lot of old movies and TV shows. Very often, it'll be suggested, "Play it like Henry Daniell or somebody like that, or an old character actor from an old TV series or movie." And chances are like, "Yeah, I know that voice. Let me do something kind of like that."

Robert Stack. Robert Stack's not necessarily old movies and TV shows. Well, I guess everything's old now since I am somewhat. Some of the best, funniest little bits that we've done, I think, have been classic movie character actors that I based the voices on.

Do you have a particular moment across your work in "Star Wars" that stands out as sort of a favorite of yours?

Well, it is hard to pick favorites. What's your favorite child? I have loved them all. I do especially love Cad Bane, because it's an original creation between myself and Dave and George Lucas. And then now in "The Book of Boba Fett," there was some influence from Robert Rodriguez, who I've known for many years. I'm his movie trailer voice, "Robert Rodriguez presents Grindhouse," which is a send up of all those exploitation movie trailer voiceovers.

[I'm proud of] so much of "Clone Wars" and "Book of Boba Fett" and I think of "Bad Batch" as just an offshoot of "Clone Wars," which it is I guess. And I'm proud of all of it, especially when I see it animated so beautifully.

All of the interaction between the characters, the character designs, the production in general is just so spectacular when you see it all put together. And of course I've already long forgotten what I did and I like to be just an audience member, just another fan. I'm often surprised, I don't necessarily remember having even done it. But if it's a great, impactful moment, that makes me feel really satisfied. It sounds maybe a little shallow and not very astute necessarily. But when I'll watch something and it's a really good scene that I was involved in, "Oh yeah, that worked, that worked." And then sometimes, "Oh, that didn't work. I wish I had done that a little differently. It was too this or not enough that."

Filmmaking and great television puts you in a different time and different place. And it's very real. And I often say sometimes we're characterized as, "Oh yeah, cartoon voices." As I learned from my first voice acting workshop, they're not voices, they're characters. My teacher, Daws Butler, said, "Ah, I only do five or six what you would call voices. But characters? I play thousands of different characters in the very same voice."

That applies to de-aging Dooku. It's nothing specific that one does with the voice. You have the basic tone, the basic shape of the sound of the character. But beyond that, you're just playing the scene and the character within that scene as truthfully and honestly as possible. But what I was going to say is to people, the general audience, a character voice — a character in a cartoon or animated production or radio play or whatever — those characters in people's imagination, in people's mind's ear are as real as any real living human being that they've never met. As real as any other actor that's performed in an old movie or favorite television series or been on radio or whatever. You haven't met them. So what you heard and saw in the finished production exists as a full being. And so it's no different than, say, Harrison Ford. I've never met Harrison Ford, but if there was a cartoon character that sounded and looked like him, it's just as valid, just as real as the actual actor in my own perception.

"Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" is now available to stream in its entirety on Disney+.