Full video

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if you were a kid back in the 90s and

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early 2000s

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then chances are you were probably

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watching the animated series about the

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batman

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behind every great animated hero is a

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great voice actor

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and for me that actor is kevin conroy

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how was that that was good kevin keep

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going okay

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i am vengeance i am the knight

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i am batman

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is that okay

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i'm kevin conroy uh i've been playing

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the voice

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of batman since 1991

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for 29 years jokers opened every cell in

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arkham

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it started with batman the animated

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series

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and then the adventures of batman and

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robin and then came the justice league

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batman beyond and in the interim there

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was

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mask of the phantasm sub-zero killing

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joke

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i would like to claim that i have been

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the only voice of batman for any

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animated show

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but i've been doing it the longest of

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anybody and i've been the one that's

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sort of referred to as the animated

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voice come into the light

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i was a new york theater actor i studied

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at juilliard

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and the people i worked with were robin

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williams

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kelsey grammer harriet harris francis

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conroy

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i did broadway off-broadway a lot of

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classics shakespeare the greeks

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address your love and might to honor

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helen

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and so when my agent told me they were

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doing this new animated batman

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show the only thing i knew about batman

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was the

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adam west show i didn't even know it had

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never been an animated show i was that

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naive to it

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and so when i was first auditioning for

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the role the director described it as

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this very dark

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noir character i went to exactly what i

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know

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which is the theater and so i used my

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imagination to fill that out

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and for me with my voice try to create

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a dark gritty filthy

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new york street so once i had

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came up with this voice in the recording

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studio everything got really still

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in there and i thought oh i just screwed

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up i have so

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blown this and then the casting director

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came running inside she said you nailed

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it you you nailed it

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[Music]

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joker where did he go my favorite

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episodes

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of any of the shows are the ones that

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deal with the

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complexity of the man of bruce wayne

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perchance to dream is a wonderful

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episode where he's drugged

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and he goes back into his childhood and

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he deals with his father

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so i was the voice of batman and bruce

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wayne and then i was drugged batman

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and then i was adolescent to bruce wayne

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and i was thomas wayne my father

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so in the one episode i did five voices

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so any episode that dealt with

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that psychology that makes up batman

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i love you know what's going on this is

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a dream

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tell me where it is voicing batman

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for 29 years has been an extraordinary

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experience

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because it evolved from being a

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an acting job to being kind of the

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embodiment

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of a cultural touchdown for a lot of

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people

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people come up to me all the time and

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just want to grab me and hug me

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because they know me i've shared my

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deepest emotional life with them

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through my performance and through my

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voice so the advice i would give to the

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next person who comes along to voice

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batman

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um is don't because i'm still here no

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i'm just kidding i'm just kidding

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[Laughter]

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joker where did he go

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joker where did he go